Uncompressed, FW800, Powerbook….what are the possibilities?

[Ed Dooley]

A number of people (including me) have been shooting Beta and digitizing to an external FW 2-drive array using the DV50 codec. We have the AJA IOLA, which is the unit you alluded to (connected by FW to your PowerBook). The DV50 codec is just about indistinguishable from uncompressed 8bit Beta and uses far less space and bandwidth. It’s important to have a FW cardbus card for your PB, though. The AJA uses up a lot of the PB built in bandwidth, and the PB FW400 and 800 use the same buss, so the extra FW card is necessary. I haven’t even bothered trying UC 8bit with my 2-drive FW array.
Ed

[Nbrazzi]

Thanks for your comments, Ed.

I would still like to hear what other people have to say about full uncompressed SD. I really hope somebody can offer some insight on that.

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Regarding the DV50 solution, would that mean I could monitor the video using a DV device over firewire to feed my monitor for Color Correction. That would mean I (the editor) would not need the AJA.

Also, I have to wonder if working with DV50 is acceptable for broadcast. Seems like it would hurt the video quality.

[Ed Dooley]

I’m guessing yes, but since we have the AJA I haven’t had to try that. I wasn’t sure about the DV50 codec for broadcast either. The projects we use it for have gone to regional network affiliates, and they look fine, but unless we need to use the PB for some editing while away from the office, we use UC8bit. I really wish there weren’t technical limitations to having a SATA cardbus, that would solve a lot of problems.
Ed

[nbrazzi] “Regarding the DV50 solution, would that mean I could monitor the video using a DV device over firewire to feed my monitor for Color Correction. That would mean I (the editor) would not need the AJA.

Also, I have to wonder if working with DV50 is acceptable for broadcast. Seems like it would hurt the video quality.”

[Ron Thompson]

[nbrazzi] “lso, I have to wonder if working with DV50 is acceptable for broadcast. Seems like it would hurt the video quality.”

I deliver DV50 projects for broadcast all the time. No problems. Its a nice codec to work with. The Panasonic SDX900 has become the new broadcast work horse…Since it shoots DVCPRO50, I capture it natively. I also work with DVCAM and Beta footage. Cinewave takes care of the mixed codecs in one timeline. Output goes to Digibeta via SDI. No QC issues to date. The obvious beauty is less drive space required while maintaining nice quality.

Ron

[Ed Dooley]

Some more thoughts:
The difference between what you want to do and what Walter did, is that he striped 2 BDX’s striped together (4 drives) and split them up onto 2 channels. With a PowerBook, you can use the internal FW800 and a FW800 cardbus card to achieve that, but be aware of the other devices you might want to use on the other internal FW port (which shares the same buss as the FW800 port). He got the high performance *because* he had 4 drives striped across *2* channels. Check out barefeats.com for their tests of various FW configurations, including the LaCie and G-RAID. Their tests show that there’s a real difference with that 2nd channel.
Ed

[nbrazzi] “1) He had two D2 units striped together. This is great if they sit on the same desk and never move. If the storage unit has to move between computers, it has to be one unit that simply plugs in throught the FW800 port. Is there a unit (internal RAID striping) that will do that and still run uncompressed video.

2) Has anybody done this successfully on a powerbook? Will this work on a powerbook? Is a 1ghz G4 with 1GB memory sufficient?

3) I’m pretty sure there’s a firewire based AJA card or something similar, so that I can output a monitor signal for color correction while editing, right?
“