[Alan Okey]

I just received a reply from AJA Support:

Hi Alan,

Engineering got back to me and they said that this is an AJA issue. We will have a fix coming very soon in v6.0.2, should be about a week or two.

Let me know if you have any questions.
Thank you
Rudy

Rudy Van Kol
AJA Video Technical Support

Email: rudyv@aja.com
Phone: 530-271-3190

AJA Video Systems
443 Crown Point Circle
Grass Valley, CA 95945

Great news!

[Alan Okey]

I might be mistaken, but I seem to remember the DSR-45 only being capable of frame-accurate insert editing when using RS422 deck control.

[Alan Okey]

[Matt Byrnes] “All of my FCP projects are archived (media manager “copy”) onto an external LaCie hard drive.”

Ask Bob Zelin how he feels about LaCie drives…

[Alan Okey]

[Jeremy Garchow] “You can choose 525i29.97 – RGB or 525i29.97 DV -RGB. IS there a similar menu within Combustion? “

Jeremy –

Unfortunately, no. There are only two NTSC choices in the Combustion frame buffer list, 525i29.97 10-bit and 525i29.97 8-bit. No discrete settings for 720×486 and 720×480.

I’m not sure how to go about reporting this to the responsible developers – do you think it’s more a function of the Kona drivers, or Combustion’s frame buffer support?

[Alan Okey]

The answer to your question will vary depending on location and market segment.

What is your specific criteria for “professionals?” Wedding videographers? Feature film editors? Commerical editors? Newsroom editors?

There are all kinds of editors doing all kinds of work and using all kinds of software. Try narrowing down your question for a more useful answer.

[Alan Okey]

Hi Chris,

Here’s what I did:

Enter the service menu by first calling up the regular menu, then press ENTER and DEGAUSS simultaneously.

Next, grab a pen and paper – you should definitely write down any existing values before changing any settings so that you can get back to your starting point.

Feed SMPTE color bars into your monitor.

In the service menu, go to SIG > WHITE BALANCE and you’ll see adjustments for SUB CONTRAST and SUB BRIGHT. These allow you to tweak brightness (black level) and contrast (white level) without changing the front panel button settings – i.e., if you’re at 0 on the front panel buttons, changing these values will leave the front panel buttons at 0 despite the image change. Pressing ENTER brings up the adjustment screen for each parameter. The UP and DOWN buttons change the currently selected parameter value. Pressing MENU will return you to the previous screen without saving your changes – this is a nice feature, as it gives you an instant A/B comparison between your new value and the original setting. To save your changes, you must first press ENTER.

Notice that setting values change when you switch on UNDERSCAN or 16:9. That’s because each mode has its own setting memory. Even the combination of 16:9 and UNDERSCAN together has its own discrete setting memory. You’ll find that in addition to discrete setting memory for the underscan and aspect ratio modes, the monitor has discrete setting memories for 480/60i, 480/60p, 720p and 1080i frequencies as well.

If you need to adjust chroma levels, try entering SIG > LEVEL-1 and adjusting CHROMA PB and CHROMA PR, making sure to keep them balanced proportionally. You can still use the BLUE ONLY button from within the service menu for proper saturation and phase calibration.

I’m not sure if the monitor has discrete setting memories for chroma or not, but it’s worth investigating.

I can’t remember how I eventually got out of aging mode, but I won’t repeat that mistake again!

[Alan Okey]

I can’t explain the good luck you’ve had, but I can vouch for myself and hundreds of other video professionals who A) use proper monitoring, B) are experienced professionals and C) experience gamma issues when encoding h.264 using Apple’s Quicktime-based encoder.

I think it’s a bit presumptuous for you to assume that everyone who has been experiencing gamma issues with Apple’s Quicktime h.264 encoding is not properly monitoring their video output. I can’t explain your success, but I’m not convinced that there is any direct correlation between monitoring YUV-based output on a broadcast monitor and RGB monitoring on a computer monitor using completely different codecs.

There’s literally an avalanche of web documentation of the Quicktime h.264 gamma issue:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/20/856650

https://byteful.com/blog/2008/07/how-to-fix-washed-out-h264-video/

https://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6151

https://ediusforum.grassvalley.com/forum/showthread.php?p=32286

https://forums.cocoaforge.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=17019&p=104258

https://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-508907.html

https://dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=70049

Consider yourself lucky that you’ve somehow escaped this annoying and persistent bug.

[Alan Okey]

[Bryan Banks] “If you get an actual broadcast monitor solution, your final QT exports will look exactly like how it shows up on your broadcast monitor. Have you seen any threads that ask “why do my h.264 exports look washed out?” Well that because they didn’t use a broadcast monitor. “

That’s absolute hogwash. I use a Kona LHe and a perfectly calibrated Sony PVM-20L5 and I always have to gamma correct my h.264 encoded clips in Compressor or they will come out much too light. Other codecs, like Sorenson, don’t exhibit the same problem.. The problem lies with Apple’s h.264 encoding, not with monitoring.

[Alan Okey]

If the subject contains multiple colors, then it sounds like you’ll need to create a roto matte around the subject in a real compositing application like After Effects, Combustion or Shake. My personal favorite for rotoscoping work is Combustion (especially in conjunction with Mocha or Mokey), but to each his own.

[Alan Okey]

Chris,

I have a PVM 20L5 and I noticed the same thing.

I was able to tweak settings in the service menu so that I don’t need to change any of my settings when moving between SD and HD. What I discovered is that the PVM-L series of monitors actually has discrete memory settings for each resolution and frequency, so you can set up the monitor for a given resolution and it won’t affect the settings for other resolutions. It’s a feature that’s not documented in the users manual.

FYI, I wouldn’t recommend getting into the service menu unless you know EXACTLY what you’re doing.

What I found even more interesting is that not only does the PVM-L series have discrete setting memory for each resolution and frequency, it also has discrete setting memory for both underscan/overscan and 4:3/16:9 aspect ratios within the same resolution and frequency – i.e. if you change settings in the service menu for NTSC 29.97i with underscan switched off (standard overscan mode), it doesn’t affect the settings for NTSC 29.97i with underscan switched on. Ditto for aspect ratio. Pretty cool. This lets you set ideal geometry and color settings for each resolution, aspect ratio and overscan mode without compromise.