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AJA and realtime
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[gary adcock] “is still promising HDV support, oH and did you mention that you cannot use FW HDcapture or Storage with the Mojo attached?”
Actually you could. You just need to be configured properly. It is no different than using FW drives with AJA Io.
[gary adcock] “is still promising HDV support”
Never thought it is a big deal if it came out spring of this year or winter. The lack of a serious deck and clients interested in editing in native HDV [all want something easier so far in my experience] has not affected us at all.
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That was exactly one of my biggest beefs with the Mojo…no SDI, and worse, no digital audio input. I think it now has a SPDIF input. Of course they argue that the basic Mojo editor won’t even know what SDI is, and if they do they will automatically buy an adrenaline system.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
i would guess you can be dismissive of HDV if you already own a $90,000 avid system and set clients. i would suspect that FCP is already winning those interested in HDV with their native support. If you put a dollar figure on the Avid solution versus the FCP solution, you will find quite a difference–enough to purchase a high speed SAN for starters. Can Avid Adrenaline do uncompressed HD yet?
i just think it is too sweet the way FCP supports most any major camera native format and not have to drag things to proprietary codecs to get “real time”.
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[Rich Rubasch] “That was exactly one of my biggest beefs with the Mojo…no SDI, and worse, no digital audio input. I think it now has a SPDIF input.”
Rich,
This has been a prime topic for the Avid guys, but I think it’s unfair to compare Mojo to AJA Io, Kona 2 or BMD Decklink. Avid never intended it to be that. Xpress Pro and DV are targeted at the DV videographer. Mojo was added to give them a bit more capability, such as adding uncompressed graphics to a DV timeline and output to an analog format, like BetaSP, VHS, etc. In addition, it functions as a monitoring device during laptop work and for Unity-attached Xpress Pro clients. Mojo performs these task well, so I doubt Avid will make it into anything more, since then it moves into the space where Adrenaline is positioned.
One cool Mojo trick, though, is that if you are running with HD footage on Xpress Pro HD (PC for know), you will get downconverted preview output to an NTSC monitor. This timeline can contain mixed DV25, uncompressed SD, DV50, DVCPRO HD and Avid’s DNxHD and all will play in RT as well as be downconverted to NTSC in RT on the output of the Mojo. This includes with RT effects, like transitions and color-correction.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Here is a question. Is the AVID capturing all of these formats in a their native codecs? Because if I use one FCP preset I can capture any format I want to that preset.
IE: with a 10 bit uncompressed preset I can capture DV, BETA SP, HDV and DBETA sources and edit them all in the same timeline. AVID has always had proprietary codecs to go along with their proprietary hardware. I know that their DV codec is proprietary so I am sure this is the case with the others as well. Just what is AVid doing with your footage to make it all compatible?
Maybe it is just all daughtercard accelleration?
Is all you are doing with AVID is capturing the same stuff into one codec? (if you want to see how bad those codecs perform then just visit marco solorio’s codec site http://www.onerivermedia.com) if that is the case I can do that with FCP any day of the week.
I’ll put a 8 or 10 bit frame from FCP against any AVID for picture quality alone.
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[David Battistella] “Here is a question. Is the AVID capturing all of these formats in a their native codecs? Because if I use one FCP preset I can capture any format I want to that preset.
……I’ll put a 8 or 10 bit frame from FCP against any AVID for picture quality alone.”David,
If we are talking about uncompressed, then it is 8-bit uncompressed SD on Xpress Pro or MCA. If we are talking about DV25, then it is native with an Avid file wrapper. DV50 and DVCProHD are imported via FW and rewrapped with an MXF wrapper. If you want the best HD image today in an Avid product, then Avid DS Nitris would set the standard and would look as good as anything out there.
It’s pretty silly to talk about raw image quality, since few images go through a system unaltered in some way. Since FCP does such a poor job of effects processing compared with some of the other top-end systems out there, you have to look at the total results, not simple raw image versus raw image. Forgetting about price, the scaling image quality of Nitris hardware versus FCP motion effects is pretty significant. Even if you look at software alone, the scaling in Motion is much worse than in AE or Boris.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[David Battistella] “aybe it is just all daughtercard accelleration?”
David,
No there is no daughtercard acceleration. Mojo enables some of the mixing of resolutions but really more as a dongle, than anything else. There are onboard chips to handle some scaling, A-D/D-A, a/v sync and codec support. Pretty much the same in MCA. You get true hardware acceleration with the Nitris boardset which is on DS and soon Symphony HD.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Oliver,
I am just trying to get this. You say.
“If we are talking about DV25, then it is native with an Avid file wrapper. DV50 and DVCProHD are imported via FW and rewrapped with an MXF wrapper.”
Is it captured or digitized via firewire or imported. if it imported, where is it captured?
In terms of image quality, there are third party solutions like FINAL TOUCH HD that are extremely clean and very powerful Color correction tools. It’s not the all in one box aproach, but the 10bit images from that workflow are beautiul.
I though the Nitris was an 8-bit solution.
Why is the raw picture quality silly?
Is it because FCP is such an awful scaler?
Is the rendered media in FCP somehow inferior to the rendered media in an AVID product?Just wondering what avid does to the picture to make it so much better.
David
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[David Battistella] “Is it captured or digitized via firewire or imported. if it imported, where is it captured?
…..I though the Nitris was an 8-bit solution.
Why is the raw picture quality silly?
Is it because FCP is such an awful scaler?
Is the rendered media in FCP somehow inferior to the rendered media in an AVID product?
Just wondering what avid does to the picture to make it so much better.”David,
DV25 is captured via FireWire and wrapped with an OMF wrapper to make it cross-platform compatible between Avid systems. DV50 and DV100 is captured via FW and wrapped as MXF. I think there are some pretty good multi-generational codec comparisons on Marco Solorio’s One River site.
I believe Nitris is a 10-bit YUV solution. It also handled 2K film files. I’m not saying that Avid’s image is better, rather that at its best, it isn’t worse, which is what you originally implied (or so it seemed to me). I use Kona 2 all the time, so I’m well aware of how good images via FCP can look. At their best, both companies put out excellent images.
My point about the scaling is that Apple does not have good scaling engines in FCP. This was specifically addressed in the FCP5 upgrade. As yet, I really haven’t had a chance to make any new comparisons. I have done that with Motion versus Red versus AE and wasn’t that impressed (with Motion’s quality on hi-res, highly textured stills). My point about raw images, was because this rarely happens. Images are scaled, color-corrected and effected in many ways. In these steps a lot of things happen to alter the image. For instance, many of these processes use OpenGL video cards. These are designed for game playback, so even though they may be pulling in 10-bit images, they frequently are writing only 8-bit images back to RAM.
What about YUV-RGB-YUV conversions? It’s all a pretty pointless argument. Frequently the “better mathematical” processes yield poor images. So for instance, Avid’s notoriously bad DVEs were Pinnacle cards. People objected to the fact that they tended to soften the image. In reality this was needed because the image filtering made the moves look smoother and softened textures, which would tend to scintilate otherwise.
Go look at the arguments on the Smoke forum. Smoke on Linux is an 8-bit box, but that’s 8-bit RGB. Is this better than 10-bit YUV? I don’t know, but Autodesk certainly thinks so and the images tend to bear them out.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Oliver,
Thanks for posting back. I wasn’t trying to start anything, just more curious about Nitris workflows 🙂
I like one of the slogan’s on Marco’s site.
Quality is cool but content is king. I think that sort of applies here.
Peace.
David
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