Chris Blair
Forum Replies Created
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I’m the only user on the system and have admin privileges so unfortunately that’s not the problem.
On a total reinstall….been there, done that. No change…same performance.
On codecs, that’s a possibility since Adobe (and Panasonic) forums recommended installing some various codecs for the AF100, but again, no change either way…with the codecs or without.
I’ve read a lot of posts on other forums of others have similar issues…especially Adobe’s forums (even with Matrox and AJA hardware), so I’m not convinced that there aren’t some underlying application and/or hardware driver issues at play here.
It drives me crazy how software and hardware companies keep quiet when there are obviously some compatibility issues with their products.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
I can capture uncompressed 8bit 720p without issue…which I believe clocks in at about 105MB/sec according to Blackmagic Design’s website.
So drive speeds are definitely not the problem. As noted, I can playback long sequences of compressed HD files (1080i and 720p) in a variety of format/codec combinations in Sony Vegas and get real-time previews out of the Decklink to an HD monitor via HDMI.
So that seems to rule out read and write drive speeds as the problem. I’ve also run a third-party Premiere CS 5.5 benchmarking test that is recommended through Adobe’s website and the system gets high marks…although the benchmarking does little to point out any potential bottlenecks or tweaks to improve performance.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Hey Kelly!
We’ve run into the exact same problem and the only real solution we’ve found is to have an SD monitor in the suite along with the HD monitor. We have a broadcast Sony HD monitor in our HD suite and it automatically switches if we feed it an SD source and even shows you onscreen that it’s outputting a 480i image, but because that SD signal is not the native pixel resolution of the display, like yours it looks pretty bad. And this is on an expensive monitor!
The Decklink HD Extreme will do upscaling only on input, and you have to enable from the Decklink Control Panel app….and frankly, the upscaling quality is pretty bad. But as the other poster says I don’t believe you can upscale on output. We’ve also experimented with video scalers from DVDO and Gefen…and while they do a REALLY good job of upscaling SD to HD, deinterlacing and removing the jaggies, they do a poor job with color, often “enhancing” the color to the point that you’re not sure what’s accurate. Some of them also mess with the gamma and black level, which can really screw you up when you’re color correcting footage. Bottom line for us is to have an SD monitor in the suite for SD projects and an HD monitor for HD projects.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Wanted to update this thread for anyone that may have read it. The AF-100 lens cable I bought from Ebay was likely NOT the cause of my power problem on my Fujinon lens, although we still have not found definitively what did cause it. We suspect it was some sort of over voltage from the Anton-Bauer plates’ D-Tap, (which I’ve read is unregulated), meaning it could output as much as 16volts (or more) depending on the brand of battery that’s attached and its charge level. Plus, there was an odd bit of wiring inside the A/B plate when we opened it up.
So we think that even though most electronic devices can take a wide range of voltages before damage can occur, either something shorted coming out of it, or the voltage was too high for the lens controller.
The good news is that you CAN indeed use other similar zoom controllers on your lens. I bought one off E-bay for $50 and it works just fine with the lens. The zoom controllers are actually relatively simple devices with servo motors and platic gears that mate with and turn the zoom and iris knobs. The motors turn continuously when they’re not geared with anything so any similar controller will work as long as the gears line up on the lens, which with similar lenses, they do. of course, there are a ton of wires inside the controller, along with a small circuit board, which I asume regulates voltage, so it’s not something a DIYer could likely fix or rewire.
Anyway…wanted to clarify that the lens cable from Ebay wasn’t the problem, but it’s still important to know your pin-outs on your lens controller to make sure the ones that are available out there will work…as some controllers use different pin-outs depending on the lens and brand.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Didn’t really answer my question there…and to be fair…it wasn’t really a case of MacGyvering the thing.
As I pointed out in the original post…the guy I bought the cable from has sold these to many other users without incident and he himself is using the cable with half a dozen lenses for both real projects and testing. So it’s SUPPOSED to work.
I also emailed Fujinon prior to buying the cable to double check the pin-outs for my lens. So I did as much due diligence as I could. So I don’t know for sure if it was the cable.
It may have been a defective Anton Bauer plate or a bad D-Tap on the battery (from Batteries4Broadcast). About a month ago a D-Tap output on one of our A/B plates fried an LCD monitor. That was an Anton Bauer brand plate from B&H that I took out of service. So it could’ve been the plate or the battery that caused it…or it could’ve just been that LCD monitor’s time to die.
I’m not an engineer or electrician so I don’t really know how to test them to find out.
It’s not that huge a deal as I almost never zoom. It’s jut nice to have it for framing changes.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
To add a little to this discussion.
Are you playing the two encoded files back on the same computer using the same media player? Media players (even the same version) on different computers can make video files look vastly different based on graphic card settings, media player settings etc.) VLC does the best job that we’ve seen at comparing files across computers.
But…provided you’ve done that already….we’ve seen the exact same thing that Todd sees. The ONLY explanation that we’ve come up with (and it’s not scientific) is that Adobe Media Encoder sucks big donkey balls. Not only are FLV files worse looking, but we’ve never been able to get Adobe Media Encoder to output a 16×9 WMV file without screwing up the entire video. It actually moves graphics so they’re misaligned and dissolves have little stutters and hiccups in them.
This…after multiple installs, reinstalls and an HP certified tech completely rebuilding our system using an image file specially designed for setting up a system for video editing with Premiere CS3.
