Bob Zelin
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COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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a canopus DV to NTSC decoder is the cheapest way to do this. This will cost a fraction of what a DV camera will cost.
bob Zelin
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you will find that learing how to do these speed tests are very important – especially in the future when you start to get dropped frames. You need about 220mb/sec to do uncompressed HD, no matter what drives you use.
And no matter how many times we write about this, there will always be someone who writes in “how come I can’t do uncompressed HD on my firewire 400 drive”.
Bob Zelin
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To follow up Ron’s excellent advice, if you think that getting a Mackie is overkill, buy a Behringer – you can get one of these mixers for about $100, which, if nothing else, will allow you to control your audio levels (and lots more, if you choose to do so). If $100 is too much money, you can probably find one used on eBay.
If you feel that “you don’t want to own too much equipment” – then you have entered the wrong business.
Bob Zelin
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you plug the audio out of your camera into the Audio in of the LHe. I urge you to purchase a mixer, to allow you to control and balance the level coming out of your camera, to match the LHe.
Bob Zelin
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if you have 2 or 3 SATA drives all stripped together RAID 0, then you can do 8 and 10 bit uncompressed, and DVCProHD. You will NOT be able to do uncompressed 8 or 10 bit HD, with only 2 or 3 SATA drives at RAID 0. You will need a minimum of EIGHT SATA drives, unless you have the amazing Cal-Digit S2VR, which can do uncompressed HD with only 5 SATA drives (and no, you can’t use your existing SATA drives – they won’t sell you an empty chassis).
Bob Zelin
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Marcus –
this is the answer to all of your questions. You own a ProMax SATA array with 8 SATA drives. This is in a KANO Technologies enclosure – this is a very nice product, but I am not exactly sure which KANO enclosure you have. Kano makes a 4 bay and 5 bay PORT MULTIPLIER enclosure for your existing SATA drives, that will allow you to use the correct SATA host card in your MAC Pro. The correct SATA Host card for the MAC Pro is the
Cal-Digit FASTA-4e, which ProMax can sell you. You will put your drives into these enclosures, plug them into the Cal-Digit FASTA-4e, and re-raid your 8 drives (yes, you will lose your media) – using Apple Disk Utility, but when you do the RAID, you will click on OPTIONS, and change the Block Size from the default of 32k to 256K. You let the Apple Disk Utility create the RAID 0, and now you can do uncompressed HD. The Cal-Digit FASTA-4e will cost you about $299. I don’t know how much ProMax charges for their port multipler chassis, but they are probably under $499 each (you will need 2, because you have 8 drives). This will ABSOLUTELY work for uncompressed HD.NOW, as for your tests with the Apple XServe RAID, that failed after 2 minutes. You MUST upgrade the firmware for the XServe RAID to V1.5, and after you do this, you run the Apple RAID ADMIN, and in the “settings” menu, change the settings preferences so that CACHE FLUSHING is turned off. If you do not do this, you will not be able to record uncompressed HD on the XServe RAID (I am assuming that this is a 14 drive Apple XServe RAID in a RAID 50 configuration – if you have 4-7 drives, you aint’ gonna to uncompressed HD on an XServe RAID).
The most important question here is “how come you have to know all of this stuff to make it work”. This is what SYSTEMS INTEGRATION is all about, and why it’s good to have a good dealer that you work with . If you bought from ProMax, they are a GREAT DEALER, and they would have helped you with this, if you had the brains to simply ask them.
Bob Zelin
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This is a simple overview. Right now, you have one system – the VTR goes into your AJA product, and you have a TV montitor that you can observe the output of your AJA or VTR. You may have your audio cables going into a mixer from your VTR and AJA. You monitor sound from your mixer.
NOW, you want to share that VTR (or countless other VTR’s, and other equipment) with TWO FCP edit systems. EVERY ONE of these cables needs to become available to anything else – because you may not only want to share the VTR, you may want to make dubs from one VTR to another VTR. Every cable from every VTR and every edit system needs to come to a central point – that could be audio and video and RS422 patch bays (in a rack), or into a central router. If you have the money for a router (and I bet you don’t) – it needs to handle analog composite, analog component, SDI, possibly HD-SDI, and analog audio, Time Code, and RS422.
Many people say “I have my beta VTR hooked up to my AJA I/O or Kona LHe, how come I need so much stuff if I just want to add one more AJA product on another MAC – why do I need so many cables, and so much other stuff – can’t I just plug in the other AJA product to that Beta VTR”. This is the beginning of the education process (there ain’t no place to plug into – it’s all plugged into the first system).
If you want more details, post your email address, and you can send me an equipment list, and I will show you what is really involved. This is beyond the scope of this forum.
Bob Zelin
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Brett –
If you think that you are going to wire up two edit suites with shared access to your VTR’s, so that you can take any of your analog audio, AES audio, SDI video, Analog composite or component video, and RS422 control – AND DO THIS YOURSELF, without any background or experience – then you are in dreamland.You need to hire a qualified systems integrator, or freelance video engineer, that knows about multi level routing switchers, patch bays, and doing this in a way that you do not have a complete mess at your company.
Reading a brochure on routing switchers will not aid you in doing this, and simple advice on forums like this will not magically make this happen.
If you do not listen to my advice, and simply order an 8×8 composite video/stereo audio router from B+H Photo (for example), you will soon find out that you have ordered the wrong equipment, after spending a lot of money, and that this is more complicated than you think.
bob Zelin
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I have been running 2.0.4b9 (not b1) without issue. Try that.
Bob Zelin
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Ditto on that ditto –
I don’t care if you have a Cinewave card, Aurora Card, Blackmagic Card, Bluefish Card, Voodoo card, AJA card, ATTO card, or any other kind of card. If you had TWO cards fry, let me assure you that it ain’t the cards that are causing this problem. If you have bad power issues, you would fry the computer as well, or the SATA host card. You have a problem with your MAC, and I know exactly what will happen when you bring it in – “we checked it out, and it’s working just fine – we did not see any problems”.I don’t know how to advise you, other than to find someone OTHER than “the Apple Store” genius’ to look at your MAC.
Bob Zelin