DVC Pro HD

[Walter Biscardi]

[Sean Davison] “Secondly is the AJ-HD1200A out yet and can any one tell me about their experiences.”

Sure, it’s been out almost a year. I got mine around December and it’s a great little workhorse. One caveat, you CANNOT do any type of insert editing with the deck. Assemble edit only and ONLY with Firewire control. RS-422 control is disabled when editing to tape. Image quality is outstanding and I got my deck fully loaded with both the firewire and HD-SDI options.

During captures there is a bug in the deck where FCP will see phantom “timecode breaks” whether you’re capturing via Firewire or using RS-422 control, especially if you do large Batch Captures. I have my preferences set to stop capture if a TC break is detected. Then I simply re-start the batch where it left off.

As for data rates, pretty much any Firewire drive will work as the footage runs with just a bit more data rate than standard DV. Single Firewire 800 drives run really well with it as I’ve edited with my LaCie Big Disk Extremes, the G-RAID’s and my Medea FCR2X Fibrechanel. Obviously, the more speed, the more realtime.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Scott Davis]

One annoying thing with 1200 is that if you use FW to monitor (like a DV system) your NTSC monitor will have horrible flashes. The only way around this is to monitor out via a 3rd party card. I’ve gotten to the point I don’t use my NTSC monitor except to color correct.

Scott Davis

[Walter Biscardi]

[Scott Davis] “The only way around this is to monitor out via a 3rd party card. I’ve gotten to the point I don’t use my NTSC monitor except to color correct. “

I should have mentioned, that the 1200A is part of my Kona 2 system so I don’t monitor via the 1200A. I have seen exactly what Scott mentions at several Panasonic Demos. Almost like a sync issue during playback.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Sean Davison]

MM Interesting Ive been thinking about a deck link and a SDI – DVI converter – will the DVC ProHD codec send SD out via the Deck link codec?

Also is the insert error an FCP of a Panasonic issue (FCP 5 May address it?)

[Greg Day]

During captures there is a bug in the deck where FCP will see phantom “timecode breaks” whether you’re capturing via Firewire or using RS-422 control, especially if you do large Batch Captures.

I just spent the entire weekend with a rental 1200A capturing 14 hours of footage. I came across the “timecode break” errors fairly regularly – doing batch capture for each tape as they were logged would usually turn up two or three. There were a few instances where it actually created new clips which I presume means there were “real” breaks. Otherwise, I could not see any actual breaks in the clips.

Have you found any issues with these errors, i.e. are they real timecode breaks, or is it something buggy?? I’m mildly concerned that it could come back to haunt me later if the film was ever to be reconformed. Right now, the plan is to master from the native DVCPro HD files, so even if there were breaks, it shouldn’t matter, right??

BTW, simply using a single LaCie Big Disk Extreme 500GB on a dual 2.5, running FCP 4.5, OSX.4.

Also BTW, this codec is pretty darn cool – looks great, less filling!

greg

Dog Day Editing
Creative Editorial & Directing Services
Rose City

[Walter Biscardi]

[GDay] “Have you found any issues with these errors, i.e. are they real timecode breaks, or is it something buggy??”

So far just a bug either in the deck or the way FCP sees the deck. I’m hoping that Panasonic and Apple addressed this with FCP 5. I have not seen any real TC breaks yet.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Greg Day]

thanks for that.

here’s to hoping…

Dog Day Editing
Creative Editorial & Directing Services
Rose City

[Sean Davison]

Walter – is the disabled 422 an FCP or Panasonic thing?

Does this set up mean that I can online at HD Res running at 12 meg per second?

Have you striped your Lacies together?

Does the Kona output the DVCproHD Codec?

[Walter Biscardi]

[Sean Davison] “Walter – is the disabled 422 an FCP or Panasonic thing? “

Panasonic. I wss told by my Panasonic Rep that the unit has “one set of electronics” so that’s why the machine is so “dumbed down.” Don’t ask me what “one set of electronics” means, because I don’t get it either. Seems like RS-422 control during an edit is a pretty basic thing for a $32,000 deck (with all the options added like mine)

[Sean Davison] “Does this set up mean that I can online at HD Res running at 12 meg per second?”

Using the DVCPro HD codec, yes.

[Sean Davison] “Have you striped your Lacies together? “

Yep, though now I’m running them as individual units for more flexibility in both suites. They run great in either configuration.

[Sean Davison] “Does the Kona output the DVCproHD Codec?”

Yep, it even accelerates some fuctions in FCP with the DVCPro HD codec. Basically when working with DVCPro HD, just choose one of the AJA Easy Setups. You can either capture natively with the DVCPro HD codec via Firewire then use the Kona 2 to output everything or you can capture uncompressed HD formats, HDCAM for example, via SDI to the DVCPro HD codec.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Craig Anderson]

We have the kona2 card as well, and have discovered a few things.

We originally tried capturing through the HD-SDI off the 1200 through the kona, but found some pretty brutal pixellation on diagonal, high contrast lines. Capturing through firewire nixed this problem. My only beef with this workflow is that the deck control is so sloppy through firewire, as compared to 422. Has anyone else experienced this problem with the Kona? Aja’s response was that this was how it was supposed to look (a cop out, in my opinion).
On to another topic:
We normally capture to an XServe raid, but recently tried capturing to a LaCie Extreme Big Disk, and encountered all these phantom time code breaks you spoke of. I found that capturing to the raid and then transferring to the LaCie solved this problem (we were running both the deck input and drive through the onboard firewire bus). So a PCI firewire card is in our future to solve this so that we can capture straight to the LaCie drive.
I think the TC breaks are a function of not enough bandwidth on the firewire bus on the g5, as I haven’t experienced them at all going to the xserve.