Boyce Johnson
Forum Replies Created
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It can work like that. If you want full-on fibre channel connectivity on a workstation it needs to have MetaSan installed. I don’t use MetaLan, but my understanding is that it allows you to attach a workstation to the SAN via ethernet with higher speeds and greater ease of use than a standard network connection.
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I’m currently using MetaSan for a small SAN using a 7TB Promise VTrak M500f for storage, QLogic switch, and QLogic HBAs. It works great. The only problem I had setting it up had to do with formatting the storage with WinXP. (Since the volume was larger than 2TB, a setting had to be changed.) Once that was straightened out, the MetaSan software installed easily and has performed flawlessly.
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Trango has 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz FM systems in the $1500 to $3000 range. I’ve seen these systems for rent, as well.
https://www.trangobroadband.com/products/analog_video_products.shtml
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I recently installed a Playbox system.
We’ll be going online with it in the next couple of weeks. I built it in February and we’ve been testing offline since. It works great and tech support has been excellent. We purchased the software only and built a rack mounted dual Xeon PC to their specs. They also sell turnkey systems.
We’ve been using a Matco 204b automation system with a dozen or so VTRs, various live feeds, and a Matco MA-600 server. We’re switching to the Playbox because we’d rather play out DV25 files as they’re more useful to us than the muxed MPEG2 files used by the Matco. Matco systems are pretty affordable and may work for you. We’re switching to the Playbox for a couple of reasons. First, we’re going to play out DV25 files rather than the muxed MPEG2s required by the Matco system. The files are more useful to us in other applications and we can kick them out of our FCP edit systems more quickly. Also, because the Matco system is a turnkey system, upgrades or repairs would have to happen at their shop in California. With the Playbox system, we can perform upgrades in-house and if a component fails I can replace it with an off-the-shelf part.
Our system is attached to a SAN (using Tiger Technologies MetaSan), but you could probably get by with locally attached storage if you don’t need fast connections to edit suites, encoding systems, etc. The system controls a Kramer matrix switcher and two VTRs (for emergencies).
I don’t know if this would work for you. I’m at a government station and we’re also in that gap between access channels and broadcast. These guys provided a great solution for us.
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Electronic Press Kit.
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I’ve got a Beck SCP-10 RS-422 patch bay. It uses RJ45 connectors. It takes up 2 RU and it works well. I’ve also got a Beck SCR-4×8 RS-422 router. It only occupies 1 RU and it’s great. I’ve also used inexpensive switches from TecNec (Markertek).
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We recently installed the same PlayBox system. Our old server was a Matco MA600 that played MPEG2s. We intend to use DV files with the new server for a number of reasons. First of all, we’ve found MPEG2 to be a huge pain in the butt. Some players and/or servers will only play files encoded with certain software or hardware, using certain parameters. Producing an MPEG2 that works in all applications has proven to be impossible. Also, the MPEG2 files aren’t particularily useful for anything other than playing out from the server. We edit with Final Cut Pro so we can’t just dump ’em back into a timeline.
Even though it’s lossy, DV is the better choice for us. We can quickly and easily dump it out of FCP. (Unless you have an older version of PlayBox, it should be able to play Quicktime .mov files as well as AVIs.) Those files also play back in other media players around the shop, and the files can be dropped into FCP timelines for editing or imported as assets into DVD Studio Pro for DVD authoring.
It depends on what editing software, DVD authoring software, and other media players/servers you have at your facility. We found it impossible to produce an MPEG2 file that would work everywhere we wanted it to. DV files are much more useful to us.
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How good are the auto mixers these days? We’ve got an old one in a meeting room but we had to disable the auto-mix setting as it sounded terrible. Beginnings and endings of phrases were often cut off and things like paper rustling would often cause mic channels to open. It’s not all the mixer’s fault, of course. When the person talking is leaning back in a chair so that his or her mouth is 5 feet away from a 57 and you’ve got papers rustling, laptop keys clacking, and projector fans humming in closer proximity to other 57s I don’t think there’s an auto mixer in the world that can handle it properly.
On a related note, we’re considering a feedback eliminator. How well do they work in a multi-mic meeting room PA system? Are there any particular manufacturers/models that anyone would recommend?
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Yeah, I know that other manufacturers use 26-pin cables. That’s why, when we ordered the second cable, we made it clear that we needed a cable that would work with a Sony UVW-100. We were assured that this was the right cable. I guess what I’m getting at is this; assuming that I have the correct cable, are there any menu settings, etc. that I have to be aware of, or will the UVW-100 send component video out the Y, R-Y, and B-Y pins on the 26-pin connector by default?
Does anyone know the pinout of the 26-pin connector on the UVW-100? It’s not in the manual, and Googling hasn’t produced any useful results. At the very least, does anyone know which pins carry Y, R-Y, and B-Y?
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What’s the difference between that cable and the two that I’ve tried from Markertek?