Chris Blair
Forum Replies Created
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I understand what you guys are doing. You’re just using the simple connector adaptors.
The main issue we have is producers tie up an edit suite to view and transcribe hours of interviews. Adding deck control to the other edit suites using the simple adaptors doesn’t solve that. They still will tie up an edit suite.
Our goal is to setup a workstation for them to control any of our 4 broadcast decks and be able to see time code, video and hear audio. Our RS422 routers and switches are maxxed out. I didn’t want to spend several hundred dollars more on another RS422 router. Plus I already have the 4-port serial to ethernet device server.
I’m also trying to avoid running more cable in what are already maxxed out cable runs. I can barely fit the cables we have through the existing cutouts and runs we installed 6 years ago.
The benefit to what I’m trying to do is you’d be able to connect 4, 6, 8 or more decks to one or two multi-port serial device controllers, then connect one cable from it to your ethernet and you’re done. All deck control would be selected via virtual com ports. So if you’re on an edit station (or any computer on the network for that matter), you’d change your NLE or deck control app to the com port assigned to a particular deck and you’re instantly controlling it. For frame accuracy you’d still need reference signals, but that would likely already be run. If all your decks are in one room, this further simplifies cabling, since you just need short RS422 cables run into the serial to ethernet adaptor box, then connect that to an ethernet wall port.
Maybe that makes more sense. Yes your way is simpler. But it requires running a lot more cable, it requires me to spend several hundred more dollars on a router, not to mention money on the adaptors, ethernet cabling runs etc….and the time to install it all. I don’t mind trying to find new ways to do something and this is something that companies like Harris and others have already designed into their high-end routing solutions using EXACTLY the same serial to ethernet device server that I’m using. So I know it can work. It’s just a matter of getting the correct cables and software configuraion.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Ah…I see. Our problem was having to make long runs of RS422 cable, which has limits on length from what I’ve been told and read (typically 50′ I was told). So we wanted to bypass that by using the RS422 to ethernet. It seemed a no brainer to put the decks onto our network to be able to control them that way.
Harris and another company have video routing based products that have the RS422 to ethernet setup that’s similar to what we’re wanting to do, so I know it’s possible. I wish I could find the the product model as reference.
I also talked to Panasonic reps about it and when I explained it they said there’s no reason it can’t be done (they just didn’t know of anyone doing it).
The software with this adaptor (Sena PS110) creates virtual serial ports based on the ethernet connections. The problem we’re having is getting the deck’s to respond to the commands being sent from the computer. The decks get the commands (there’s a utility to check what’s being sent back and forth), they just don’t respond back correctly. The reseller (Axxeon) thinks it’s a pin issue on the cables (which they supply)…so that’s why this thread caught my eye.
So I guess Bob’s doing it the same way you are??
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
You’re welcome. I think you meant the opposite. That codecs can affect programs…which they definitely can. Odd that it fixed itself. We’ve had codec insallations break other codecs and cause all sorts of weird things to happen in a program. There are literally thousands of codecs out there…all with numerous versions. Not all are well written. In fact, I’d say from my experience that many are poorly written. That’s why we only install codecs as we need them.
Case in point. We have one Blackmagic Decklink Extreme based editing system, and 4 Harris Velocity based editing systems. In order to read the blackmagic based AVI files on the Velocity NLE systems, we had to install the Blackmagic software codec. Problem was, it made the Harris based AVI wrapper stop working. In fact, the Blackmagic codecs caused several AVI based codecs to stop working across mutliple systems, including some AVID and Matrox based ones. We had to uninstall it. Queries to Blackmagic basically were ignored.
Posts on Creative Cow found several other Blackmagic users having similar issues with their drivers and codecs. This is a pretty well-established mature company with mature products. But we’ve found their software to be a nightmare if you want it to work with other systems. If all you have it Blackmagic based systems it’s less of a problem.
So it’s not just obscure codecs and “all-in-one” codec packs that can cause issues, even established ones can wreak havoc to your system.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Hey guys…I looked into doing this in our facility about 18 months ago and people told me I was crazy. That you couldn’t do it. Something about latency issues. Well me being me I didn’t listen and I bought a RS422 to ethernet adaptor. I’ve been able to get it to see the video decks but have never been able to get deck control within our editing apps or our logging utilities.
