[Bob Flood]

Walter

Great Article/Post/Blog thing! There are a couple of these Ethernet SANs out there, and it looks like you picked a good one

So I have seen facilities working on TV shows, and their approache to Shared Storage is a bunch of 500 gB My Book Studio drives that they move around from system to system. The My Books are fast enough to maintain dual streams of DVCPROHD that the show shoots in. Each drive has all the media for a segment and the project. A writer cuts together just the sound bites, then its given to one editor, and he works on the segemnt until its approved, then the drive is taken for sound work, Color, and Compiling into a show. I believe the popular vernacular is “sneakernet”

jut out of curious, why wouldnt that work for you?

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[Bob Flood]

Gregorio

AS a rule of thumb, is it not advisable to compress any video files that have already been compressed, as is the case with P2 (or any format other than Uncompressed) and I am not even sure about that.
The type of compression that data tape cartidges use is not video freindly, and can permanently damage your video files.

on the other hand, the price for a couple of tapes is still a lot less than P2 cards, or having to have a service perform data recovery on a hard drive.

as a side note, I was looking at that drive as they claim to use a very robust means of writing the data, such that it becomes much more un-vulnerable to normal data tape problems. If you can remember, let us bovines know how it works out in a few weeks

hope this helps

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[Bob Flood]

shane et al

I heard from chumpborneveryminute.com that the next release will contain time-space bending features, so you can edit before you shoot, and take as long as you need to meet your deadline!

however, everytime you use the feature, you age 10 years, so they are still working that out

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[Bob Flood]

no

but the programmable “retail” keyboard looks interesting…

https://www.xkeys.com/xkeys/xk12884.php

no more 3 or 4 finger spreads (command option something)

could put track mutes, locks, enables, patches, all on its own keyboard, as well as anthing else that takes mutliple key presses (not keystrokes, although i think they handle that as well)

the down side is, if you freelance at different places you have to drag the thing around with you!

plus it aint cheap!

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[Bob Flood]

Walter

Been a big fan for a long time, and you are someone i respect and listen to on this forum.

However

did you do it this way?

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/basic_onlining_jordan.html

Its been a little while since i did this, but the last time i used it, it worked pretty well, especailly with a VTR with decent ballistics, like a beta sp or a sony 1500.

It takes a little longer, and it makes it tricky if you have to change the cut after the fact, but i sure had a lot less media to recapture!

hope this helps.
And if not, tell me why

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[Bob Flood]

Joe

We have used this codec as follows: Green Screen material shot on P2 DVCPROHD, Load into FCP same codec. After selecting takes, exported Sheer 1080, wheich we then loaded into AE CS2 or 3. Used AE to make Alpha Channel versions of the Selects and exported from AE as Sheer as well, When re imported into FCP, just had to adjust setup ie black level, and all was well!

There are steps in this workflow where you have to set setup at either 7.5 or 0, and we probably missed one, so we had to tweek the black setting. Other than that it worked great, Fast exports, a lot less drive space and network xfer time than uncompressed.

You can run free trials for both mac and pc’s to give you a sense of hoe it will work for you.

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[Bob Flood]

Joe

Company called BitJazz has developed Codecs designed to address this specific issue. Link:

https://www.bitjazz.com/en/products/sheervideo/

the developers get into a lot of color space theory on this site, but the bottom line is it works!

Correct me if i am wrong, but are’nt the ;ater versions of AE, such as CS3 and CS4, supposed to give you the option of working in a Non RGB colorspace, specificly one that is particular to video?

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[Bob Flood]

Trent

SO they can do transfers to digital file formats? they will digitize or capture the video from a telecine or film to tape camera/scanner into a computer, and subsequently put in on a hard drive? thats sweet!

Without knowing more I would say DV25 as a digital format/codec will give you good results, and wont eat up a lot of drive space.

It would be helpful to know what kind of computer and capture card they are using. PC? Apple/Mac? QT Capable? DVCPRo50 Capable?

there is one transfer system i have heard of that does it single frame, and scans full aperture. It connects to a computer and creates a series of still frames, which you cna then convert to wahtever flavor you like.

