Bill Stephan
Forum Replies Created
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You need 1080/23.976sF tri-sync reference to do what you want. From the picture of the box, the Aja sync gen doesn’t appear to have a setting for that. We use Evertz HD sync generators in our edit rooms, and these units do have this setting, which does work well with both Avid and the HDW-500 VTR.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Dan, you did a major upgrade to your Avid system costing $$$, so your Avid dealer should be willing and able to solve this for you. If you don’t get any satisfaction from your dealer’s tech support, then call the support people in Tewksbury. They do talk to engineers from the other manufacturers when a customer has a problem.
You really shouldn’t need to pray to the saints to get this worked out. Just demand the support that you are entitled to.
Also check whether Sony can offer any helpful insight.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
I wonder if this is the same issue as having a Mojo and Firewire drives on the same logical segments of the PCI bus. The advanced PC workstations have the PCI bus slots divided into 3 (I think) logical segments that the CPU can operate simultaneously. So in order for the PC to be able to capture media, the Mojo on Firewire and the storage on Firewire needs to be on separate logical segments. Then the CPU can run both simultaneously and they don’t conflict.
I would check that the Firewire i/f you added for the XDCAM is on a different logical bus from the FW running the Adrenaline DNA. You might have to move the FW board to a different slot.
Check out Avid’s web site for the instructions on setting up a Mojo. It explains in great detail how a PCI bus is segmented in the advanced workstations.
Also check that the FW board you added has a Texas Instruments chipset. Look for an IC with the outline of the state of Texas. Avid doesn’t like most other FW boards.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Since you are releasing on DVD, the easiest and best way to get the subtitles into the program is at the DVD authoring stage. You need to convert your file for the DVD authoring software being used. Closed captioning software can do this conversion, producing either a subtitle or a closed caption file for DVD use.
Adding the subtitles or closed captions at the DVD authoring stage allows the viewer to display the subtitles/captions or not as desired.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
For thermal printers, there’s Rimage Everest and Teac. Both work well and are expensive. A less expensive option is a Rimage Prism with color ribbon. That printer does full color, but it is halftoned like the color images in the newspaper. Look at a print sample before buying. If you aren’t doing high volume, you can buy just the printer and add the robotics later on all of these units.
I don’t care much for any of the inkjet printers except for very small jobs (a few discs). But my shop does tons of DVD-R duplication and color printing, so I use industrial-strength machines.
I look at disc printers all the time at NAB. I haven’t found anything satisfactory between the two extremes of the cheap inkjet printers and the expensive thermal printers.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
FWIW, our company doesn’t promise to keep customer’s projects forever. I think you should back up the Avid projects onto multiple DVDs, CDs or hard drives. If you ever need them, you can send the Avid projects to an Avid or FCP system to use as necessary. An Avid project is just a folder full of .avb (bin) files and some other stuff, so it does not need to get any more complicated than what I described.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Are you using anything such as dissolves or transitions to/from your menus? That would force DVDSP to re-encode your MPEG-2 assets, causing a fair to substantial loss of image quality.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Plan A: If you don’t have large amounts of 1080/59i footage, then standards convert to an HDCAM or SR 1080/50i. If there is much 1080/59i footage, especially if it will live together in one large segment (or many smaller segments) of the program, you might like:
Plan B: Off-line and on-line the 1080/59i footage into a 1080/59i edit master and standards convert that to 1080/50i. Then drop into the final 50i off-line and on-line as needed.
A lot depends on how you need to organize things in the final production.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
As far as the Hollywood movie discs are concerned, if you filter out the stores that carry only a dozen or so discs in each format, all the big sellers devote two to three times as much shelf space to Blu-ray as to HD-DVD. This is in Central New Jersey and midtown Manhattan.
For authoring small prjects for corporate customers, again Blu-ray wins because there has been working burners and recordable media on the market for awhile now.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Almost everyone in the broadcasting business works on a system where maximum audio level should be no higher than 10DB over reference level. Your reference level (tone) belongs at -20DBFs on the DigiBeta’s meters, and your maximum permitted level on program material is 10DB over that, or -10DBFs. (PBS and its affilite stations want no more than 8DB over reference, or -12DBFs.)
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City