Bob Zelin
7
COW Coins
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yes – this is way off.
Why are you dealing with a local IT company ? Why not with a professional video dealer ?
Are you in the US, or Europe ?The smallest Synology with 10G is the DS3615xs, and you need to buy the 10G card as an option.
If you have limited budget you are better off with a low end QNAP, like the TX831X that supports 10G and comes with the 10G ports. The smallest switch you can use is the Netgear XS708T. The drives are fine.If you don’t have a 10G backplane system, you are just wasting your time, to try to have multiple people try to edit from the same storage – even if it’s only over 1G connections.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
grade A Kay ? No, I look for budget ways to accomplish things.
And since this is a government job, done by government employees, I am sure that the four runs cost A LOT MORE that the $119 each that I pointed out from the Markertek website. That means that the readers of Creative Cow, and myself, had our tax dollars pay probably 10 times that much, and nothing is still working correctly.
Had this government organization hire a professional AV contractor, this would have never happened, and you would have had a working system from day 1.And I look up to Mount Olympus, which is where the government spending is – all usually done incorrectly and inefficiently. My clients have very little money – I just try to do things correctly on a tight budget. I observe all the Harris Broadcast installations that are done for the government. What a shame. One of those contracts could employ the entire readership of Creative Cow.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
Hi Kay –
I looked at some of your other posts, like looking for someone to do some AE work for you for free to build their portfolio. With that in mind, I can readily tell what is going on here. The very fact that you are using terms like RG59 and RG6 means that you, or your “contractor” went to Home Depot to buy the cheapest crap they could find for your professional production operation. If you kept RG-59, and used Belden 1505A cable, with connectors like 75 ohm Kings connectors, everything would be working fine. If you wanted RG6 cable (which there is no reason to do with only a 200′ run), you use Belden 1694A with the correct connectors (and crimped with the correct tools). As has been suggested in another post, you don’t get this stuff at Home Depot – you go to Markertek or another professional supply house, and spend $400 for a roll of cable and have it done, and you will have no prolbmes.When you say “at 720, I get one camera, at 480, I get 2” – exactly what does that mean. I assume you are going into a video switcher. Do you mean that when you plug in a 720p camera, it works, and when you plug in the second 720p camera, the other camera disappears ? Exactly what switcher are you plugging into ?
look – a premade 200′ Belden 1505A cable with Canare connectors – all premade for you – for only $119 each and free shipping ! Problem solved –
https://www.markertek.com/product/mbcp-1505a-200/mbcp-1505a-200-canare-slim-bnc-belden-1505a-rg59-hd-bnc-cable-200-ftWho knows what switcher you are plugging into.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
this post is from 2008 ! Who records back to a Beta VTR in 2016 ?
Your AJA Kona Card and Beta UVW 1800 must have a black reference signal from a product like an AJA GEN10
connected to the EXT REF input of the Kona (and select EXT REF in the Kona Control Panel) – and put the same black signal into both the REF IN, and Composite Video IN of the Beta 1800. I assume you are using the Y Pb Pr output of the Kona card to go into the input of the Beta 1800 VTR.Once you do this, you will no longer receive an error message on the VTR.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
currently, unless you are buying the Universal Videohub, the largest videohub is the 40×40. When you install a router in a facility, you just don’t install a router – you install PATCH BAYS along with the router. Yes – if you buy Evertz, Miranda, Utah Scientific, Grass Valley – or AJA KUMO 64×64 or Blackmagic – you install PATCH BAYS in case of failure.
With that said, while I have had dead crosspoints on Videohubs, I have never had a Videohub completely fail on me.
The price is so aggressive, why don’t you buy TWO, which is cheaper than any single router from another manufacturer.
Routers, including brands I have not mentioned – like Pesa, have been incredibly reliable in recent years.
Like I said, I have personally NEVER installed the Universal Videohub, which is 72 or 288 crosspoint, so I cannot attest to the reliability of these, but I am sure that it’s similar to the regular 40×40, which I have not seen a failure on. And the older 72×144, which they no longer make – I have never had one fail.So when your HyperDeck failed, what did you replace it with – an AJA Ki Pro, an Atomos ? I bet you a nickel that you did not buy a CineDeck, because you would never even consider spending $16,000 for one.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
scott Thomas writes –
“Yes, it’s crazy, but my other option is a QNAP box connected via 10Gb Ethernet that only works when it wants to. Most recently, the authentication that was tethered to our domain was a problem. I could connect to one share, but not the one a needed. IT turned off all authentication and then had to do a permission reset before it would work.
