[Bob Zelin]

Just a guess – there are many menus in the A500 that allow VTR control to happen from other ports beside the RS422 Remote port. Start checking those menus on the A500.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

23.98 is not wrong, but conventional products (like VCR’s, and your TV at home, and the DSR-11) don’t work at 24p. This is why pulldown was created (back in the film transfer days – which of course still exist). Unless you are releasing at 24 frames per second, there is just no reason to work at a frame rate that can’t be used by Beta, Digi Beta, VHS, and almost every TV monitor that you can think of (which is what your market is, unless you are releasing a theatrical release). You ain’t gonna get 23.98 recorded on a DSR-11, or even a more professional VTR, like a DSR-1800. These products are all designed to work at normal 29.97 frame rates, so unless you do the 2:3 pulldown – using the VTR, or using your AJA card to do it – you are not going to get a dub on a DSR-11.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

the future is no hardware. It’s starting with P2 and HDV with Firewire (and Apple’s push for it), and it’s going to continue with XDCam HD. AJA, Blackmagic, and others won’t be part of the picture. And of course, I will be out of business. Just look at the audio business, with all these Pro Tools systems. “We” are trying to convince everyone about vintage preamps and compressors, but software modeling is becomming more popular than ever.
No young person wants a hardware intensive audio studio – but try convincing “old timers” that they don’t need that UREI compressor anymore. And Pro Tools is doomed too – too many “USB” software packages coming out. The “audio pro’s” don’t like this, and bitch like I do, but what can you do. I am not blind to this – I am just bitching, because I don’t like what the future holds – because it doesn’t involve me. I guess companies like Boris and Sapphire (and Apple of course) will continue to support Creative Cow. Grant Petty tried to get around the whole black generator thing, but this didn’t work out well with the analog VTR’s – but it sure works just dandy in stand alone SDI and HD-SDI systems. With products like XD-Cam HD, and future VTR’s like this, young people will all say “what’s this sync stuff”.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Harlen –
I can assure you that you have a bad cable, or perhaps you are hitting a RS422 bay first, and the problem is there, before it gets to the router. It’s easy to take the wire from going to the Decklink, and move it onto any VTR (even if you have to carry it into the room) to see if it works. I am sure that it will not. If by some miracle this does work, take any original Sony 9 pin cable, and plug it directly between the Decklink RS422 port and that VTR you just dragged into your edit room. See – it works, doesn’t it.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Let the DVCPro VTR do the 2:3 pulldown, and simply make a dub from the composite out of the AJ-HD1200 or AJ-HD1400 into the composite input of the DSR-11. Now you have your tape. I assume this project is for television, so you don’t need to work at 23.98 – you can work (even when you remaster at HD) at 59.94 – the Panasonic VTR will do the 2:3 pulldown for you in composite, and in HD.

If you are already digitized into the FCP system at 23.98 (mistake) – then simply go to the Audio Video settings, choose the playback tab, and choose a 29.97 output, and the Kona will output from the “Y” BNC a composite signal (if you choose this in the Kona Control Panel) to go into the composite input of your DSR-11. This ain’t gonna happen thru the Firewire port on your DSR-11.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

hello fh,
ready for your beating ?
First – a simple answer to your question. You have no money, and you don’t want to start hooking up all kinds of equipment. The Mackie Big Knob is about $299, and the Mackie 1202 is about the same price, but you really don’t want to spend that much money.

So how about this –
https://www.americanmusical.com/item–i-BEH-XENTX502.html
The is the new Behringer Xenyx 502 mixer, which you can use as an audio attenuator, out of the AJA product, and into your speakers, so you can easily change the volume. It’s tiny, and has nice little knobs on it, so you can easily change the speaker volume, take up hardly any room on your desk, and cost you less money than you spend this Saturday for dinner when you and your wife went out to eat. Easy, inexpensive answer, right. (It’s $44.95).

OK, now for your beating –
We are on Creative Cow. Creative Cow makes money from selling advertising to companies that make products that WE BUY. You get this free advice, because Creative Cow exists, because we all BUY EQUIPMENT. If there is no equipment to buy, then there is no AJA, no Creative Cow, and no free advice. So if your dream is “gee, how come I just can’t go out and buy a MAC computer, and have it do everything, so I don’t need to buy anything ever again -no VTR’s, no mixers, no more software, no TV monitors, no hardware encoders – NOTHING !” – then we will all starve, because without all this hardware, from all these forums, most of us won’t make a living, and won’t be able to eat. So here is my advice to you – if you don’t want the people in our industry, and everyone on these forum to turn into Ethopia, START BUYING SOME EQUIPMENT. Because if you get your way, we will all die. Is that what you want ? The analogy of “all a good writer needs is a pen and a pad” comes from people that make as much as a high school student working at McDonnalds. You know where the guy with the Royal typewriter writing his script is right now – in his grave ! Buy that mixer NOW.

bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

This post has aggrivated me. The Truevision Targa 2000 was designed by Carl Calabria. This was the card used by AVID for years in the ABVB product. Carl went on to Pinnacle to design the wonderful Pinnacle Cinewave Card. Carl is (or was) employed by AVID Technologies as chief hardware engineer – this happened before AVID bought Pinnacle. So over a year ago, they had the ability to have a brilliant hardware engineer re-port the Pinnacle CineWave card to work with the Media Composer (instead of the silly AVID Mojo product) – so even with the know how, and the staff to do it,and owning the hardware rights, they did not do it. And you expect me to even think that AVID would SPEND MONEY to license the AJA Xena product for Media Composer (and the low end Xpress Pro HD at that). Are you in dreamland ?????

bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Dave –
Simply because you have posted this, AVID will now rewrite the software in their next release to make sure that it does NOTHING with the AJA Kona card. Are you trying to imply that AVID is secretly working with AJA to get the Kona card supported for the Media Composer application ? Since you must be on drugs, can you please send me some, becuase I would love to live in the fantasy world that you live in. I am sure that engineers in Tewksbury are currently being tortured in the AVID dungeon because management is forced to use the Xena for the Nitris product for 4:4:4 input. You know how they say “never say never” – well, in this case, I say NEVER. AVID would rather go out of business than go back to relying on a third party hardware card (like they did with the Truevision line). In fairytale land, the only possibility of this EVER happening would be for AVID to purchase AJA, and make sure that the AJA product line would never work with FCP ever again (and this is in fantasy land, as none of this will ever happen).

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Hi –
unless you are working in the feature film industry, and do film print release, you do not need the Evertz Tri LEvel Sync gen. There are different philosophy’s on this, but I do not see any need for anyone finishing for Television release to work at 23.98 native frame rate. You shoot at 23.98 (or 59.94 or 29.97), and let the VTR do the 2:3 pulldown for you, so your HD projects are all at normal frame rate (you still get the film look with no aggrivation of editing at 24p). For this, you need nothing other than the generic cheapo black generator – not a $4000 Evertz. However, if you need to print back to 24p for film release, you need a product like this. Most people just need a cheapo black generator.

As for the Sony monitor – simply purchase the AJA K Box or K3 box – it’s $299, and has the analog Out Y Pb Pr on it, to feed your PVM-20L5 an analog HD signal, which looks GREAT. You don’t need anything else.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Brian –

I just saw that you also own an Apple XServe RAID, which is the most expensive storage array on the market, so I really don’t want to hear that you can’t afford a black gen.

Bob Zelin