I haven’t spent a great deal of time messing with it and still think I could get it working, but the RS422 to ethernet adaptor I bought has some pretty confusing configuration instructions and software utilities. The company I bought it from was nice and wanted to help but were clueless when it came to RS422 for broadcast. I thought RS422 was the same regardless. They claim broadcast video decks use different protocols than say robotic manufacturing equipment, which is where their device is mostly used.
Can you tell me what brand/model you guys use?
My goal was to hook 4 broadcast decks to a 4 port 422 to ethernet adaptor. Then, each edit suite could call up deck control via the virtual serial connections that their software setup. Not to mention ANY computer in our facility could theoretically grab deck control and log footage (we have a logging utility with our VelocityQ NLE that will run standalone). I even bought an 8×8 router to route video to 8 different PCs if needed so we could log anywhere. We do lots of videos with long interviews and it takes hours to log and transcribe prior to an edit so that’s the reason I wanted it.
Everybody on every forum I posted told me I was nuts. Couldn’t be done. Well obviously you guys are doing it! Or am I reading this incorrectly? I know Harris has it built into one of their advanced broadcast systems but I figured it was proprietary.
Any suggestions here are appreciated.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Mark Raudonis: While I appreciate your skepticism and conservative approach to the “cloud”, I think your resistance is futile.
I don’t think I said that I was resisting it. I noted that we have customers that have resisted. We’ve pushed for it when it’s an appropriate solution.
Tim Wilson: they all offer sync with desktops – and my experience was that, after I loaded music from desktop on to my phone, ALL the rest of the sync was from the juicy stuff I gathered on my phone, pushing it to the desktop where I could deal with it later…and often dealt with it on my phone anyway.
I have an iPhone. Fabulous product. Great interface. I’ve had it for 2 months and still haven’t setup my email on it. Why? Because I actually like not having to be tied to instant communication with clients expecting me to respond to them within a few minutes of their every query. I’ll eventually set it up and make use of it. But I prefer to check and answer email once in the morning, once after lunch and if my schedule permits, I’ll check and respond again before leaving for the day. I’ll even occasionally check it one more time before going to bed at night.
I remember a post from Ron Lindeboom talking about how he works his email in a similar way. I have colleagues and clients that literally email me 15-25 times a day during a project. Why? Because they can! Because their iPhone or Blackberry immediately gets the email and they can immediately read it and immediately respond. When in reality it would make a lot more sense to read and gather information from multiple emails from multiple parties before responding.
I don’t have any music or TV shows or movies on my iphone. I do have videos, but they’re all samples of our company’s work. I’m not into listening to music or watching videos on a 480×320 screen with ear buds stuck in my ear. The things I love are the ability to load word documents, pdf files etc…because now I can take less stuff on a shoot or to a meeting…and of course it’s internet capabilities.
But I digress. When you consider that many people in corporate environments big and small still have incredibly slow internet performance, I just don’t see how true cloud computing can make big inroads until those corporate internet infrastructures are updated. We’re an 8 person company. We have T1 for our internet… the fastest we can get into our building (at a cost we can afford) regardless of the provider. Yet it’s still painfully slow compared to my home cable internet connection. I couldn’t imagine having to work on 100MB photoshop comps or render hundreds of videos for the web if I had to do it across the internet.
I certainly see the theoretical benefits…less hardware, fewer (if any) hard drives, only pay for the services you use like a utility company model, shared infrastructure costs among many users…information spread onto many servers to speed performance and accessibility… But at least where I live and in the business we’re in, the infrastructure isn’t in place for clouds to support our computing needs. If that changes, then certainly we’d take a hard look at it.
Just look at this thread. There are only 3 or 4 people involved in the discussion. Why? My guess is that other people either don’t know what the heck we’re talking about, or don’t currently see it as a viable option. It probably will be? But I think it will take a while for widespread adoption.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
I don’t doubt anything you guys say in this thread, but I think the reality of cloud computing will end up somewhere between the hype and the current state of using a locally based OS and software.
I can give you a real-world example from right here in my community. Just this year the local school system provided every high-school student in the county with netbooks. The students access most everything online and they save their work to the so called “cloud.”
Sounds fantastic, since the goal is to provide a level playing field for all income levels of students and provide them with immeidate access to tools they’ll certainly use as they move forward.
One big problem. Students would create their papers, save them, then go to access them later and…POOF…they were no longer there. Okay…the school system says…we’ll get them off the backups. Oops…they’re not there either. Seems in setting up the system, the IT company they used had to set up some sort of “purge” of files every so often because they underestimated the amount of storage they’d need. So thousands of students lost their schoolwork, in some cases half a semester’s worth because of this error.
Another example. The school system decided to put their grading system onto the cloud. Because of a similar glitch, several school systems lost their entire first half of the school year’s grades. Again, an error purged them as well. The schools had to have the teachers estimate students grades from memory because they kept nothing on paper, nothing locally to fall back on. This affected thousands of students. Parents were none too happy.
Another example. The first two weeks the netbooks were issued, students figured out how to setup instant messaging, so they were all texting each other during class instead of taking notes. Teachers didn’t know cause all the kids were diligently typing. They thought they were taking notes. When they found out, they blocked the services the kids were using. Guess what…kids being kids, they figured out ANOTHER way to text. This went on for a month before the IT folks had to configure or install something in the system (at substantial cost to the school system for the work) to block the ability to instant message.
Lastly…cloud computing will have a difficult time catching on with the masses until the whole idea can be simply explained to them. We use cloud based video hosting for a couple of clients and just explaining it to them (they’re pretty forward thinking) was a difficult process and we found LOTS of resistance to using it, despite the fact they were already hosting their videos remotely with another host. Once they understood the concept, they were on board, but it was a struggle. They were also resistant to the fact they had to go into their sites and make some changes to URL links and such to make use of the cloud.
Again…you guys are WAY smarter than me when it comes to this stuff, but I’m a bit of a cynic when I hear some of the claims of new technology and methods. Does it have tremendous potential and value? Certainly. Will it be widely adopted by people and businesses? Maybe…maybe not. Companies would have to see a real-world dollar savings placed on it. Consumers would have to first understand it, and second believe there are real benefits either through convenience or time and money saved.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
I noticed no-one responded to your post so thought I’d offer what I know. I’m mainly on Windows so Mac users can certainly correct me if I’m wrong (which I may be).
But I thought the Perian Plug-in provided avi support on a Mac?
According to wikipedia it’s built upon ffmpeg.
You’d also likely have less headaches using a dedicated encoding app. Doesn’t Compressor come with Final Cut?
I also think Handbrake was built upon the ffmpeg framework..but I’m not sure if it can read AVI files (we’ve had no luck with AVI on the Windows version).
With ffmpeg on Windows if you get even one setting wrong, it can can wreak havoc with playback or encoding of various codecs or formats. I’d suggest uninstalling it (if possible) to at least get Final Cut running properly again.
We typically use ffmpeg as a codec pack solution of last resort. Meaning we only install it and try it if we can’t get ANY other solution to properly play or encode a file. Plus many other apps are built upon it’s framework, so I would think that installing them would be a much cleaner and safer way to go.
ffmpeg is an amazing tool (on Windows) when it’s configured properly, and on very fast machines it can work wonders preprocessing video files for playback or for decoding prior to compressing into another format. But it’s got a really confusing interface (at least on a PC), and unless you’re a codec guru, it’s nearly impossible to know which settings to mess with and which ones to leave alone.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
S-Corp. Always have been since founded in 1996. From all I’ve read on the subject, C-Corp status is typically what’s recommended for very large corporations with official boards of directors etc.
We have a retirement plan (Simple IRA) that was setup 8 years ago and works just like a retirement plan.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Over 14 years we’ve switched accountants 4 times…until we finally found one that understood our business, provided sound business advice (not just making sure our numbers were accurate).
Finding that company meant paying quite a bit more for their services than we paid for the previous three. But in the first year, her company found errors on previous business and personal tax returns that resulted in amended returns that put thousands of dollars back into our pockets. Obviously, their increased cost was worth the investment.
My advice, don’t scimp when it comes to attorneys and accountants. You’ll be sorry in the long run and they’ll end up costing you money rather than helping you save any.
We have similar stories concerning banks. Our first bank was the largest bank in our region. It went through merger after merger until finally being bought by 5th/3rd. It became so impersonal and the service and policies so bad that we switched to a smaller regional bank. The result is much better service and knowledge of what we do and what our financial needs are.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Here are some real-world reviews and discussions of Digital Rapids products. Again…I love Rhozet’s products, but Digital Rapids is certainly a viable alternative if speed, quality, live encoding, deck control etc. are all needed. The fact that NBC selected it for the 2008 Olympics says a lot about how robust and mature it is:
https://www.freshdv.com/2008/08/olympics-of-encoding-digital-rapids.html
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com