I don’t trust the QNAP, so I’m forced to rely on two 10 year old Ciprico Media Vaults… and now I’m running into issues with 10 year old SFP modules. Diode lasers only last so long.”
Hi Scott –
since I use QNAP’s now on almost every installation, and they are completely reliable, this is what I would like you to try, to show you that they DO work. Move the QNAP near you, move the 10G switch near you. Forget our IT department. Forget your domain – no authentications. Just stop all that nonsense. You are on a closed network. In the QNAP, create a simple shared folder. Click on Users, and enter a user name – NOT TIED to active directory or open directory. Just a simple user name, and assign this user to the shared folder you just created. That’s it.
Now go to work. You tell me how unstable it is now. You tell me if you ever develop permissions problems, or the QNAP dismounts, or anything else. OK – so when you see it work, run some Cat 6 cables on the floor to a couple of other users, to the 10G switch, and put in their user name in the USERS icon in the QNAP GUI, and let them all work off of this – and DO NOT involve your IT department, and do not make the users authenticate to the SERVER. Setup
SIMPLE SHARING – no ties to active or open directory. I bet it works great. And if it doesn’t work great, I will help you FOR FREE to make it work great. You only have ONE problem from what I can see – an IT department that wants to overcomplicate a simple stable system. You already own everything you need for a perfectly working system and not relying on 15 year old Ciprico Fiber 4G hardware.Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
boy, I am going to regret answering this – no matter what, I will be chastised or reprimanded, or this post will be deleted quickly –
but here we go –“we have our projects on two RAID enclosures (each with 4 drives configured as 4x 4TB Raid1). To back up the RAID enclosure I have 4x 4TB ext. harddrives (1 drive for each of the RAID1 setups). But I never know when is best to back these up”
So you are able to make a living with a single drive that is RAID 1 for “backup” , and you have two of these in a single array (4 drives in one enclosure). When you say “but I never know when is best to back these up”. Really – what if the power supply fails ? You lose it ALL. How about ANOTHER RAID ARRAY to clone this. Or how about all four drives at RAID 5, with another identical 4 bay RAID array, that you are running Carbon Copy Cloner on, or Chrono Sync –
oh – I forgot – that costs MONEY, and you can’t afford another 4 bay just for you (and another 4 bay for your other editor). Isn’t there a cheaper way to do this ? When do you back up ? Every day, every night ? Is this time consuming ?
How about hiring someone to do this, or running Chrono Sync or any scheduled backup program to do this for you, to do it when you leave for the day ?.. It’s already a head-ache managing data, and I’m not even shooting 4K or RAW yet.
REPLY – you mean, that it is TIME CONSUMING and you are busy editing, and you and your other editor don’t have the time (or the money) to put all this time into managing data, because you EDIT for a living and all this backup stuff, and archiving, and media management is not billable. And God forbid that you have a drive failure, the meager amount you are charging for your editing will become ZERO (and possibly a law suit) if you LOSE this media.
How should I be organizing these? Should I have all Premiere Pro projects on one drive or folder that is backed up to the cloud (either with CrashPlan or Adobe Cloud)? It’s not a big deal to plug in an external drive once a week to back up (for off-site storage), but how do I manage the drives in a way to know which drives need backing up and which still have data that is already backed up?
REPLY – RAID5, RAID6, LTO Tape, redundant drive arrays. Crash Plan ? Really ? Buy ChronoSync and schedule the backup, and take it home with you (unless you are working from home). (But all this costs money, and requires my time, and I have no time !).
Unfortunately we area always working on multiple projects at a time- not just a single project, so footage (and especially project files) are constantly being updated/added.
REPLY – so you are BUSY with multiple projects – but are you BARELY getting by, because your budgets are SO LOW that you cannot afford someone else to assist you with this, and your budgets are SO LOW that you can’t afford redundant equipment or LTO to BACKUP, and you are exhausted from editing all day (perhaps you are shooting too) – and your budgets are SO LOW so that you can’t afford to do any of the things I am suggesting. Well, WELCOME to the real world. If you have LOW BUDGET CLIENTS that simply won’t pay you (we only have $800 for this project) – then you suffer, and you get screwed, and if you lose the data, then you don’t get paid at all. That kid who got his mom to pay for his Blackmagic camera, and shoot his music video that will become “viral” is not the client that you want.
