[Brian Cutts]

Thanks for the response.

You’re right about it correctly being referred to as 25i since that’s the frame rate. I have similar issues with people who still refer to PAL & NTSC in the component digital world – and even with HD!

So from what you’re saying, the de-interlacer in a modern TV will be fine and it’s just an issue with future post prod?

I guess the ideal situation would be if you could edit in a 25 interlaced frame timeline with the even numbered frames of the source footage being treated as a 2nd field. I’ve noticed that this is how some EVS technology treats the format.

I’ll look into the idea of doing the interlaced export directly from the timeline rather than through an external process and see if it handles it correctly.

[Brian Cutts]

One idea we are considering is to use MacBooks running Windows. Does this give us access to Thunderbolt still?

You might think it strange to use MacBooks and then not use OSX but there are various technical reasons why OSX will not integrate into the rest of our workflows and technologies without some major changes which I would like to avoid.

[Brian Cutts]

Thanks for the info. The laptops will have 16GB RAM and will have a qualified Nvidia card with a Mercury compatible GPU so it looks like we can save on the additional hardware interface by using the on-board HDMI.

[Brian Cutts]

Good idea… I’ll email them in the morning.

[Brian Cutts]

OK Doug understood.

What we were trying to do is just have a simple monitoring solution for these Picture Ready capture stations with a direct connection to a pair of speakers and using the Kona control panel to select which of the incoming embedded pairs to monitor.

Given that the control panel has a monitoring option which appeared to offer this function we thought we had a solution.

From your response it looks we’re going to have to use an external de-embedder for the monitoring with a selectable analogue monitoring output (there’s no space on the desk for a mixer). Next problem – we’re in South Africa for the World Cup so sourcing additional kit will be ‘interesting’.

Thanks for the help.

Brian

[Brian Cutts]

Thanks Bob, I had a feeling that they would probably be a bit of a compromise given the fact that they are significantly cheaper than the JVCs but you know sometimes there are the occasional ‘bargains’ out there.

Interesting to hear that you’re not keen on the Sony monitors. What is it that you’re not happy with?

Brian

[Brian Cutts]

You’ll probably find that Media Composer 7.2 software will install and run under those dongles. If you use the MC1000 dongle it will be a Media Composer. If you use the Xpress dongle it will run (using the same installed software) as an Xpress system which is a cut down Media Composer.

[Brian Cutts]

I’ve also captured the footage exhibiting the stutter back to FCP, clipped the ‘offending’ sections and created an export – all using the same codec as the original. The file is around 17 seconds long and about 250MB. I can upload it to my personal .mac site if it would help you in seeing the problem first hand.

Brian

[Brian Cutts]

Bob,

Excellent idea. That’s exactly what I’ve done and it does actually go BACK a frame!! In fact on one instance it went back a frame and then missed out a frame before going on to the next frame.

So I guess that blows the whole system bandwidth theory right out of the window?

Brian

[Brian Cutts]

Hi Guys,

Well the problem has started again… arggg!

I’ve checked the FCP preferences and report dropped frames is turned on for ETT & PTV. I’ve disabled the Airport & Bluetooth modules as well as anything else I can think of. There are no other apps running and nothing is set to run under user login.

Fully rendering the sequence (both video and audio) does not fix the problem but the export/import does seem to as far as I can tell. The export also plays fine under AJATV.

I’ve tried swapping the MacBook Pro out for another unit (of higher spec) and the problem remained when using that unit so it looks to be related to the 3rd party hardware.

As a reminder, we are using the AJA IO box with the latest software drivers & firmware connected to the onboard FireWire 800 port, a G-RAID 2 2TB drive connected via a FireWire 800 Express34 card. This card is a Dynex DX-ECFW 800 card. I’m wondering if maybe this is the root cause of the problem. I’ve been reading up on the G-RAID site and they only ‘qualify’ their own FW800 Express34 card.

I also see that the G-RAID 2 uses the Oxford 924 FireWire chipset. I know from my Avid experience with Adrenaline that connecting FireWire devices which use different chipsets can result in some ‘interesting’ issues so is replacing the Express34 card a reasonable course to take? G-Technology don’t seem to supply their own one now as far as I can see and they don’t seem to recommend any by 3rd party manufacturers… do you guys have any recommendation?

Brian