Chad Brewer
Forum Replies Created
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I’ve got it locked down here.
Mark, I especially hope you read this because don’t give up on frame accuracy with your upcoming Snow Leopard and Kona stations.
Final Cut X and Lion? I don’t care at this point. I’ve found what works now and won’t touch anything new until it is proven to work without me having to be hospitalized over it.
AJA was more than helpful in all of this. Kudos to that entire company for their support! They did a lot of tests on their end based on my specific request. I already knew, but what a top-notch company they are.
Chad Brewer
Senior Broadcast Videotape Operator
TeleVersions, LLC – Chicago -
I may have finally solved the problem…I will give this many, many days of further testing to make sure. Keep your fingers crossed.
Chad Brewer
Senior Broadcast Videotape Operator
TeleVersions, LLC – Chicago -
Happy new year as well Rafael!
Chad Brewer
Senior Broadcast Videotape Operator
TeleVersions, LLC – Chicago -
I was just joking because Rafael called Abraham Adam. 🙂
Chad Brewer
Senior Broadcast Videotape Operator
TeleVersions, LLC – Chicago -
Paging Adam Chaffin…Come in Adam Chaffin.
Are you out there?
🙂Chad Brewer
Senior Broadcast Videotape Operator
TeleVersions, LLC – Chicago -
Mark, Joakim,
Everything was working rock solid for four days under the new configuration…I could perform the same edit 10 times or more in a row with 100% frame accuracy. The fifth day? Nope.
I’m talking directly with AJA about this now, but am going to start putting heavy testing in on our Blackmagic cards to see what I can rule out…
Seriously, four days straight and everything was fine. Changed absolutely NOTHING and then out of nowhere it’s back. I’m freakin’ back to being stumped and hoping it’s an FCP problem. I just don’t accept this for whatever reason the problem is. If it is FCP, I would wish they put the same effort into device control protocol as they do to catering to DSLR video formats.
Chad Brewer
Senior Broadcast Videotape Operator
TeleVersions, LLC – Chicago -
Hey Joakim…I’m glad you followed on this old post..I’m glad Mark found it too…
I’m going to keep a very close eye on this…In my opinion, there should be no reason that something will just go from being frame accurate to not without changing anything regarding software/hardware…Are you sure you didn’t just change one little thing? Even an auto update on anything? I guess that even being on KONA 8.1, etc. might make for a bad mix..I bet you didn’t, I just want this issue to go away…
I will post all my findings, good or bad.
Chad Brewer
Senior Broadcast Videotape Operator
TeleVersions, LLC – Chicago -
Hey Mark,
Over the past few years, I’ve read a lot here about this problem and was very glad it had never happened to me. Until late last week, when of course, time was of the essence to deliver to a major network who I knew would not accept anything unless it was 100% frame accurate. Our other edit rooms were tied up. I knew that even 1 frame off was not going to cut it. Spending much of the day messing around with the device control offsets which to me are less than accurate because you can be two frames late, offset for the two frames, and then be one frame early!, I started to share yours and others insanity over this. I couldn’t fix the problem no matter what I tried and had to result to guerilla video warfare tactics to get the masters done to ship that night. By the end of the day, I had noticeably more gray hair.
I still had this edit suite on fully updated Leopard because we got the MacPro right around the Snow Leopard drop and I didn’t want to change anything as it was working fine for the last year and a half, or so I thought up until a certain point. This 1.5 year old MacPro started on FCP 7.0 and stayed there. Not updating that was probably a mistake on my part, but anyway…It was also on Kona 7.5 drivers, fully up to date…I tried going up to the 8.0 drivers and that didn’t fix it either.
I was later able to move the entire project to a 3 year old MacPro to see what was going on, but one that was running Snow Leopard, FCP 7.03 and the Kona 8 drivers. Editing to SRW-5500’s, HDW-1800’s, DVW-A500’s, everything 100% frame accurate. And on the same exact project. So I looked at everything that was different between the two.
First, I went back to the newer edit suite and got FCP up to 7.03. Still not editing frame accurate.
Second, I took the Kona drivers back down to 7.5 where they had worked before, that didn’t work. I got them back up to 8.0 and then decided in all of this mix, the only major discrepancy that could be causing a muck in all of this was the OS. Once the new suite was up to Snow Leopard, it was not until it reached 10.6.4 or above (now 10.6.7) that I got back my 100% frame accurate editing to tape.
Looking back at the madness this situation and partially myself, have put myself through, I guess I was naive to think that the hardware drivers and the pro app updates alone could fix this. After something working just fine for so long, I just didn’t think upgrading the OS would be part of the kicker. It’s not like a fully updated Leopard MacPro is subpar. I already knew that FCP, the KONA drivers, and the OS are all in an elaborate dance together where even the slightest version discrepancies can lead to this sort of madness, but I just hadn’t had the pleasure yet of the “it’s worked fine for 5,000 layoffs and now it doesn’t.”
As of “right now,” FCP 7.03, KONA 8.0, and OSX 10.6.4-7 are a recipe for 100% frame accuracy and life is back to good…
I thought I’d post this to share what solved this problem for me..
Chad Brewer
Senior Broadcast Videotape Operator
TeleVersions, LLC – Chicago -
Vanessa,
We have Teranex platforms across the different models…If you can tell me what model you have I can assist. VITC is handled differently between the different models and you need VERY specific settings depending on which Teranex you have as well as how your Digital Betacam deck is set and how you have things routed…
I have a lot of experience with this and it won’t be easy to explain on the forum, but if you still need help, reply here with your email and I can help you…
Chad Brewer
Senior Broadcast Videotape Operator
TeleVersions, LLC – Chicago -
Hey Chad, (I’ve never said that to anyone except myself :))
I’m assuming the tapes you’re digitizing don’t have a gazillion timecode breaks which would affect the stream via firewire. If they do, then that is probably the issue.
My shot in the dark is that if you use your camera for playback this frequently, you could have dirty video heads that are contributing to compromised playback in which case you’ll get stream interruptions via firewire that result in dropped frames…
You could try running a DVCPRO cleaning tape in your camera and see if that helps…
Just a guess…
Chad Brewer
Senior Broadcast Videotape Operator
TeleVersions, LLC – Chicago