[Brett Howe]

Some things never seem to change, and brand awareness is still a premium marketing tool. That’s why companies spend so much cash on getting their brand to the forefront of peoples minds.

This has been especially true of the video business during a transition from linear tape editing to non-linear workstations. At the end of the day, time was money, and the non liniear options had to play ball, and play well. Hence, systems like AVID, Media 100 and the like got a foothold, and were acceppted as the “Industry Standard” because they were a viable alternative to tape, and a more creative one.

Fast forward about 20 years, and the landscape has changed dramatically. Thanks to companies like Blackmagic Design, AJA, and Matrox, it’s not about the hardware, it’s about the software, and reliability, and of course cost.

Back to your question. All the other bovines who posted here are right. Yes you may well find work more work at established production facilities with Avid under your belt…for now…but a good editor is a good editor, no matter what he cuts on. As long as it works.

I have cut on AVID, Quantel, Final Cut, Velocity, Vegas and Premiere….but as a studio choice, we went for the Adobe suite. Why. Well it works. The workflow is intuative and flexible, the tools are great and the hardware options are much more flexible.

I don’t think there is a best “tool” for editing, just different tools. The key is to remain flexible.

As for studio’s adopting the ADOBE solution over the others…well I think it is happening more and more. The bottom line advantages of working with the Production Suites will continue to play a major role in the progress of the software into more and more production facilities.

Brett Howe
Creative Director / Producer
Brave Vision Pty Ltd

[Brett Howe]

I’m Glad to hear BM have sorted you out.

I will continue to get some kind of result, as I have had no joy thus far.

I was told to stick with the drivers that work on the card, which doesn’t help me migrating to CS5, matter of fact, it makes my card redundant!

I shall chase BM agin, and see if we can get some closure.

Thanks for the update.

Brett

Brett Howe
Creative Director / Producer
Brave Vision Pty Ltd

[Brett Howe]

Don’t cry Bob, you know you’ll ugrade sooner than you could have thought.

It seems only yesterday I built my new HD edit suite, and now,three years have almost past, and I’ve just done it all again!

I do have USB3 on an X58 board. So bring it on! Practically, I think it’s a great idea. We know the Intensity is great value, but it looks to be even better value if we can move it between machines as required.

More importantly, BM has had quite a time certifying the Intensity for any machine with a PCIe slot, as they all seem to be so different (Hence the NO DELL support). USB3 should simplify matters accross the board. And that can only be a good thing.

As for the very sexy Ultra Studio Pro, again, any investment in hardware that we can feel confident will travel through a couple of machine upgrades is welcome.

Now we just need some AVCIntra presets in the drivers, and native AVCInra support (like the recent DVCPro addition) and we won’t know ourselve’s.

Brett Howe
Creative Director / Producer
Brave Vision Pty Ltd

[Brett Howe]

Hi Adam

The Dell ultra-sharps are a nice monitor to work on, on your desktop, but don’t bother as a preview monitor.

I have 2 as my main monitors, and I wen’t down that path a few months back, while testing some HD workflows, and they just don’t cut it.

A bit of lag, colours are off and the picture was very dissapointing.

I too am looking at my options, SDI HD would be nice, but the bucks are killing me.

Currently we are using some cheap full HD TV’s with HDMI…..to get us through short term….but quite frankly, i’m better off rnning down-convert into my PANASONIC broadcast CRT for colour work.

Brett Howe
Creative Director / Producer
Brave Vision Pty Ltd

[Brett Howe]

Hi

It looks like your CPU isn’t up to the task.

If you wan’t to check what the problem is, right click on the taskbar, and open the task manager, select the performance tab, and leave it open while you try to cut your footage in a blackmagic timeline. If the CPU maxes out, you don’t have enough system system grunt to do what you want.

For HDV playback from premiere pro you need to use a blackmagic sequence. (this is the only way to get BM output) Use the 1080p settings.

THe problem is, the BM native workspace is 1920×1080, and your HDV footage, I believe, is 1440×1080 (anamorphic), therefore, your CPU is being called upon to not only decodee the MPEG 2 stream, run Premiere and Windows,(and all it’s services) but also rescale the footage in real time to playback via the card.

