[Bob Cole]

I forgot — we started the fix with low end roll off, then noise reduction, then the rest as I described.

Experiment! And use very good speakers, or else headphones.

— Bob C.

[Bob Cole]

[Michael G] “No matter what you do it is still a turd.”

In principle I agree. But in practice, you can get away with a lot nowadays. You might be surprised at the before-and-after of a dialog track that was in here last week.

A very astute sound mixer friend was able to make this problematic track (recorded too close to a very noisy HVAC system) sound really really good, using only STP. The key was to use each filter just a little bit. In this case, a little bit of low-end roll-off; a little compression of voice only; for some parts, a little normalization; a little more compression of the mix; and a little limiting. It sounded really great in the end! And these were non-professional voices.

Of course I agree with you about trying to do the best you can on location. The tracks would have been a lot better if recorded on a sound stage. But sometimes, you just have to roll with what you have, and thank your lucky stars there are tools that can “fix it in post.”

— Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[jmf] “Isn’t the Panasonic 1700W an upright vacuum cleaner?”

Yes. That’s why it has such a clean image.

I just saw the 2600 and the 1700 side-by-side at a trade show yesterday. Both produced impressive images, the 2600 just a little bit better, but with more features such as pixel-to-pixel imaging (very useful for someone who wants to do critical checking on his HD camera). The biggest rap against LCD screens is “the blacks aren’t black enough.” At the show, the ambient light made it difficult to determine how true that was. But even there, with color bars, you could easily tune the pluges that should be black to black, and still see the just-above-black pluge, so either monitor should work very well in an edit suite. If an immediate need arose for an HD studio monitor, I’d get the 2600 right away. But I’m going to wait and see whether the recent price drops in consumer monitors somehow filter to the professional side. Probably wishful thinking.

Again, you should take a serious look at the 2600. It is very nice and not that much more expensive than the 1700.

— Bob C

[Bob Cole]

I have been having a bad customer service day, in no way connected to the video business. So when Piers reminded me of this incident, it struck me differently today than before. When I encountered this glitch, I was just grateful to AJA for promptly resolving my problem. Today, however, I wonder, “Why should this even BE ‘my problem?'”

It’s not as if Panasonic is a strange, tiny deck manufacturer. Doesn’t Apple actually test their software in a real studio before releasing it? I just don’t get it.

Worst of all, we just have come to expect this.

Hurrumph.

— Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[Piers Goodhew] “You wouldn’t care to elaborate on *what* it was that AJA sent you and what you did? I’ve just hit the same problem with FCP 5.1.2, Tiger, QT 7.1.3, Panasonic VTRs and Decklink here. I’ve contected DeckLink support, but I’d love to know more about what AJA gave you …”

sure — send me your email address and I’ll forward the file. I don’t know whether it will fix a Decklink problem though.

bob “at” rcole “dot” com

[Bob Cole]

Were you impressed? Cameras are developing so quickly that (more than ever) buying one raises fears of instant obsolescence. I’m looking for the right camera, right time to buy.

Is the HPx2100 a camera that will hold up against the competition for a couple of years?

— Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[Chris Poisson] “I would swear it was shot backlit, OR maybe a shadow cast on a scrim.”

Take a look at this page(scroll down to the image)

https://hitchcock.tv/HFAQ/FAQ.html

What do you think?

I’ll bet that if we saw it again, we’d be amazed at how primitive it was. But that was part of the charm.

[Bob Cole]

Wasn’t it just a shadow from a nice focussed fresnel?

[Bob Cole]

[Bret Williams] “Make sense?”

Yes. Thank you. That part of it does make sense. And the purple lines that show pan location do move in opposite directions as I change from -1 to 0 to 1. (I am not in front of FCP right now, but I assume that in order to pan the channels independently, you merely have to separate the tracks, right?)

But what about the stability issues? Have you seen anything about that? I wonder whether that is a MacPro issue, and in that case, I should just accept it as part of the deal for getting new hardware. Or perhaps even a Kona LHe issue.

Thanks again.

— Bob

[Bob Cole]

[izoneguy] “It says the new version can read back to P2
so I guess that means .mxf….”

I saw that, but there are multiple incompatible flavors of .mxf, and it doesn’t tell me whether I can get back to the specific DVCProHD codec that I am using with my Kona card — or if it does, I don’t understand it.