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Newbie question about multiple stream capture
My situation is that I am trying to capture 5 concurrent HDSDI feeds. I am thinking that to do this I will use 5 computers with capture cards, possibly 5 xserves. Thinking of linking them all to a fibre channel RAID along with the one Edit PC. Thinking that DVCPRO HD is likely to be the capture format.
My queries are
-What software do I use to do the capturing. I downloaded the user manual for the LHe and the software but it talks about using FCP to capture. I only intend to have FCP on the edit PC not the ingest PCs so what do I use for capture?
-How do I set all 5 machines capturing at the same time? Clearly there is remote desktop but is there a better solution?Is there a better way to do this?
Cheers
Jim -
9 Replies
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[jim stewart] “-What software do I use to do the capturing. I downloaded the user manual for the LHe and the software but it talks about using FCP to capture. I only intend to have FCP on the edit PC not the ingest PCs so what do I use for capture? “
AJA’s VTR XChange should work. I’ve never tried it this way but that’s what it is designed to do. Allow you to capture on any machine that does not have FCP installed, but it requires the Kona card to be installed. The LHi would work perfectly fine for this. It’s a free app you can download from the AJA site.
[jim stewart] “-How do I set all 5 machines capturing at the same time? Clearly there is remote desktop but is there a better solution? “
Put them all side by side if you can or I guess hire some cheap Production Assistants to start / stop each one. Honestly don’t have any other suggestion than that.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
Credits include multiple Emmy, Telly, Aurora and Peabody Awards.
Owner, Biscardi Creative Media featuring HD Post
Biscardi Creative MediaCreative Cow Forum Host:
Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Apple Color, AJA Kona, Business & Marketing, Maxx Digital. -
Thanks for the prompt reply. I had somehow missed that bit of software. The machines are unlikely to have screens and will be capturing from cameras not VTRs so it looks like either remote desktop unless I can work out a way of getting applescript to control them all.
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[jim stewart] ” The machines are unlikely to have screens and will be capturing from cameras not VTRs so it looks like either remote desktop unless I can work out a way of getting applescript to control them all.”
I think you can set up the VTR XChange for a non-controllable device, just like you would with FCP. So you would just hit Capture, etc… Certainly something worth testing since the application is a freebie.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
Credits include multiple Emmy, Telly, Aurora and Peabody Awards.
Owner, Biscardi Creative Media featuring HD Post
Biscardi Creative MediaCreative Cow Forum Host:
Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Apple Color, AJA Kona, Business & Marketing, Maxx Digital. -
I have also managed to work out that VTR Xchange is applescriptable so I am just trying to work out how to run the scripts remotely. I think I can get some terminal scripts to do it.
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You can use it without deck control. I’ve used it for live capture. One nice thing about the Kona series is that it can read RP188 time code, so if the device you’re capturing from supports this (it’s basically part of VANC) – almost all Sony cameras do, I was capturing from F900’s – you get time code directly from the SDI stream, making “deck control” unnecessary. If you set things up right, you also get embedded audio.
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you can capture all streams live into one system, using this –
https://www.telestream.net/pipeline/overview.htm
you put your cameras into the Pipeline hardware, and it converts it to a ProRes422 stream. You can do 2 HD streams per box, and you can have 2 boxes per CPU. This means 4 live ProRes422 streams into FCP live. HD-SDI in, ethernet (Gig e) out.
You can do more than 4 cameras in live, but I didn’t follow the exact way to do this. Each HD pipeline box is $10,000. I saw this work at NAB 2009.
Bob Zelin
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Looks interesting but I think its just about cheaper for me to do Xserves. The 4 channel ingest is SD only and the dual is $10k, xserve with card is going to come out around $4k each and I have the advantage of having an out of hours 5 server render farm!
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Thanks, I had seen that software, probably just what I want but really pushes the budget! I think I am sold on the free solution. Important bit for me is to get the hardware in and working. Software added features could come later!
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