Not ideal, but nobody said HD was going to be easy…or cheap.

There is a work-around though, if you can stand to have your preview in SD while you do your main edit.

Use a BM SD sequence. When importing your footage, have “Scale to Frame size” checked. This should output an SD image onto your preview monitor, and allow you to cut as normal. (The scale to frame size handles things a little more efficiently)

The trick is getting that job into an HD sequence when you have cut the job.

Create a new HD project. Make your footage of the old edit offline. THe easiest way is to rename your Directory. Ensure you have scale to frame size unchecked. Then import your original edit.

Cut and paste it into your new sequence, then re-link the footage.

I suggest you do a small test. In some instances the footage is scaled to SD, then blown up to HD, with artifacts, so get the workflow right first.

It would be a nice feature to be able to turn this function on and off on a clip by clip basis.

Other than that, I would suggest getting yourself a quad core at the very least.

Cheers

Brett

Brett Howe
Creative Director / Producer
Brave Vision Pty Ltd

[Brett Howe]

Hi Matt

Did you end up sorting out your issue?

I’m looking at building a new suite here, and I was looking to use the same motherboard.

It seems there are compatability issues regarding the i7 and X58 chipsets…so I’m keen to see if you have it sorted.

Cheers

Brett

Brett Howe
Creative Director / Producer
Brave Vision Pty Ltd

[Brett Howe]

Thanks Chris

I have contacted BM support, to try to get to the bottom of this, and have had no joy.

Unfortunateley, the Intensity Card is in a Dell machine. So the blanket response was, we don’t support Dell!

I understand the issues with Dell hardware….but…this was a fully functioning, card in this box, until the firmware upgrade. So as you could understand…I’m not entireley happy with the response.

We are a professional production company, with all levels of gear. The Dell/Intensity combo is a low cost option. But I would hazard a guess….at the pricepoint of the intensity…there are many users running the card in all kinds of boxes…including dell.

I guess I’m just perplexed that a PCIe card, should be working to some kind of standard. (If Only it were that simple).

Anyway, we have another Dell box here wit han intensity in it, so I’ll upgrade that one and see if we encounter the same issue.

I’m speccing a new workstation for cutting AVCIntra….I’ll stay well clear of Dell for this one.

Brett Howe
Creative Director / Producer
Brave Vision Pty Ltd

[Brett Howe]

Hi Joerg

We have exactly the same problem here..except on a windows 7 64 bit box.

The older drivers work fine, but a little buggy in Premiere Pro CS4. The answer we thought was to upgrade drivers, and get all those bug fixes the BM guys are always working on.

When we upgrade the drivers and firmware, the board ceases to function. No video output. No Audio. The machine does recognize the card.

If we roll them back..then all functionality returns.

You are not the only one with the problem.

I hope the BM guys are reading this.

It seems to me the firmware has an issue!

Brett Howe
Creative Director / Producer
Brave Vision Pty Ltd

[Brett Howe]

Thanks Noah

I’ve posted in the Premeiere forum already. In the meantime, We’ll beef up a machine here and test it out.

I appreciate your input.

Cheers

Brett

Brett Howe
Creative Director / Producer
Brave Vision Pty Ltd

[Brett Howe]

Hi Noah

Thanks for the quick reply. Maybe I didn’t mention it, we are windows based here. Not a mac in sight….well maybe an really old G4 in a corner somewhere.

We have some quad core machines running CS4 32 bit OS. We are in the process of going to 64 bit, to open up more RAM.

I was hoping for some insight from any PC Premiere CS4 users who had experience with the format.

Just trying to establish if we can…

A./muddle through for a while with the quad cores at 64bit & more RAM

B./Go for a couple of i7 based workstations at 64bit.

C./Chuck the $$ at a beefy Dual CPU XEON to get the benefit of AVC-INTRA.

I don’t like the idea of C…I’d rather have two guys cutting at once on two lower spec boxes, rather than one guy on a killer box. Geez, now I’m sounding like an accountant! Sorry.

Brett Howe
Creative Director / Producer
Brave Vision Pty Ltd