[Ben Scott]

you need both as the pcie card gets hd sdi signal out and the hdlink changes to DVid with lookup tables allowing for calibration

there is another firewire product all in one called a matrox mxo but i had bad experience with their products in past, this may be of interest as it means only one device for output

[Ben Scott]

surely it aint that difficult

you should be able to open flv into quicktime native, if so then just use compressor to change file formats to uncompressed .mov

the other way is get the person making the flv to export to a quicktime format to begin with e.g. blackmagic codec may be needed if they are pc and it is free from their website, on an apple with final cut pro it should definitely be done at that stage

if using flash for video graphics go for the correct colours (not too white or saturated) and line widths of more than 2 px. also make sure your frame rates match and you are working with a square pixel sized project e.g. SD PAL is 768 by 576 when in sq pixels

[Ben Scott]

the quato is around

[Ben Scott]

i got the same happening

i reckon it is simple

hdv is a nightmare as it is not iframe based and sticks (you are asking the card to downcovert on the fly whilst it works out which frame it is on on the fly in final cut pro it is very confused)

try capturing any hdv to the prores codec through firewire from now on (heard it works on g5 as well which would be good) let us know as not working with hdv deck. prores is iframe based and shouldnt give you the problems. you need update from last week to get fcp 6.02 to use the firewire hdv to prores thing.

you may find the firewire 800 is a bit slow and annoying with the data rates though

[Ben Scott]

I take it you are matt hollowearth

its ben scott here from space (not there anymore)

if it is then my email is info@benscottarts.co.uk
lets talk

a) Decklink HD Pro PCIe. I should get this and not the PC-X is right isn’t? I don’t need analogue

pcie for mac pro, pcie is different on a macpro from g5 so get right one

b) With the Decklink HD Pro PCIe do I need the HDLink to monitor my output or does this card output straight to a monitor like my old cards used to?
you only need the hdlink to use HD (hdlink is cheap option to monitor using cheap leds) if you want true hd then wlater bascardi recommends some monitor called a tvlogic (check color forum), cheaper and uli plank advises is german called a quato intelliproof 240 i think

c) If I do need an HDLink, which one?
if you are working compositing film then go for the more pricey one, otherwise cheaper one for 4.2.2 as far as I understand

d) With monitoring do I need *another* monitor or can I monitor onto my current desktop a 30″ Cinema Display.
to properly monitor with lcd you should go for second monitor, dells are cheaper and more features than apples, quato ones have hd sdi inputs and might be better bet (depends on budget)

e) I really dont want another RAID array (sighs) I read on the BM site that 3 RAID striped drives do fine if one’s not doing editing (I’m not- just Motion Graphics)
go for a esata raid like the seritek product (uk distributer is wts broadcast) or for newer machine mac pro you can stripe inside machine and newer raid controllers like rocketraid or others give you redundant inside the machine (i think)

you need 3mb ram minimum ram for hd Crucial.com cheapest
you need the best graphics card you can get to get motion etc to work well e.g. radeon top graphics card

[Ben Scott]

try redndering out the footage before working with more effects

or do the flip at the end in a nested sequence

[Ben Scott]

this maybe useful costs a bit

https://www.xmedit.com/

[Ben Scott]

not a 3d guy but found these 3 programs

sketchup (google)
bryce 5.5 on download.com (cnet)
blender (from their site)

blender is full app

bryce is good for landscapes I think

sketchup is great for previsualisations and relatively easy I heard

also pfhoe is a cheap 3d tracker that can export to a few different apps

hope of help

[Ben Scott]

apparently used to

from cow on this page

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/98/863674
[msacci] “did not the Kona3 has a limiter in it when v3 first came out?”

It did, but AJA removed it as people mistook the meaning of what it was doing and AJA decided it’d be best to just remove the feature all together.

From the Kona 3 v3.2 release notes:

“Removed “Limit Output Video to Legal Values” checkbox in KONA Control Panel due to inconsistent behavior and perception as a broadcast safe filter. ”

[Ben Scott]

twixtor used to be what I used, i suggest reading up marcos tutorial as it makes sense of all this retiming stuff (it gets complex)

this sort of effect likes progressive images and footage shot over certain shutter speeds

you could use compressor to deinterlace

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/solorio_marco/twixtor_review.php

this is from a review and talks about shutter speeds preferred
“Twixtor, however, is going to be used with 24fps or 30fps footage captured with a shutter speed of 1/50 to 1/80 of a second. At these frame rates, fast motion causes blurring, which seems normal when the footage is viewed at normal speed. In fact, it tends to smooth the motion of objects that are moving quickly. When you apply Twixtor to this footage to create synthetic slow motion of 96fps (a 4X speed-up), you get the same amount of blurring as from a 24fps shutter. That’s because Twixtor faithfully replicates each pixel. So while the motion may be nicely slowed down, the blurring causes parts of an image to smear.

If you can control the shooting of the footage, one solution is to select a faster shutter speed during acquisition. In a film camera this means closing down the shutter angle. Digital cameras offer even more flexibility, and some support 1/1000 second shutter speeds.”
https://digitalcontentproducer.com/ar/video_revision_reelsmart_twixtor/

also watch out when optical flow retiming on some footage with smoke/.abstract backgrounds when changing speed by a lot as this can go very very strange and keep warping in the wrong places

if you are doing a lot of speed work like this you may want to cut out each element with green screen or masking and then the retiming is more intelligent between planes in the picture.

hope this helps