Supposedly its the best super 8 transfers out there, supposedly.

hope this helps

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[Bob Flood]

Tony

Unless you are dealing with a commercial film-to-tape transfer facility, which does 35 and 16 mm transfers for tv spots and shows, you will find that most places that do 8mm “home movies” usually go directly to whatever format consumers use, ie DVD (as a Video DVD) VHS, or DV.

The best format you can get out of that kind of facility is DV, on a mini DV tape, which is just fine for a Standard Def DVD.

I would stay away from vhs or dvd, as its going to be more work for you.

also, most super 8 cameras run at 18 frames per second, instead of 24, so to make a clean transfer to 30 fps video, the film is usually sped up to 20 fps. as such you may want to slow it back down in editing.

however, between you and me, most home movies are better when they run faster, as it makes watching them shorter 😉

hope this helps

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[Bob Flood]

Actually, I’m working on starting a TV program soon & will be receiving something along the lines of 12 years worth of items all shot on 3/4″ tape. I’m REALLY nervous about these digital broadcast rules which are to supposedly shut out formats like Beta SP.

I am not sure waht you mean? We find the problem isnt so much resolution, but the aspect ratio, taking a 4×3 image, and putting it in a 16×9 format.

I wanted to ask you a few questions relating to this broadcast issue and about dealing with these 3/4″ tapes…

1) Will feeding my tapes into the computer and turning them into Quicktime files be enough to deal with this digital broadcast “monster” on the way? Or will I have to set up a different conversion setting such as DVC-PRO to make it good for broadcast in the future?

If you mean digital video, then yes, but you need to choose a format thats better than DV, such as dvcpro50,

2) I’m currently in the process of working with a friend to turn some of his 3/4″ tapes into DVDs for the market… because the TV producer he was working with at the time had a love for recycling tapes, one of them has some dropouts (not major) but they cause the video to briefly go out of sync by the odd frame or two. Normally, when I face issues such as clogged tapes, I take them to a special place where they clean off any loose oxides which makes the tapes play like new. Should taking that tape to this place fix the problem?

Have you gotten a TBC for the VO-9800? the capture cards are not powerful enough to clean up the sync signals off tape. A time base corrector aka TBC does just that.

without a tbc, a hefty drop out can cause you to lose picture sound sync.
With a TBC, all you get is a line across the picture, and if the TBC has a good dropout compensator, it will just look like a line of video. (which may not be ideal, but will look better than the actual dropout.) I cant say whether burnishing the tape (the “place” you speak of) will help. Personally i would not.

3) To do these transfers, I’m currently using a Sony VO-9800 (3/4 SP), one of the tapes I using plays like a dream except in one spot (40 mins in) where the tape makes a couple of minor shifts (which affects the digitizing slightly). I also have a VO-2610 sitting in my garage (perfect condition, except for the stop button needing replacement), would bringing in that machine, scrubbing up the heads & digitizing the tape in that machine fix the problem?

Do you mean a VO-2600? a top loading machine? the machine you are using now is better.

the minor shifts will not affect your digitizing once you have a TBC

4) I read your mentioning about tape clean-up plugins for FCP, I’m currently using FCP 5.1, would those plugins be available for my version? How can I find them & what in fact do these plugins do?

I am using the CHV repair collection. google “video noise removal”

5) Earlier, I mentioned these old tapes coming to me pretty soon, the majority of them date between 1978-1991 and are in very good condition. Is there a way these tapes can be made to look as if they had just been shot yesterday?

if you can cut out the paisly shirts, bell bottom pants, and shoulder pads, sure! 🙂

Creatively, There are 2 things you can do with old footage, clean it up, or make it dirtier.

You can try and remove as much of the undesireable artifacts as possible, using methods you and i have talked about. they will never look like they were shot yesterday, but they will look as good as they can

OR

you can do trickery to make it look even more grungier than it already is. Run it through a monitor and re shoot it. Put some color and noise filters on it, stuff like that.

hope this helps

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.