[Bob Zelin]

Hi DK,
I am very confused by your post. Let me get this straight – you have HD clients, you have HD work, yet you are not doing any HD work because you want to wait for the release of a certain product ? I am sure that the Blackmagic Extreme when it is released will be wonderful. But the Kona 2 (which costs just over 2 grand) is out NOW, and it a fantastic, stable product. Won’t you make back the 2 grand on your HD projects by the time the Multibridge Extreme comes out? How can you afford to do NOTHING – let clients go somewhere else – instead of buying what you need now?

I know that SATA II drives will be wonderful, but I have to work NOW to make money, so I have to buy something that is ON THE MARKET.

Buy the Kona 2 – make some money, then get yourself a new car.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

I saw the 292 at NAB2005. I am used to scopes from Leader, Videotek and Tektronix, and in my opinion, the Hamlet appears as a cheap toy. The LCD display is terrible. I don’t know why they didnt’ have an external port for an external display (like Videotek). The 292 is the cheapest HD scope, but it’s not cheap – it’s over 6 grand.
The Videotek VTM-150 (which is an SDI – NOT HD scope) is 4 grand, and it’s display is top notch professional. I dont’ think I could convince anyone to spend 6 thousand dollars on the Hamlet. I am amazed that other companies are not trying to make 4-6 thousand dollar HD scopes. I guess Tek, Leader and Videotek can get the 12-16 grand from broadcasters, and our market is just not worth it for them. The Astro systems HD scope is $9000, and is about the same quality as the Hamlet.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Why do I need to use an external monitor when the MAC display is a monitor ? Why do I need to use external speakers, when the MAC G5 has an internal speaker ? Why do I need to use an AJA product, when I can just go Firewire into the MAC G5? Why is there a professional video business, when any 12 year old can go to the Mall, buy a MAC G5 (hey, an iMac), and produce videos ? If I buy an AJA I/O box, does this product come with clients that will pay me a lot of money, so I can buy a new car and a house? And if I am in fact 12 years old, why are you making fun of me?

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

this has been an entertaining thread, and is one that certainly drives everyone crazy. The Sony PVM-20L5/1 may only have 800 lines of resolution, where the Dell 2405FPW, Apple Cinema 23″ and Sony SDM-P234 have the full 1920×1200 HD resolution, but the Sony PVM-20L5/1 LOOKS BETTER AND MORE ACCURATE than any of these FULL RESOLUTION LCD displays. I am dying to see the eCinema, but I have not requested a loaner yet, as I do not know ONE CLIENT that would even consider paying $13,000 for a 23″ display, no matter what it looked like.

With that said, I spend last NAB looking at every alternate waveform/vector scope on the market. I have been a big fan of the Videotek VTM-150 for STANDARD SDI resolution (about $4000) but there are NO good quality CHEAP HD scopes made. The Videotek VTM-420 is about $12,000. The Astro systems HD scope is terrible, and about $9000, and the Hamlet HD scope is worse than the Astro and it’s about $6000. When you think about the “standard companies” like Tektronix and Leader Instruments, their prices are out of control. But if you have no problem spending $15,000 for a HD scope, and $15,000 for the eCinema display (30 grand to monitor your image) – well, you have MUCH RICHER clients than I have.

bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Boy, am I confused – why would you need an AJA I/O LA if you have the LH?

It’s easy to get the drivers for your I/O LA. Go to http://www.aja.com, click on Support, click on IO support, and you will see the I/O LA drivers on the list. Click on that, and it will load onto your system. Restart, and go to EASY SETUPS, and select an I/O LA setting in Easy Setups, and you will be in business. But the LH does everything you need – why do you need the I/O LA anyway?

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Marco tried to make a funny, but it’s not as funny as this real life
example just posted on the Blackmagic forum

any suggestions? the monitor is my old Commodore 1084 (yes, low budget TV at it’s finest!) and has worked great with my Toaster and then my PC running Speed Razor.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

I use both the Firmtek and the Sonnet 8 port. In both cases, I stick the Kona 2 product in slot 4 and either the Firmtek or Sonnet in Slot 2 or 3, so there is never an issue that “it does not fit”.

