[Adam Berk]

Thanks for the pointers Rohit.

I guess what I was doing differently was trying to output with Power Mastering as opposed to rendering files, then outputting those.

Is it possible to output selects from a Source Mode timeline with Power Mastering?

thanks again, everyone at blackmagic has been fantastic with responsiveness and willingness to help!

-adam

[Adam Berk]

Out of curiosity, what is your storage configuration?

[Adam Berk]

[Gary Adcock] The other thing you need to think about is workflow- how many differing formats do you work in? It is not uncommon for some of us to have projects from differing sources, rasters and frame rates, something that is no so common in the higher end workflows were all content is conformed into the existing workflow pipeline.

Hmm. Definitely an interesting thought. Most of what comes our way is usually 1080 23.98psf HDCAM-SR film transfer, though every now and again we see 720p30 used in gaming spots for game capture and animation. This project though is a feature (our first) and it’s entirely 720p23.98 with a few 720p60 cuts that came from mistakes made on set. We’ve only seen one job that was shot R3D. Keeping in mind that we are very new, and very small (just 3 of us full time with 2 suites). We rarely have a job that uses mixed resolutions outside of graphics, screen inserts, and other elements of that sort.

So does the Kona actually handle the number crunching involved with a mixed format sequence in FCP during output? I though FCP does this during final render.

[Adam Berk]

Thanks so much for posting that Mark. Super helpful. Thanks for sharing.

[Adam Berk]

[Shane Ross] And it is understandable, big conversions are taking place.

It may be understandable. I wouldn’t exactly say that it’s acceptable. The less workflow snags we have around the office, the better off we are when trying to deliver top notch, top quality work, creatively and technically, every time.

[Adam Berk]

[gary adcock] FYI – That would be the same Aja hardware in FCP since Autodesk is an Aja OEM.

What’s interesting is that I’ve never seen any sort of offset issue like this when laying off from the Autodesk boxes. Although, the only realtime conversions they allow the AJA board to do are pulldown insertion and RGB <-> YCbCr. If you want to do a full resolution down conversion or cross conversion, you must do the output from the Nvidia SDI.

I wonder if Windows users of the Xena, or any other Linux based systems that use the AJA OEM-2k have these offset issues.

Have those of you who’ve seen this offset problem on the Mac had the same issue when using the card with apps other than FCP? For example, AJA’s software, Premiere?

[Adam Berk]

[Joey Burnham] Well, FCP doesn’t cost 6 figures, so not really comparing apples to apples.

And the thing with comparing FCS to something like Smoke is that cost should not be considered when deciding “which of these two systems will help me do the best work I can, for the clients I have, in the environment that I work in?” The cost consideration comes after that.

I just don’t think that if we invited Steve Jobs to a town-hall meeting with finishing artists and colorists, and said to him, “Apple’s tools are great for the price, but when it comes to having an elegantly designed finishing system with great tools, speed and ultimate reliability….well, you get what you pay for!” that he or anyone else involved in the development of FCS at Apple would be satisfied. People take pride in their work. People, in general, care about doing well at what they do. And what Apple claims to be doing is developing a software platform that can be used up to the highest scale of work….. national advertising, high profile feature film, etc. Look at their promo materials. Based on what Apple promotes FCS to be, I don’t see why we shouldn’t be comparing Color to Lustre, Resolve, Pablo, Speedgrade, Smoke, etc.

When we bid on a lower budget project and win, we don’t say to ourselves that we’re not going to do our best work. We may limit the scale of work to what the client can afford, but by no means do we give lower quality output. I don’t see why software developers working at Apple, or Autodesk or Avid or anywhere else would think any differently.

[Adam Berk]

Sorry, should have been more specific. My comments mainly referred to Color, not FCP.

[Adam Berk] “If we could only get audio playback”

[Joey Burnham] “Um, why not? This sounds like a setup problem.”

Was referring to Color…

[Adam Berk] “better re-conform abilities”

[Joey Burnham] Not gonna happen any time soon.

Was referring to Color’s dependence on shot number/order to re-conform a changed edit. You can change your edit, just don’t change the number or order of the shots…(please correct me here if I’m wrong)

[Adam Berk] “Color integrated tape i/o”

[Joey Burnham] Not sure what you mean but I assume color timing on ingest???

No, what I mean here is that I’d like to be able to conform from tape right inside Color, instead of having to use FCP. I’d also like to be able to layoff to tape right from inside Color… either Insert or Assemble with source timecodes (like a re-transfer of selects).

[Adam Berk] “realtime playback of rendered material”

[Joey Burnham]This shouldn’t be a problem. As long as your sequence settings match your video, no rendering should be needed. Choose the easy setup that exactly matches your material.

Again, was referring to Color. Not having any realtime issues with FCP. Having to take a sequence back into FCP each time the client would like to see realtime playback with audio would be a major show stopper for us with most clients.

But again, don’t get me wrong. I’ve been enjoying working on this setup. Very much so, it’s just not entirely appropriate for the majority of our work, which is really just too bad. I’m just hoping that Apple can up their game a bit and revert some of their attention back to all of us is the professional media and entertainment business. Yes, we all love our ipods, but we need the great tools we need in order to buy more for our friends and fams!

I apologize in advance for this digression of a thread.

thanks again,
ab

[Adam Berk]

Good to know. Hopefully I won’t have any problems with it. We’re just finishing up this job, which is our first using FCP and Color as the finishing platform. There have certainly been some snags, but it I’ve been pretty happy with it overall. I wouldn’t feel comfortable using this platform with some of our commercial clients, but for independent feature finishing (a market we’d like to be more involved in), it seems like a great setup. I’ll be excited for the next software update, and another opportunity to use it. If we could only get audio playback, better re-conform abilities, Color integrated tape i/o, realtime playback of rendered material, and faster rendering, I’d feel much more confident in using the system for spots as well.

Again, thanks so much for the advice thus far!

-ab

[Adam Berk]

This seems like quite a major issue. Something like this, in my book, would be considered a show stopper bug and be moved to the top of the bug fix priority list. How long have you all been experiencing this? I’m entirely new to the world of final cut pro and kona-> we’re a finishing house with flame and smoke. I understand that this is probably a limitation of the kona hardware but having the offset change randomly is what scares me. If the offset changes, any workflow or software compensation methods would be rendered futile. After hearing about this, I’ll just plan to do the format conversions with shake or quicktime before I output.

Thanks so much for informing me of this frame offset thing. It’s exactly the type of info I was looking out for. The cow rocks.

-ab