[Alex Elkins]

Hi Greg,

Thanks for all your help on this, you’ve been excellent. I’ll give AJA a call when they open (I’m in the UK here so were some hours ahead).

All the best,
Alex

Salad Daze Films – Freshly Tossed
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[Alex Elkins]

Hi Greg,

Thanks again for being such a great help. I’ve found that in Quicktime Player if I assign the audio channels to display CH1-L and CH2-R rather than dual mono I get playback via Kona 3. See below…

No Audio Playback:

Audio Playback:

I don’t understand why the latter works but it perhaps sheds some light for you/AJA. The problem with this is that to save these settings overwrites and (I think) re-compresses the file, which is no good with XDCAM. Plus I’d have to do this to every file!

I think you’re right that this is a Kona problem. I’m sure they’ll be able to offer a solution.

Thanks again,
Alex

Salad Daze Films – Freshly Tossed
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[Alex Elkins]

Hi Greg,

These are all just with 2-channel audio (one internal camera mic, the other line from a boom). Digging a little deeper I’ve actually found that I get audio if I playback via Mac internal speakers but not through the Kona 3, which is what I would like.

Any thoughts as to how I might be able to route the audio correctly through the Kona 3?

Thanks,
Alex

Salad Daze Films – Freshly Tossed
Check out my latest addition to the Creative Cow Reels Section

[Alex Elkins]

Greg,

Thank you so much. It worked perfectly in a quick test I’ve just done. Excellent!

I’m going to guess that another question I have may be related – when I open the MP4 files with Quicktime Player there is no audio playback. This is also the case when playing the files in CatDV. Making it impossible to use for logging interviews etc.
Is there an import option that will enable audio playback with these apps, and is it ok to keep switching between Moov and another setting?

Many thanks,
Alex Elkins

Salad Daze Films – Freshly Tossed
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[Alex Elkins]

Hi Wayne,

For best performance all RAM modules should be the same size, and preferably the sane brand too. In addition to the new 1GB and the 500MB, what else is installed?

All the best,
Alex

Salad Daze Films – Freshly Tossed
Check out my latest addition to the Creative Cow Reels Section

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Eve,

1. Double click the text slug
2. Go to its Motion tab. In there you’ll see a Drop Shadow teck box – tick it and change the settings as you see fit.

Nice and simple, and you can copy and paste those attributes to all your other bits of text.

All the best,
Alex Elkins

Salad Daze Films – Freshly Tossed
Check out my latest addition to the Creative Cow Reels Section

[Alex Elkins]

[peter pop] “Its also been suggested to go ahead and edit, then swap back in the original h264 files from the canon before laying out a master for grading.”

This is terrible advice. Stick with the ProRes files once you’ve got the gamma shift sorted.

What software are you using to convert the files? You may find that under an Advanced tab there is a gamma correction option – if this is set to Automatic it might be the cause of your problem – try experimenting with the different options. It’s difficult to tell you exactly what settings will work for the reasons Gary mentions above.

All the best,
Alex Elkins

Salad Daze Films – Freshly Tossed
Check out my latest addition to the Creative Cow Reels Section

[Alex Elkins]

I can second the suggestion of LTO tapes for backing up. Cheap and stable, which is great long-term.
There is of course the snag of it taking forever to back up/de-archive. I combat this by having a 1TB drive in the Mac which I use for backing up recent work which I think/know I will need access to in the near future. This is in addition to the LTO tape, so no risk of loss if the harddrive fails.

You could also look at a harddrive dock if the speed of LTO is impractical for your needs.

All the best,
Alex Elkins

Salad Daze Films – Freshly Tossed
Check out my latest addition to the Creative Cow Reels Section

[Alex Elkins]

Thanks for the responses, Peter and John.

Both PictureReady and Softron have demo versions on their sites, which I’ve tested and both work well, especially considering the relatively low cost.
EVS would be the ideal method, but the fact is that clients increasingly can’t or won’t afford the best options, so we’re looking to get the most value from whatever we go with as the brunt of this cost will likely be borne by us – these software options of course speed up our work in the studio whenever we need to ingest from tape, as well as being vital in the field for a rolling edit, so they save/earn us money long-term anyway.

For anyone interested, the setup I’m using works perfectly and similarly for both PictureReady and Softron…
AJA Kona 3 (SD to HD up-scaling works fine too)
FCP 7.0.2
Fibre Channel RAID 5

Thanks,
Alex

Salad Daze Films – Freshly Tossed
Check out my latest addition to the Creative Cow Reels Section

[Alex Elkins]

Sorry not VirtualVTR, that should be Picture Ready (same link as above)

Salad Daze Films – Freshly Tossed
Check out my latest addition to the Creative Cow Reels Section