Todd…try this…try making your FLV file from YOUR Premiere CS3 timeline, using the exact same settings as you’re using in Flash Video Encoder. Then compare THAT result to your result out of Flash Encoder. I almost guarantee the one that came out via Premiere will look worse than the one that came out of Flash Video Encoder. That will elminate CS4 as the the culprit and point to Adobe Media Encoder or the Premiere encoding engine as the problem.
That’s the test we did which made me decide to NEVER use the built in export engine in Premiere. It’s horrible. We use Procoder (which is now dated), but it plugs into Premiere so when you export a timeline, it opens Procoder and renders out the encoded file from Premiere’s timeline to Procoder’s compression engine. Those files look very, very good and we never have weird issues from machine to machine.
The ONLY other things it could possibly be is some setting in the On2VP6 codec or a setting in a direct show or FFMPEG setting (if you’ve messed with or installed those). I seem to remember that ON2 installs a control panel app that allows you to tweak settings…but I thought it was for decoding and not encoding. You might check to see. Another thing to try is searching for the On2VP6 codec online:
Here’s one:
https://www.videohelp.com/tools/VP7_Codec
Install is and see if anything changes. It shouldn’t mess anything up as it simply plugs into Windows direct show architecture and Adobe should simply follow those settings when it encodes to a specific codec.
Also…if you’ve installed FFMPEG or FFDshow (or whatever they’re called) go into their settings dialogue and check to see if they’re controlling the ON2VP6 codec.
Those are the only things it could be. But we gave up on Adobe Media Encoder 2 or 3 years ago because of all the wasted time and headaches that came from troubleshooting what should be a simple process.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
By conforming I mean choosing a format, frame rate, aspect ration and interlacing method that matches on all the footage. As Jeff pointed out, Final Cut is only so-so at taking different types of footage and conforming it to a timeline’s specifications (what you set when you start a timeline).
So even if your different footage is on separate timelines….those timelines would need to match your source footage specs….so each timeline would have different specs. When you go out to a DVD, you’re going to be sending your DVD different formats, aspect ratios, frame-rates etc, which is STILL going to create problems upon playback, because I don’t believe you can mix formats within one DVD menu structure. You can have a widescreen menu choice with everything widescreen, or you can have a 4:3 menu choice with all 4:3 material, but I don’t believe you can mix them within the same set of menus (could be wrong on that).
Anyway…as Jeff suggests, your problem could ALSO be that something is messed up in the original digital files….most likely field order. But if it looks ok playing back in your timeline, then that’s less likely the problem. So identifying what the problem is first is important.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
dorit grunberger wote:
1. I received QT .movs from a camera shot at 16:9, DV/DVCPRO-NTSC, lower field dominance.
2. For newer material, I used our Panasonic DVX100A, shot in 24p advanced (progressive).
3. For newest material shot with 2 cameras (and because I didn’t pay enough attention, rental place gave me a DVX100 that couldn’t do 24 at all), was shot as 4:3, DV/DVCPRO-NTSC, lower field dominance.I think the above mish-mash of formats, aspect ratios and frame-rates is likely what’s causing your issue. As I mentioned before, the only way we’ve ever had success fixing final output problems is by grading the whole project and making all the shots match in terms of pixel aspect, frame-rate and interlacing. You’ve got 60i (interlaced) material at 16:9, 60i (interlaced) at 4:3 and 24P (with no pulldown) at whatever aspect you shot it at. So when you go to export, if you pick progressive, you’re interlaced material is probably going to look “stroby.” If you pick interlaced, your progressive material is going to look bad. If you pick 29.97fps, your 24P stuff is likely going to look odd etc.
Sure..Final Cut can conform your material for you in the timeline, but it’s an editing app, not a high-end format conversion program. The best method to convert footage at high quality is with compositing and color grading programs. So my advice is still figure out which format, size, frame rate is used the most, and shot by shot…conform everything else to that if at all possible.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
You could upload a snippet right here on the cow and actually embed it into your post I believe. That would be easiest as others on the list could view it and help with feedback.
However, if your project is a mix of different aspect ratios and frame rates, that’s likely your problem. When we are forced to use mixed footage, we typically decide which format is used the most, then convert all the other clips to that format, aspect ratio, interlacing and frame rate. Yes…it’s a pain, but it’s the only way to eliminate artifacting when you export for final delivery. It’s no different than color correcting or grading a project clip by clip, which we often do on projects with decent budgets.
So if you have clips in your timeline shot at 30p, and clips shot at 24P with pulldown and clips shot at native 24P (no pulldown), and clips shot interlaced, you end up relying on Final Cut for conforming all the clips. It may or may not do a good job, depending on your original footage, your timeline settings and how you interpret the footage.
If there are only a few offending clips, you could always convert just those clips to match (frame rate, interlacing, aspect) your other footage.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
The only way you’re going to make use of old, mismatched equipment in a shared video editing environment is if you’re editing standard def DV based projects. Since it’s only about 3.5MB/sec per stream, if you setup a system that’s capable of 30-40MB/sec of sustained throughput, it will probably work ok.
Anything else just flat out isn’t going to work in any sort of reliable, seamless way when it comes to video….especially anything HD.
There are half a dozen affordable, turn-key solutions out there that don’t require third-party SAN management software or any sort of specialized setup. Old drives, ethernet switches, HBAs etc…. regardless of how fast you think they are, are likely not going to give you the throughput needed to work reliably.
But you can certainly try! A better route would be to use that equipment to build a RAID 1 or 6 based backup system (if the drives are only a couple years old). If the drives are 3 years old or older, you’re asking for trouble using them for anything critical, unless you have redundant backup in place (either a version of RAID that mirrors or mutliple backup targets).
That’s just my $.02.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog