[Ben Holmes]

Tangent told me at IBC they were waiting for an update in Color to add the ‘hooks’ for the Wave – I had the impression they saw it as the primary software platform for it. I think Tangent were hoping it would be included in the update to Color that bought the “RED room”.

If it’s still not supported that must be as disappointing for Tangent as it is for me.

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[Ben Holmes]

I always show people this great diagram on the Terrablock website that shows just how complicated a fibrechannel SAN (like the XSAN setups) to run video actually is.

Trust me – even if you get a pro reseller in to sort it – have a SINGLE shared storage system that not only handles video (which has pretty unique access requirements) but also all data requirements is madness, and will lead to the premature balding of everyone who is involved with it.

Set up a good system seperate in your media labs – and add 5 years to your life…

Ben

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[Ben Holmes]

Hi Syed

[Syed Ali] “1) Considering the final output is an SD DVD, is it worthwhile getting the production house to capture uncompressed 10 bit footage? If not, then what codec should I tell them to capture on? “

Considering the delivery format, ideally, you could capture in ProRes. This would give you compressed, broadcast quality video that you should be able to playback on a decent firewire 400 drive. However, you would need an Intel Mac to take advantage of ProRes.

If you do not intend to do a lot of effects and grading work, you might consider just having the material captured as plain ol’ DV25. Believe me, although the codec will not allow the full color information of the digibeta footage to come through, you will see a noticably better acquisition from the camera than DV camera sourced footage (better optics, lenses etc), so you will still see the benefit – certainly enough given that you are going to deliver it in MPEG-2 on a DVD.

The main advantage for you is that you can use your DV deck for monitoring (as it will only accept DV down firewire) – otherwise you would need a video card for monitoring.

Your other option, if the deck accepts it, is to have the footage captured as DVCPro50, giving better quality at a sensible bitrate. This can be viewed over firewire on DVCPro decks – although I am guessing you do not have one.

The next step up would be to work in uncompressed 8-bit video, which you could not play back via your deck, but which could be edited via a Firewire 800 drive.

Whatever codec you choose, you will not find the editing process any different, assuming your drives are fast enough. An external e-Sata array (such as the many advertised here) would be a cheap way to achieve uncompressed 10-bit editing.

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[Ben Holmes]

Let’s take a look!

[John Higgins] “Two 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors (8-core)
8 GB ram “

Check – although maybe if you can hold off for a month or so you’ll get yourself a shiny new i7 system, who knows! 8Gb RAM is fine – you have no need for 16Gb, really – unless you keep every Adobe and Apple app open all the time. What the heck – if someone else is paying, get the 16Gb.

[John Higgins] “NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 Graphics card “

There is no need for this card to be honest. The stock card is still the best performer for Motion, and the (crazy expensive) Quadro will be of no real benefit unless you plan to do 3d modelling of nuclear explosions on the weekend. Again – it’ll do no harm, but I could think of better ways to spend my money.

[John Higgins] “AJA Kona 3 and Breakout Box
AJA HD10AVA Component to SDI converter for Analog sources. “

The Kona 3 is top of the line – no question. It also supports capture and playback of analogue sources – why do you need the HD10AVA?

[John Higgins] “Storage ?? – come from a Server world but they’re not ready for that so some kind of external raid suggestions needed. “

Everyone here will recommend the systems they use and are happy with – so here’s mine: I use G-Tech gear like the RAID5 G-Speed ES ‘cos it’s bulletproof and good value. I like Walter’s linked thingy as well, but I like e-SATA for a single workstation for massive cheap bandwidth. Noise can be an issue though, and the cable length is limited. Depends on whether you need HD playback really.

[John Higgins] “Dual Apple 23 Cinema Displays, tough to find now I’m told so maybe (2) 30 inch “

Yup – no more 23’s – I keep mine flightcased and safe for working away. You could go with the 30’s, but I think 2 is too large an area to keep track of – I prefer to just use one. The Dell 24’s are excellent, and have video inputs too.

[John Higgins] “FCP Studio 2
Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium
“

Check and check. No brainer.

Now you left out a few things:

Video monitor: Panasonic, Sony or JVC. You can get one with the money you saved on the Quadra and AVA… If you are producing for DVD, you will NEED to see the video on an interlaced monitor. Grab yourself an SD CRT while you still can. I think the JVCs are excellent, but really all the above are good.

Speakers/mixer. I use a pair of active speakers and forgo the mixer. I have the Audiophile 5Bs and they’re excellent. Adding a mixer allows you better control over levels to the speakers, as well as mic channels if you want to do voiceover, or adjust incoming levels from a deck – neither of which are a concern to me at base. Both of these items are cheap (for great gear). Figure $300 for speakers, and $200 for a mixer.

Hope that helps! Why not save yourself a headache and go to a good reseller? Although I’m not from the US, I’ve used Promax over there and they’re great! They’ll sell you a system already integrated and sink-tested.

Ben

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[Ben Holmes]

Again – the green bar does NOT mean the footage and sequence matches. It means that FCP is able to preview the playback in real time by transcoding or reszing or rendering your footage on the fly. If the footage and the sequence matched properly the bar would not be visible – or rather would be the same color as the timeline itself.

As David says – use the easy setup. However, in FCP 6 you can also open a new sequence and drop your footage into it when it is empty. When FCP asks if you want to match the sequence settings with that of your footage, you select yes. This will ensure the sequence settings are correct.

However, you will still not get smooth playback unless the Kona’s settings match the sequence settings, so you need to check the video output settings as well. If you wish to eliminate this as the issue, turn the external video off whilst you check everything else out.

Finally, as Walter says, you need to have drives fast enough to play back whatever your footage in encoded in. What drives are you using, and for what codec? I assume your friend is smart enough to know NOT to use the system drive for media.

Lastly, if all else fails, go to a good PRO reseller and have them set up your system. Note – this does not mean the Apple Store!

Hope some of this helps – if not, come back to us with more info!

Ben

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[Ben Holmes]

When you say ‘gain’ you mean the footage you shot was over-exposed? Detail lost like this is impossible to recover. One of the most powerful tool in FCP for ‘matching’ shots for exposure, however, is the color corrector. It’s not just for correcting white balance. Look at correcting the gamma and lift here with the sliders to mitigate the problem a little.

Ben

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[Ben Holmes]

I’d maybe suggest trashing the render files if you can – it could be an issue with those. Generally, projects that go bad stay bad – they’re not unstable, their unusable. This suggests you have an issue with the media connections to the project – which could be render files.

Whatever the issue is, if you cannot revert to a stable and previously saved version, I’d get a new project up and running with the timeline copied across – assuming you can keep the project open to do this.

I would be tempted to split the timeline into sections, just copy and pasting them into a fresh project with (say) 4 timelines. At the very least, this may help to isolate the problem.

I’d also recommend 8Gb RAM in an 8-Core (2xQuad Core) machine, or at least symmetrical RAM on each riser as per Apple’s recommendation – but I doubt that is the specific problem here.

Ben

Ben

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[Ben Holmes]

Thanks Chris – I’ll definitely investigate this when I can find the missing PCI lead for my MBP – doesn’t seem to be in the box that just came back from a job…

I’ll let you know if it’s still working – never used the component outputs on MBP, but my JVC 24″ supports everything, so I can check all the outputs.

Ben

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[Ben Holmes]

No – I said I had swapped sets of drives in an internal array, not into an external array. I would think that would be impossible, as generally the external array contain their own RAID hardware, or are larger SCSI/FC systems requiring PCI RAID cards in the Mac.

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[Ben Holmes]

Search on here for still image quality questions to understand why what you see on your canvas and on your external video output are two different things here.

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