If you are doing 8 bit or 10 bit SDI or DVCProHD, you will get spectacular results with only 2 drives (Hitachi and Seagates are both fine). However, if you want to do UNCOMPRESSED 8 or 10 BIT HD, you MUST MUST MUST use all 8 drives, and you are stuck with the Sonnet. You may find that you have trouble getting all 8 drives to mount with the Sonnet, and this is only due to the eSATA connection, which you have to play with sometimes to get the corner ports to mount. (Don’t worry, you can do this with power on) – but this gets frustrating, when you have all 8 drives stripped together as RAID 0, and you see nothing mount on your desktop, when only one (which one ?) of the drives did not mount. It can be a challange. Either way, the Firmtek WILL NOT DO UNCOMPRESSED HD due to the limited # of ports on the card.

I still feel the safest way to do uncompressed HD is with the HUGE U320RX (or Apple XServe RAID, and Walter says the Medea FC array).

I am urging my clients to choose SATA over FW800, but many still choose FW800.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Riccardo states that he is getting an aneurysm from his Blackmagic Product. If he in fact had an anuurysm, he would have to go to a doctor – perhaps a neurosurgeon, to aid in resolving his medical issue. The purchase of the CORRECT DISK DRIVE ARRAY would easily resolve his stuttering problems, and be A LOT CHEAPER than a SINGLE VISIT to ANY doctor.

So Riccardo, this is what you are going to do. We don’t want you to have an aneurysm. And if you think that there is an alternative, if you would have purchased products from Aurora, AJA, or AVID, YOU ARE WRONG. You must have a DRIVE ARRAY that will do what you want. There are no miracles here.

YOU STATE –

But I have problems playing back 8bit and 10bit.
Short of getting a fast RAID what can I do to optimize playback? I just upgraded decklink software, QT, etc.

REPLY – so this is what you are going to do. If you want to play back single stream 8 bit and 10 bit uncompressed video, you are going to buy a firewire 800 drive – a 250 gig drive will cost you less than $300 (a lot less than a visit to a neurosurgeon) – and your problems will be GONE. And if you want to do multiple streams of 8 bit and 10 bit uncompressed, you will purchase a SATA host card, and 2 SATA drives – a Firmtek 2 port SATA host, and 2 250 Gig Hitachi SATA drives in an enclosure will cost you about $549, give you EVERYTHING YOU WANT, and you will have about 500 Gigs of storage for this price. AND NO ANEURYSM. Now, if spending $300 – $500 do resolve your head problems now gives you an ulcer – well, this is a different doctor. But even a different doctor is NOT GOING TO TELL YOU HOW TO GET 10 bit UNCOMPRESSED TO WORK ON YOUR INTERNAL DRIVES. Buy the right equipment, and you will have no problems. You have an excellent hardware setup, and obviously have spent a lot of money to get what you have now. Finish the purchase – and get back to work.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Some people have asked me not to do the “crazy bob” thing here. Some people love that stuff (I love it), but others take offense (meaning that they can’t take a joke). Don’t worry, one day, there will be some guy that will ask how to use the Kona 2 card in a MAC 9500 – then I will threaten to kill him and his family, or something creative like that.

There are plenty of people still out there that will buy a HD VTR, and all the MAC/AJA stuff, and would still rather go out of business than buy a $289 black generator. I recently saw a post on Cow (on another forum) where a guy is waiting for a product to come out, and appears to be willing to “leave the business, and consider an alternate career” rather than to consider a competing product. I was just at a company that just bought a brand new AJ-HD1200A HD VTR, and wouldn’t send someone out to K-Mart to buy a $2.99 outlet strip, so they could plug it in (all their rack strip outlets were being used by other equipment). I wound up giving them one that I had in my car (I watched for over an hour as they contemplated what to do about plugging in this VTR, while I did some wiring).

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

As Walter said – a Horita BSG-50 (NOT A BG-50) is what you need. The last 2 people I told to get a BSG-50 tried to save 50 bucks, and ordered the wrong unit.

You need a black generator to keep all of your equipment “genlocked” or synchronized.
When you don’t use a master sync generator, you get the little flashing blue stop lights on your VTR’s, and the “Error-Non Std. Ref” error messages, as well as the dreaded vertical roll bar upon trying to record to analog VTR’s. Some products will lock to incomming video, and AJA’s new “thing” is to allow their products to operate in “free run”, but to avoid all issues, just buy the damn Black generator.

Bob Zelin