[Angelo Lorenzo]

Haha, to me the “form factor” for the tower is the G5, it’s just been burned into my brain 🙂

[Angelo Lorenzo]

Is it worth upgrading in general? Total yes.

Is it worth upgrading in the middle of a project? Maybe. It’s more stable for sure, but if your footage is playing fine and is already transcoded, etc. then finish it up before the chore of upgrading.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

Get the most expensive g5 tower, throw away the ATI card, get the most expensive approved Nvidia card, buy a raid 10 storage server and call it a day.

… in other words, what are you using it for? SD? HD/2k? 4k? On-set capture? Time sensitive projects where encoding speed is important?

[Angelo Lorenzo]

I tend to think PPro is a sound package in comparison to the dust that is gathering on FCP7.

The few things I wish PPro CS5 had:
FCP style subclips where you can mix video from one source and sound from another. PPro can only currently create subclips that are trimmed sections of original clips

The ability to export the entire multitrack sound edit to Audition. I believe FCP and Soundtrack Pro can communicate like this.

FCP is expecting a huge update this spring/summer, but Adobe has a faster and more consistent release clock and CS6 is slated to be released in the Fall/Winter of this year. I still believe that Adobe will come out ahead in performance as they’ve been really responsive and receptive to industry comments.

I can’t speak much for Vegas, but Adobe gets points for their full suite of products.

As a side note, although the BBC didn’t explicitly state what programs PPro is being used on, they did buy 2,000 or so licenses… a huge deploy.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

Do you absolutely need the files renamed? I ask because once in PPro’s media bin, you can “rename” them with aliases. You can give your clips descriptive names that don’t interfere with the atomized file structure of P2 footage.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

I have apprehensions even playing back 1080p footage on dual core systems.

When we had originally gotten the 5D I Was working on a dual core system. I suggest editing via proxy files. Transcode your footage to half res files for editing (960×540, mpeg2 or whatever tickles your fancy). Edit with these files, then use “replace footage” to link back to your original high res footage when you’re finished.

You could also use an intermediate editing codec like Avid DNxHD (free at https://avid.custkb.com/avid/app/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=263545 ) or something like Cineform NeoScene.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

I could be wrong as I don’t cut with FCP, but it sounds like it MAY be their gamma shift issue. I conform/color correct all of my footage with After Effects on a calibrated monitor because it’s an ICC color managed application.

I found this on another forum:
FCP assumes that you are working on a 1.8 system and therefore need a gamma adjustment to match the 2.2 broadcast gamma. So FCP automatically adjusts the gamma for certain imported footage. The rules are as follows since FCP 5.1.2:

– Quicktime movies that use Y’CbCr codecs (like Uncompressed, DV, etc.), get no adjustment (assumed to be 2.2 from the start).
– Quicktime movies using RGB codecs (like Animation) and still images (like TIFF) use the setting in Imported Still/RGB Video Gamma (either Source, 1.8, 2.2, 2.22 and Custom). This is kind of new in recent versions (I can’t remember when it was added), but in the past, all RGB video codecs got an automatic adjustment of 1.22 (got brighter). Now it’s controlled by the same setting as for still images.

Things were more complicated before FCP 5.1.2 where there rules were different and files were also adjusted on export (for example TIFF would get a .824 gamma shift – made darker). This doesn’t happen anymore.

You can test the whole thing by creating a gradient in FCP and viewing it with the Waveform Monitor in the Video Scopes:

– Create a grad, view it in the scope and you’ll see it as a straight line going diagonally.
– Export the grad as a TIFF. Import the image back into FCP with the Imported Still gamma set to Source. The grad will now appear brighter and the scope will show a bump in the mid tones duo to the applied gamma adjustment of 1.22.
– Now change the gamma for the imported clip (cmd + 9 on the clip in the sequence). Under Format > Gamma change it to 1.8. Nothing will change because any still imported into FCP is assumed to be set to 1.8.
– Now change the gamma to 2.2 and you’ll see it revert to the original grad with the same straight slope in the scope.

There’s more to this once you start adding Motion (which again assumes that everything coming in is 1.8 and exports everything as 1.8).

Working for TV and need to be sure of your content? Use a broadcast monitor. Only then can you spot all these differences and will you know exactly what will be displayed on a TV.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

Any content meant for a flash player is best left encoded with a square pixel ratio.

Youtube does re-encode their material. I’ve heard weird things that it doesn’t compress the stream drastically if you spit it out at under 6mbps, but they aren’t very forthcoming about settings for pristine quality for their site.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

In the upper right of the timeline window, use the menu icon to switch timecode to audio units and then zoom in to look for fine sized gaps and overlaps.

As another possible issue, just make sure Premiere is up to date too.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

What’s the originating source? I have some P2 MXF footage I can play around with and help troubleshoot.

Are you dragging files into the bin or using the import command? (Silly question, but I use to be a tech support supervisor for an internet software company, exact steps can help a lot)