[Bill Crawford]

Hi Brian,

Yes, it’s very easy. You can have the facility you are renting it from tell you how.

If they look at you with a blank look, then you can find the info in the operators guide. If they don’t have an operators guide to share, the following should get you through.

Assuming that they have not created custom menus, you can see the “Video In” choice on the home page, “F1”. Press and hold this for more than 3 seconds and you can select the internal signal generator. If the internal generator is not set to black, you’ll need to set the internal signal generator to Black – do that by selecting “Menu” again on the home page – ‘F5″. Use the Multi Control knob to select parameter 710 “Int Vid SG”. Press “Select” then “-” or “+” to select black, or color bars. Exit out and you are ready to go.

When you want to insert color bars, do the same thing but choose color bars on 710. To insert tone, go to parameter 808 and set the 1KHz tone.

To set the input on the audio to the signal generator, press and hold the ch 1 input for more than three seconds as well.

Good luck – you’ll find this a great way to stripe tapes.

Bill

[Bill Crawford]

Hi Brian,

I have a 2000 and when it comes to blacking and coding a tape, I just use the internal signal generator to do this. It’s very easy to do and does not tie up an editor to be a signal source.

If I’m in a hurry, and don’t have a pre-blacked tape, then I just black the first few minutes and insert edit the B&T on the deck again using the internal signal generator, then output the sequence using an assemble edit. Set the output for pad at the end of the sequence and you can output a master pretty quickly without having to completely black a tape.

Bill

[Bill Crawford]

Hi Ben,

So do I understand you correctly – that running windows and a windows based encoder on a Mac under Bootcamp will allow me to have a better WMV encode than using the Telestream WMV encoder thats the base of Squeeze or Episode?

Bottom line here is that I have several new intel macs, and if I can avoid putting in a dedicated PC for just WMV encoding, that would be great.

But if encoding under windows on a Mac will be no different that using the QT based WMV products – Squeeze and Episode, then I guess I’ll just keep plugging along looking for improvements there.

Thanks,

Bill

[Bill Crawford]

Hi Ben,

So – as the resident WMV expert – can I get better quality WMV files encoding with Procoder, or the free MS encoder running on a MacPro under windows with either Bootcamp, or Parallels?

I’ve been using the full up versions of Squeeze and Episode for a number of years, but even with careful work, I’m not seeing the quality I’ve seen from others work on Windows PCs.

I recall at one point or another seeing a post of yours mentioning using a Mac and a windows encoder.

Thoughts?

Bill

[Bill Crawford]

Hi Joe,

Would you contact me off list – I have a couple of questions about your experience with the HDPro.

Thanks – I’d appreciate it.

bill_crawford(at)harborpictures(dot)com

[Bill Crawford]

Just like expensive homes and cars – if you have to ask – you can’t afford it! 😉

If I remember correctly the scuttlebutt was North of 200K for the camera and deck. Not your typical production company camera. Pretty much limited to the Hollywood folks or rental houses.

It’s great to dream isn’t it?

Bill

[Bill Crawford]

Hi Boris,

I have (pretty sure) an official Sony SP rack mount kit collecting dust. I can verify tomorrow when I get back to the office.

I’d be happy to help you out with a deal – say 25% of cost to move it out of the boneyard and to someone who can use it. I also have some additional Sony rails – but I only have ears for the SP deck. I got it as a duplicate with either the SP, or digibeta purchase. Can’t remember which.

Feel free to contact me off list bill_crawford(at)harborpictures(dot)com. We can do this through a private ebay sale if you’d like to.

Later,

Bill

[Bill Crawford]

Hi Matt,

No problem. Everything is a moving target these days and keeping up is a bear.

Once you have an answer from the product team, feel free to contact me offline.

If not tech – are you on the sales side?

bill_crawford(at)harborpictures(dot)com

Thanks,

Bill

[Bill Crawford]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for listening in.

I thought the latest drivers were allowing striping fast across all drives – was I mistaken in that note?

Bill

[Bill Crawford]

Thanks for the reply Walter.

Adam from Lacie tech support called back and confirmed that. It was a bit odd to see the 4 lights going when the drive was striped all 5 for fast using the new manager and driver. Didn’t quite seem right. If all 5 were striped together, it would make sense that they would all light up.

In addition, the read / write rates fell to barely 8 bit HD rates. Below what I had before under the old drivers and manager.

Adam had suggested before the call back to make it a jbod and strip under OSX. I did that and the read / write jumped way up. 210 mb/s on the read, and 198 mb/s on the writes. Much better than the internal fast raid setup in the S2S. Apparently the two offer the same – no protection for your data. So if you have a choice, at least as far as my box goes, the jbod wins out hands down in the speed test.

So for now, until they let me know if this is a result of some new bug and have a solution, the array will stay jbod and striped under OSX.

Thanks again,

Bill