[Ben Holmes]

I have a simple workflow now for dealing with these upgrades – try them on my laptop with all FCS and plug-ins installed, and hammer it for a month or so. If I’m happy and it’s rock solid, up we go – but remember folks, there’s NO actual reason to perform this OS upgrade if you run FCS, and whilst I’ll be playing with Leopard, it won’t go anywhere near my perfectly stable edit systems until I have a compelling reason to do it – like a FCS upgrade not supported by Tiger. Anyone care to guess how long we can hold out?

Ben

[Ben Holmes]

You can achieve this by undercranking the camera – shooting at a slower frame rate and playing it back at 24p, or by speeding up what you shot in post. However, the real key to this look is how you set the shuttering on the camera – you need a fast shutter speed and preferably using a film camera you would use oblique shuttering (a la the beach scenes in Saving Private Ryan) to create a choppy and harsh flickering look in your footage.

Really, that’s the key to making this work, and it’s hard to fake. You can use frame cutting to create a jerkier and more agressive look, but it’s much more time consuming.

[Ben Holmes]

Ron

You can get my contact details via my company’s website (there’s a link on my profile). I don’t want to post it here to avoid spamming.

If you are working in SD, and are using the newer XT2 EVS systems, I would recommend you contact EVS in the USA, as we can’t supply equipment to you over there anyway. Media XChange is relatively inexpensive as a setup (compared to the $100,000 for the EVS anyway!) and they should get you up and running with a demo PDQ. You’ll find contact details at http://www.evs.tv.

Things are more complicated for an XT1 setup, as those systems do not support IMX, and so require additional encodes. There is also an additional version called XStream which gives direct access and export of the record trains of an EVS – useful if you are cutting rolling highlight edits on sport – I would ask about this as well.

Let me know how you get on, happy to help if we can – my colleague Steve Cotterill, who is an expert on the exchange process is currently in the middle east until early next week, and he can provide more details on the workflow and some cost estimates.

Ben

[Ben Holmes]

Please note my recent thread on this – I have had exactly the same problem. Did you find a solution? Are you working in PAL?

Ben

[Ben Holmes]

Dear all

I have just spent the weekend on another system – recently installed on a Quad core Intel Mac Pro. A Kona LH card and BOB on a system running FCP 5. It had the latest versions of QT.

I had held off installing FCP6 after the problems I had faced above, but I was dismayed to find the same problems. If I wanted to slow a clip down to 50%, I had to de-interlace it to get rid of field judder caused by the capture/playback. Of course, these issues were not visible on the computer monitor, just on the interlaced monitor.

PLEASE, can anyone in PAL-land (as I am sure this issue is not an NTSC issue) try to duplicate this for me – just capture using the uncompressed 10-bit SD codec, and slow it to 50%. Let me know if it’s smooth – with or without field blending.

No – this is not a sequence or capture settings issue, so please my American collegues, don’t tell me it is. This is driving me crazy.

I am planning to post this as a new thread as well, to see if I can get AJA’s attention – they have not replied to my support follow-up.

Ben

[Ben Holmes]

Hi Ron

EVS have a piece of software called Media XChange which allows you to transfer video from EVS (using an X-File preferably) to Mac and FCP. This requires the EVS to use the IMX option on XT2’s. I understand that in SD this requires no transcoding, however in HD, EVS are still negotiating access to ProRes to allow HD transfers without a transcode – which XChange will do at present by changing the MXF wrappers. This causes transfers to be slower.

Can you be more specific about your client’s workflow? We are experienced worldwide EVS consultants, and I would be happy to help.

Ben.

[Ben Holmes]

Oh yes – business licences, that’s what I meant.

Actually, I recall previous versions of OS X needing no on-line verification when installing – does anyone know what the new process is with Leopard, as some of our Mac Pro’s are installed in a truck with no internet access.

Ben.
Proud owner of thousands of dollars of Mac licenses.

[Ben Holmes]

Or order from Amazon.com for $109 and skip that boring Mail-in rebate bit! You Americans love a mail-in rebate don’t you? How many of them actually get claimed for I wonder….

Glad my company needs a couple of family pack licences – should be a couple left over for me..

Ben

[Ben Holmes]

Just an update. I have had little time to work with the system, as it is in near constant use – I will have to do more comprehensive tests next week.

Fundementally, the field order appears to be wrong on the Kona output, so that any clip slowed down looks horrible. The field order file I was kindly sent seems to show the clip going into an uncompressed timeline upper field first. The problem seems to be with the Kona card output. Shift fields does not fix the problem. Reinstalling the Kona drivers does not seem to fix it either – and I can’t risk a codec downgrade in the middle of this job.

As I said before, I’m a long time Kona user and I’m stumped. I’ll be sure to report back when I have a chance to take it all apart and compare it to another system at base.

Thanks for all your help.

Ben

[Ben Holmes]

Tom

Unfortunately it’s all good ol’ 25i.

Ben