[Bob Delano]

Here’s a customer support story with a happy ending…

AJA tech support has been all over this since I emailed them late this morning. It appears that one of my many third-party plug-ins is causing the conflict. I’ve removed all but the basic set of plug-ins and the problem has gone away. Now we’re adding the plug-ins back bit-by-bit to isolate the problem.

It”s one of those weird problems that only shows up in the Aja output and not with FCP.

Thanks to Hector at Aja for all his help!

Bob

Editor Bob
Charlotte, NC

[Bob Delano]

Update –
Took advantage of my Apple Pro Care membership, made an appointment at the local Apple Store, and they were able to get it to boot. Seems there was a problem with the boot drive and it was hanging up. In and out of the store in less than an hour, spots have shipped to the networks, ran disk warrior this afternoon, and we move forward with another set of commercials in the morning.

I will be much more carful about making sure I have projects like this backed up to external drive in the future.

Bob

[Bob Delano]

I use it’s big brother, the FW-1884 with an AJA io. I added a n inexpensive FW400 card to an open slot in my G5 to keep them on seperate busses, and life has been fine for over a year. I just wish I had more time to get into everything the Tascam can really do…

Bob

[Bob Delano]

In the telecine world, “Dailies” are a quick transfer with the telecine set to a base color correction. The entire collection of film footage is run through to the format of your choice. After the edit is done, the final “selects” trasfer is done… the exacting scene by scene process of color correction by the colorist of the final material to be used in the project. The project is then reassembled from the selects material in its final master format.

Editor Bob
Charlotte, NC

[Bob Delano]

Air Condition, Rent, Electricity, Telephone, Internet Connection, Equipment & Building Maitenance, Fees for common areas as part of the lease, Bank Fees, Insuarance (both business & health)… all of that is part of the overhead for operating your edit suite. Back when I had a big traditional post house I would take all of the fixed operating costs for the plant, annual maintenance budgets, utilities, plus salaries for operators and support staff, and determine the base operating cost per month for each edit suite. Factor in software upgrades and your Apple Care policy as well…

Bob

[Bob Delano]

Most Post Houses put their “House Bars” at the front of the tape. Many projects have sources from more than one camera, but as the editor you are expected to color correct the scenes as needed. Back in the “Old Days” (big on-line linear suites) we’d set up the tapes t the bars generated by the camera, but would still adjust the scenes as needed – many would still be over or under exposed, need adjustments to color and hugh levels, contrast, etc. It’s just a part of the editing project. House bars at the front (and for us here they’re the bars from FCP) allow the end user to adjust the tape to what we as editors want him to see.

My last commercial edit had scenes from five seperate commercial shoots by three cineamatographers each witht here own gear, shot over three years on a variety of film stocks and telecone by different colorists/seperate facilities. Each shot had to be “dialed in” to match the overall look for the new spot. House bars at the front allow the networks to set up the tape to an established standard so what you see on TV matches what we saw in the edit suite.

As for timecode, the old standard was start blacking the tapes at 58:00:00, a minute of bars from 58:30:00 to 59:30:00, then a slate or countdown and the first frame of the show at 1:00:00:00. Drop-frame for long format shows, non-drop for commercials. Actual standards for the front of the tape differ from network to network, but follow this general approach.

Way more info than you asked for….

Bob

[Bob Delano]

Just an update for anyone who’s concerned… I added a $35 belkin PCI firewire card to the G5 and all is well. Score something today on Soundtrack Pro… video output to the big monitor via the AJA io just fine…

Bob

[Bob Delano]

I understand the fear of commitment….

In my system we use the AJA IO, and I have three of the ProMax 500 gig SATA firewire drives. I can do an entire one hour program (BetaSP source) on a single drive, and love knowing that I can take the drive to another shop if my deck or system crashes.

On the road I used the G-Raid 500 gig firewire drives and a decklink card without any problems. The system was hard-wired in a remote truck for a sports car racing series, bounced around all over the country, and worked just fine.

I like the extra versatility of the AJA io plus the fact that it is its own “break out box”.

Just my experience… good luck.

Bob

[Bob Delano]

I forgot about that Bob… thanks for the reminder. I have regularly used a firewire deck as an input device while using the AJA io in FCP, so a kind of forgot about the limitations. Addind to my “brain fade” is that the two appeared to both be working at the same time for a while.

A new firewire card is an easy soloution. I’ll give that a try this weekend.

Thanks!

[Bob Delano]

Oh yeah… I forgot about that.

Will adding a new firewire card to the G5 allow me to do that, or does this require a move to a Kona card? Of course just unplugging the audio board firewire cable when I’m in FCP is a simple work-around.

Thanks for the reminder Walter!