I guess I’m wondering if there is a software solution, a user-disciplined/organized solution, or, more likely, a combination of the two. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
REPLY – well, you can WORK all night, run asset management software (who is paying for this ? ) like AXLE Video, or even $40 Neofinder, and you can BACKUP your media with Chrono sync ($40 – isn’t there a free version) –
and God forbid, you buy another IDENTICAL RAID ARRAY (your 4 bays) and backup to this – no – we can’t do that – your rent is due, and you have an infection on your finger that you got from banging your finger on the last production shoot that you got $800 for , for both shooting and editing – and you are a nice person – why can’t medical insurance be FREE ?Aah – our lovely industry. Very different from the $800 dollars an hour (before ADO and Chyron) in the linear days of the 1980’s.
Believe me, I appreciate your struggle, but you cannot give your services away. And if that’s the only business you can find, which prevents you from purchasing the right equipment to keep your media safe, then perhaps it’s time to apply for a job somewhere. Because its possible that they will offer MEDICAL INSURANCE BENEFITS, which might be more money than you make all year.
I am an amateur musician, and I go see bar bands play all the time. I am going tonight. And I love them. And I say to my wife “how the F are these guys playing for 4 hours from 10 – 2am, setting up and sound check at 4:00, and at 2am, they have to pack up all the gear and go home – and for all of this, they get $75 – $100 each”. This is rapidly becoming the video business.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
lets say you have a firewire 800 drive, and it does 40 MB/sec. You want to play back an Ultra HD 4K image that you recorded on a Blackmagic camera, or an AJA Ki Pro, or Hyperdeck, or Atoms, and the compression codec was
ProRes4444. So that’s about 141 MB/sec. Guess what – you can’t play it back. It requires too much bandwidth.So you say “ok, I got these SSD drives, and they play back over 200 MB/sec – now what’s the problem”.
Ever hear of multi clip, or multi cam editing. What if you have 6 cameras, and you don’t want to do a low res proxy – you want to edit in original resolution (141 MB/sec per stream). All of a sudden your SSD’s won’t be fast enough.
And if you say “I don’t know what on earth you are talking about – I shoot with a Go Pro, and I do 10 camera multi clip all day long” – well, nice talking to you.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
back in the stone age of standard def video, and analog video switchers, all products that needed to go into the video switch needed to be genlocked to a house black generator (like an AJA GEN10). So you would put your horrible VHS machine into a For A Frame Synchronizer (if it’s a TBC and not a Frame sync, it will do nothing for your VHS machine) – and this would replace the entire sync interval of the unstable VHS playback (same with Sony 3/4″ Umatic tapes).
So now your VHS machine is going into a switcher, but it needs to synchronize with other video sources (like other VTR’s and cameras). You would own a waveform monitor and vectorscope (in those days typically from Tektronix or Leader), and put your black reference signal into those as well. You would expand the Tektronix Waveform monitor to see the sync interval, and switch (or dissolve) between your sources (like the For A) – usually done against the internal black signal or color bars on the switcher. You now turn the H Phase on the For A so that the sync signal stays in one place. If you did not do this, you would get a horizontal shift when you switched or dissolved between sources (like a Camera and the For-A). The SC phase is subcarrier phase. If that was off, you would get a color shift when you switched or dissolved between sources – you would look at the burst signal on the Vectorscope to make sure that when you went from black (your reference) to your For A, the SC would not move (the burst would not move) on the scope. When they matched, there would be no color shift.
Now, for your last control – Video Phase – this adjusted your color phase. So when you lined up your SC burst with the SC phase control, and you played back color bars on your tape (every pro tape had color bars at the head) – you now adjusted the dots of the color bars on the vectorscope so that all the colors lined up in the dots – you use the video phase control to do this.
There were other controls too – video level, black level and chroma level. All adjusted using color bars looking at your scopes, to make the signal correct.
Every editing session was an ordeal – that’s why editors used to get paid a lot of money.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
I have never ever said to keep your media on SSD drives. SSD drives are very small – most people have a lot more than 1TB of media. Almost everyone I work for has multi drive SATA RAID arrays, be it miniSAS, eSATA or Thunderbolt connection, and this is where everyone keeps their media. NOW, if you are rich, and can afford eight 2TB SSD drives in an 8 bay RAID chassis -well, that’s another story – but I do not have one single client that does this. Everyone keeps their media on the SATA drives. The SSD is a wonderful place to set the Cache for your Adobe programs.
Whether you are professional or a student, the last thing you have time for is to constantly be migrating your data from your 500 gig SSD drive back and forth with your SATA drives.Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com