[Carsten Orlt]

PS don’t let the fact that it is a beta version scare you. It works flawlessly no matter what software you use it with.

[Carsten Orlt]

Little known software called Spark can create shortcuts for menus in any application.
And it’s free and has a super small footprint.
https://www.shadowlab.org/Software/spark.php

Carsten

[Carsten Orlt]

You’re very welcome!

Boards like this made it possible for me in the first place to make an informed decision so only fair to pay it back 🙂

Cheers

[Carsten Orlt]

You’re very welcome!

Boards like this made it possible for me in the first place to make an informed decision so only fair to pay it back 🙂

Cheers

[Carsten Orlt]

Jason

I thought maybe I just tell you how I set myself up as we’re exactly like you: a couple doing their own docu work.

I wanted to have a long term archive solution which makes me independent from any source footage requirements e.g. hiring different VTR’s for pre tapeless footage we have. I also wanted a system where I do have preview clips of all our footage over the years online so I can look at everything without! restoring it from a backup system.

I also will when I have the time recapture all footage from the last 10 years so we end up with a quasi everything online situation. One way to do this is of course get enough hard drives. But they should be raid-1 so everything costs double. And even than I couldn’t find any reference (and believe me I looked everywhere) that gave a guarantee on long term reliability of drives.

So only way is LTO unfortunately! and I’m glad we made the investment!

I bought a HP 1840 SAS LTO4 drive and a Atto H380 card for my MacPro. I also got BRU PE archival software. The reason I didn’t get the Cache-A was that this would have been way more expensive than the 1840 and as I only have to manage one client (us) I figured a little manual labour is worth the saving.
I also got a Network Attached Storage box (I have a Netgear box but get anything you like (if you like what I say next of course))

And here is how I set it up now:
If its tape based: capture in ProRes – Archive via BRU PE to LTO
Import clips into CatDV – describe and build preview clips in H264 640×360 to NAS (network drive)
import clips via XML into FCP for editing.
If its tapeless: Archive the original files via BRU PE to LTO
Convert everything to ProRes and archive those files as well via BRU PE
rest as above (I do not log the original tapeless clips as all of them have some form of compression/trickiness about them. Why bother installing endless extensions or extra software when all is so much easier if I have one editing/mastering format: ProRes)

Here is what I think are the benefits:
Lowest setup cost for getting best long term archival solution, namely LTO4

Having the preview files on NAS gives me the flexibility to excess the material in the future from many computers at once or easily transport the whole preview archive to a different location.

Yes I do not have the luxury to retrieve my online footage from within CatDV but it’s really easy as I can either create a custom field which tells me which cartridge a given clip is on or (as I do) I code my clip names in a way that it’ll tell me project and tape name which I only have to look up in the list I have for the LTO archive. Once the clip is restored via BRU PE to a hard drive I can easily tell CatDV where to look for it and everything is back online.

Another benefit for having an LTO drive is that you only need very cheap Raid-0 setups as you don’t have to worry about hard drive failures as everything is backup on the most secure system. I buy Raid-0 boxes for AUD$300 and naked eSata drives and build 6TB Raid-0 boxes for about AUD$2000. Again saves a lot of money long term!

Cartridges for LTO are about AUD$80 for 800GB so pretty close to hard drive prices BUT so much more reliable.

I do convert everything to ProRes because its the one codec I can use from start to finish. No offline-online nightmare. And because I pay little money for my editing Raid-0 drives I have enough to have about 100 hours of ProRes 1080i50 footage online. Enough for a film at a time. And if I would need more its cheap.

CatDV was crucial in this mix as it allows me a much more sophisticated way to describe and preview my footage. And the preview clip handling is something FCP doesn’t do. Also CatDV does so many more things that it’s really a bargain!! even if you never archive anything 🙂

Hope this will give you some food for thoughts 🙂
Cheers
Carsten

Carsten

[Carsten Orlt]

Yep not possible right now 🙂

John – what I was trying was actually not to lengthen the media (this being impossible of course) but to adjust the In2 and out2 selection of any given clip by a fixed amount. If lets say I would like to adjust the in2 by -50 frames and the media only has 30 frames in front of the current in2 then it should just adjust to the max amount possible (same of course for out2). Maybe a warning message in such a case could be an option to tick but would not a deal breaker if it does it without further notice.

Bryson – even better if the underlying functionality could help solve other cases too. Might get a chance to get implemented in the future 🙂

Cheers guys

[Carsten Orlt]

the jobs mentioned weren’t posted recently but in Jan 2009. Go and search yourself…

so much of being an ‘insider’

[Carsten Orlt]

the difference in the sequence setting relates to any effects, speed changes or transitions you apply.
in a psf sequence they will be rendered as interlaced. in progressive they will be rendered as full frames.

capture doesn’t really make a difference as you can set the field dominance of a psf clip to none which makes it progressive.

Carsten

[Carsten Orlt]

Both Michael and Jeremy are right of course but to simplify the answer:

HD frame sizes are the same regardless of 50 or 60 Hz countries: 1280x 720 (called 720) OR 1920×1080 (called 1080)

Broadcast: 720 is always progressive and 1080 is always interlaced regardless of 50 or 60 Hz countries.

So the only difference between HD formats are the frame rates which are used in 50 or 60 Hz countries.

60 Hz countries can have 24 (Norm = 23.976) or 30 (Norm = 29.97). Sometimes (as in your case) the field rate (i in the format name) is listed which is 59.94

50 Hz countries only use 25. Sometimes the field rate (i in the format name) is listed which is 50.

So you only have to convert the frame rate which I have had quite successfully done in compressor. Just choose a HD codec and set the frame rate to 25 (frame control=on, rate conversion to good or if you have time to better).
Because you’re not changing frame sizes I would definitely try this first before you’re going the expensive way via a Terranex.

Hope that helps
Carsten

[Carsten Orlt]

Happened to me again today.

Was wondering: I get always the import notice that my clips (after being captured in FCP) have duration discrepancies = video media exceeds movie duration.

Also: Had a clip yesterday where I wanted to add a TC track (got this as an offline file on DVD-Ram) and got the same (java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException) message?

Just some observations – no idea if they are relevant?

Carsten