[Buck Wyckoff]

Very good to know!
Thanks.

[Buck Wyckoff]

Thanks. That response helps.

I talked to my Matrox dealer and he assured me nothing in Adobe Pr CS4 would be unavailabe to me just because I was in a Matrox sequence.

He ran Matrox products, but never used the Matrox codec in a Matrox sequence. He didn’t know anything about it. But I’m glad to know you like it.

I’ve calmed down now and will keep it.
Thanks again.
Happy editing!

[Buck Wyckoff]

Tim,
Thanks for the reply.
I’m a Velocity, 3DS MAX, and Combustion user. With this new computer, the Adobe CS4 product line is entirely new to me. I’ve been doing Lynda.com training to get up to speed. I’ve gone through Premier the most and played around a little. I’m 75% through Encoder, but have done nothing as of yet and I’ve done 20% AE training…but done nothing myself yet.

I will leave for a month next week and given my inability to quickly determine various workflows due to my inexperience, I was trying to ascertain quickly whether in an overall sense, this is the route I should have taken…and if necessary, return the MX02 while I’ve only had it for two days.

Thanks again,
Buck Wyckoff
Buckward Digital Services, Inc.

[Buck Wyckoff]

That’s funny!

Of course I meant I could work it out and that there were no insurmountable hardware/software issues.

I am passionate about my work, but rarely kill myself over it.

[Buck Wyckoff]

I/O know. That’s why I don’t get why it isn’t working. But that’s the fun, pain and agony of bringing new hardware & software together. I do not think this combonation of hardware/software has ever been done before. I just hope I am not saddled with something that will just not function.

I’m pretty diligent about logical trouble shooting and when I find the definative culprit, they’ll be hearing from me often.

Hopefully, I’m the culprit, because there is a solution to that problem.

[Buck Wyckoff]

I bought the MX02 mini from a locat dealer yesterday. Had to go to Austin today, but I’m back and will play with it tonight.

The Matrox website says MAX for PC (off a link for the mini)will come out in late Sept 2009 and “further details to come”, but theer are no further details. And delay in this business is common. But the dealer says the CS4 drivers are out there.

AJA website says PC support is coming “soon.”

Anyway, this is good for now. The future holds a killer desktop system with a super-turbo charged GPU card, maybe the V4HD, Axio LE…who knows. For now, I’m good…I/O think.

[Buck Wyckoff]

I’m weak on Photoshop and just learning Premier (Lynda.com training is getting me up to speed), but I thought I’d mention this technique incase Toni is up against a desparate deadline and the other comments aren’t working out. I learned it from Richard Harrington’s book, Photoshop for Non-Linear Editors.

Anyway, his take is that Photoshop has no alpha channel unless you create it. After your graphics/text is created, make a blank layer. I call it “flatten” and have it at the top of my layers. Hide all the layers but the ones you want in the graphic file you are about to create. With the “flatten” layer selected, link the other layers to it (toggle the link chain icon next to the visibility icon). Then hold the ALT (OPT) key and in the layer pallet pulldown, select Merge Linked. It will be greyed out unless you have linked some layers.

Then with CTLR (Command) key held down, select the “flatten” layer and you get the marching ants selection around everything visible (the selection should encompass layer style things like drop shadow as well). Then in the channels pallet you can select the Create New Channel button at the bottom and you will create an alpha channel.

Now if you do a Save As to a tiff, targa (or png I presume) a perfect alpha channel layer is included. Now, tiff and targa saves with the 32-bit option enabled. Photoshop senses that there is an alpha channel and allows you to save a 32-bit file.

After I save it, three undos gets you back to not having anything in the “flatten” layer.

I create all text for an entire project in one Photshop file and by turning things on and off and going through this process, I can save all the individual graphic files with alpha for my NLE.

This method he advocates seems cludgy and laborious, but it works. You’d think something more straight forward, like a PSD file with a transparant background would be better. If you are editing in Premier, it should understand a PSD file and key it properly. I was editing in Velocity and am just moving to Premier, so I just don’t have experience with this.

For things like drop shadow, you need a black background so the transparent shadows key properly. There are other issues with this, but I don’t want to go on too long about his method.

I suspect setting aspect ratio is nice so that graphics that wind up in an NLE with non-square pixels will look correct while you are designing them on a square pixel display (you computer screen). But the file saved (TGA, TIFF, PNG) is just square pixels. The stretching happens on the display of an output monitor in an NTSC format.

The PAR is an aid so that circles you create in 720×480 on a computer screen aren’t ovals viewed in video output, but the file itself doesn’t do pixel stretching. It is irrelevant on the quality of the saved file and the keyed result in the NLE.

[Buck Wyckoff]

That’s a good question and a scary thought. If I can’t monitor through firewire, you’d think I couldn’t print to tape. Then how an I going to archive my projects?

But something doesn’t add up here. I digitized from tape and Windows Movie Maker controlled the Sony M25U through firewire. To do that it must have had bi-directional communication to pull that off.

With my Leitch Velocity system I currently have a 55″ LCD and a Sony broadcast monitor CRT hooked up. I do not feel comfortable without the CRT. I’ve been editing this way (without the LCD) for 11 years. Clients are only looking at things on LCDs anymore and commenly saying the color is off.

At any rate, I have to try other hardware, programs etc… and nail down where the problem is. Just the fact that other people say it works let’s me know it should work.

Thanks.

[Buck Wyckoff]

Brian,
Thanks for the response. I have looked at the MX02 mini and it seems like a great option for laptop work. The PCMIA interface card seems like a good interface option for me….especially if my laptop’s firewire port is questionable for output. I also like their Mpeg I-Frame codec. And another plus is the Matrox MAX feature for accelerated encoding of some formats. They say PC support will come in late Septembor 2009, but there it nothing listed as of yet.

The Blackmagic Design MultiBridge seems like a great product, but it is desktop only.

The MOTU V4HD looks AWESOME!!!! It works with Premier Pro CS4. Not sure if it can aid encoding. My worry about it is I am still not sure my firewire connection is bi-directionally functional and it is a firewire interface. A firewire 800 PCMIA card for my laptop and that device might be really tasty.

But I think I may get the MX02. I’m just getting up to speed with CS4 etc…, and I can get crazy later. I like the workflow you mentioned; two CS4 apps opened full screen on two monitors and a third program output via MX02. Sounds sweet.

[Buck Wyckoff]

Thanks Mark,
I need to learn my scopes as LCD’s are not to be trusted.

As I had mentioned, my firewire output does not work. I’ve contacted Sager about that. Monitoring through the laptop DVI port works great though. Something I picked up elsewhere on this thread.