[Bruce Colgate]

Hi Bob!

Thanks for that. Will do.

Hope you’re doing well.

– Bruce Colgate

[Bruce Colgate]

To me, the dissolves look “wrong” and inconsistent.

First, a dissolve should look the same whether it is in the primary storyline, or dissolved to a connected clip – there should be no difference, and yet there is, clearly, and numerically.

When I describe it to others, I describe it as like a “non-additive mix”, or NAM. Essentially the incoming highlights in darks come through in a nonlinear fashion and different from the transition in the highlights. In some ways, it has the feeling of a key, or a compositing mode.

The sensibility of the transition is different, and not necessarily better.

Anyone who wants the test images and results can ask off-list if desired.

– Bruce Colgate

[Bruce Colgate]

Based on what you’ve said, I agree that the BMD ATEM TVS is not the product for your application. It seems you’d want a box that it straightforward and can take a beating – something with knobs and buttons that is easily understood. Though I’ve never used the HMX100 HD unit, I’ve never been unhappy with any of the Panny switchers.

– Bruce Colgate

[Bruce Colgate]

I can certainly echo Dan’s experience. Except for a very few configuration instances, it seems the integration between PR6 and BMD is modest at best, and not at all helpful to making PR6 into FCP8. PR6 has a lot of features going for it, but video display with BMD doesn’t seem to be one of them.

Interestingly, BMD and AE6 works beautifully – just beautifully. If we could get that in PR6…

Thanks,

– Bruce Colgate

[Bruce Colgate]

Hi VP,

It would seem that the safe money is to limit the HDMI connection to 15′. We’ve tested with various different builds of cable, and have also tested passive, active and externally powered active extenders. All have fallen short of what I would define as good, solid connectivity.

For us, everything now is SDI for the BMD TVS, even though the glue now costs more than the switcher itself, though, these days, it is increasingly common for what used to be “big ticket” items to cost less than the gear around it to make it work. FCP needed much more than $1K of gear to make it work properly. Most of our HD cameras cost less than the Sachtler Video 25-II tripod some of them sit on, and some of the cameras are worth less than the lenses we put on the front of said cameras.

Still, we should all send a thank you basket to Grant Petty for making these cool tools inexpensive enough for the common man to own.

– Bruce Colgate

[Bruce Colgate]

If I had to guess, and that seems to be as good a method as we have here so far, it would appear that the “sharpness” of the transition, or slew, is what the TVS is most interested in. Obviously, this is largely due to the capacitance of the cables in question – the lower the capacitance, the sharper the transition from off to on, or on to off. Evidently the TVS is very discriminating in this regard, and has little tolerance for gradual transitions. The TVS may also get confused if there is significant crosstalk – again, a guess.

Knowing this now, my only wish is that the TVS had been built with the SDI connections 1-4, and the HDMI connections as 3-6. Not a big deal. Have already spent the $900 or so in BMD converters for HDMI to HD-SDI connections. Still a wonderful product for the $$.

– Bruce Colgate

[Bruce Colgate]

Hey Bob!

Yeah, HD-SDI is the way to go, of course, but I had hoped for native HDMI transmission a *bit* longer than 15′, particularly when other equipment don’t seem to be as limited.

That said, the ATEM TV Studio is still one heck of a deal. Will be using it Sunday for a commercial shoot, Tuesday for an investor’s meeting, and Wednesday for a webcast. Will probably have it paid off by the end of the month.

Thanks again Bob!

– Bruce Colgate

[Bruce Colgate]

We got ours today from B&H. We powered up with no inputs attached. After connecting one HDMI from an HMC-150, nothing happened, but within a few seconds, it recognized the signal. I don’t know if it was because of its first birthday, but it seems quite fine. We haven’t fully tested all the capabilities, but this is an amazing piece of kit for only $1000. Even if it “only” switched, and didn’t have H.264 encoding, or keyers, or media sources, or a multi viewer, this would be an unbelievable deal.

– Bruce Colgate

[Bruce Colgate]

Thanks Jason!

Posts like this are terribly helpful to the community. It is surprising how often a bad power supply can bring production to its knees.

Thanks again!!

– Bruce Colgate

[Bruce Colgate]

I can tell you where we are in this.

On this older Mac Pro (a 2,1 model), we have the 206 in the DX enclosure as sold by VideoGuys. We’re using CS5 just now. It is connected through a D-Link USB 2.0 hub.

CS5 (and the OS – 10.6.8, IIRC) recognize the drive.

On this most recent project, we compiled the Blu-ray project (20GB) to an ISO file first, and then, when complete, burned the ISO to the shiny disc using Encore; we didn’t close the project between operations, though I’m sure it would have been fine if we had.

The resulting master plays fine, and does duplicate properly in Microboards equipment.

By way of suggestion to your problem Erik, is the 206 connected directly to the CPU, or is there a hub involved? A long shot, but, it has happend to me that a hub has corrupted *some* data on the way through. It was a very soft error, only happened sometimes, and only with some equipment. Replacing the hub, or connecting directly, resolved the issue. YMMV, but I hope it helps.

Best,

– Bruce Colgate