Chris Blair
Forum Replies Created
-
I had read a little about it on the Telestream site while I was researching this, but it’s primarily used as part of a broadcast ingest station for trafficking TV spots. We just weren’t looking to spend $2000 to implement wider machine control. I could buy RS422 switchers and RS422 cabling for probably $850 and accomplish what I’m trying to do, but it’s not exactly elegant in that everything has to be manually switched.
I was looking for the ability to just change a virtual com port on your PC and “bam” be controlling a device. That’s how the devices basically work, they fool your computer into thinking the VTR is a computer device on your network.
What got me interested in this was seeing one of these in use at a TV station (don’t recall the brand of the thing), but they were able to switch to and from and control 16 different decks from any computer interface in the building. It was very cool and the device that controlled it was about the size of a small VTR. The engineer said it did exactly what I’m looking to do, which was convert the decks RS422 signal to appear as a device on your ethernet.
But the Pipeline device is cool too. So another good option for people out there.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
If they just need to be able to play it. Direct them to download VLC player (it’s free). It will play flash video files.
If they’re planning on putting it on a website, they’ll have to figure out how to use Flash Players because an .flv or .swf won’t play on a website without one.
Again…it’s like putting a .wmv on a website, but the end-user doesn’t have windows media player installed. The video won’t play on that user’s computer whether the file is downloaded or embedded in the site.
Another analogy would be a Windows user that doesn’t have Quicktime installed. Quicktime files on websites won’t play.
It’s really as simple as that. The only major difference is that the Adobe Flash Player doesn’t have a good standalone equivalent to Windows Media Player or Quicktime. It’s major implementation is within web browswers as a plug-in (like when you download or update your Flash Player).
Hope that helps.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Does your .swf file include any sort of player interface or does it look the same as your .flv file? Typically an .swf (shockwave flash object) contains the control parameters for your video, or is created for compatibility in web authoring. For instance, many web authoring apps would rather insert an .swf file than an .flv file. But all the .swf does is basically point to the .flv and tell the web app info about the .flv video.
So…your actual compressed video is the .flv (flash video) file. For the client to get the files to work, they need to embed a Flash player in their application. It’s the same thing as needing windows media player to play a .wmv or quicktime to play a quicktime movie. The .flv or .swf won’t play unless you have a player to play it in.
If they don’t know how to do that on the client side, they’ll have to learn (lots of good resources by just googling, or go to https://www.longtailvideo.com for some great tutorials and applications).
Or, you could learn how to do it and charge your client more!
So think of it like outputting a .wmv file. If they were to embed the .wmv into a website, they’d have to embed the player into the code somewhere so that it would play on the page. If you don’t, when the user clicks on it, it opens up their windows media player and plays the video in the external application. Flash video (.flv) typically won’t call a separate video player from a website. So you HAVE to embed the flash player into the site to get the video to play.
Hope that helps.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Glad it’s not just me! And since we place media as an agency as well as produce it, you’d think we’d get a little more response from stations and cable outlets. But we don’t. They’ll eventually fix the problems, but it takes dozens of emails and phone calls. The local cable system uses a playout server that’s not even located in their city. So the folks that manage it have literally thousands of spots coming thru their Telestream Encoding setup. All automated, all using what they call “factories” (encoding setups) for the spots that are dumped onto the FTP.
The IT guy that manages it admitted to me in an email that they don’t visually check the spots that are encoded and pushed to their servers (which again are physically in another state).
I actually had some dialogue with Telestream on this matter (who I was VERY impressed with). I sent an email late last night to them detailing the problems we’re having (mainly field order and bad compression). Before I arrived at work this morning, I had an email response asking me to FTP one of the problem spots to look at (remember, we’re not even their customer!). Within 20 minutes of sending it, their support guy emailed back that it was a simple matter of adding two common filters to the “factory” setting. He said it was a VERY common issue and a VERY common fix. He said setting it up literally involved hitting a couple of mouseclicks and saving the setting for the files that are dropped into the FTP folder used for our spots.
He also gave me detailed specs (which none of the local affiliates or cable has ever provided) on what to deliver to eliminate even needing these filters.
Like another poster on here…most stations and cable outlets tell us “to send a quicktime,” or send an “MPG2 file” without any specific specs. We even send them multiple tests and they claim they “look good.” Then we see the spot run and are horrified.
I had a local cable IT guy tell me this morning that the problem with our spots stuttering on-air was that we were delivering VBR bit-rate files instead of CBR which they require. Well anyone with any knowledge of digital files knows that’s a load of crap. This guy literally didn’t know what I was talking about when it came to field order.
I guess we’re all doing what we can to get it corrected. But man it’s frustrating to spend my time dealing with something that should be an absolute non-issue.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Bob Zelin:
and why won’t you spend $4500 for the Blackmagic Videohub ?Valid question Bob. The answer is simple. The device server method is only $350 dollars and uses existing RS422 and ethernet cabling.
We already have an 8×8 Kramer SDI matrix switcher as well as an 8×8 Kramer component matrix switcher, so we can already route almost any audio and video signal we need to any of the 4 suites. Those two cost us roughly $2500 plus probably another $1000 for cabling. So doesn’t make sense to spend another $4500 right now considering that.
The ethernet machine control isn’t something that we HAVE to have. Just something that theoretically does work and I’d like to implement it.
I’ve emailed a few engineers at companies that make these RS422 to Ethernet devices, and they all say it’s possible and a couple were even aware of the Harris device that uses it. They said it’s just a matter of getting all the settings matched correctly on the device server with those that the pro VTRs use for RS422 communication. If you get one setting wrong (out of about a dozen), it won’t work.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Eric,
We have 2 capture stations (which are also edit suites), and we have another identical NLE suite along with 1 additional Blackmagic based suite. So it’s not really a problem we’re trying to solve since we almost always have suites available to edit, composite etc. regardless of how many tapes we need to log and capture.
It’s more a matter of adding enchanced functionality. A good example would be a producer who needs to log b-roll footage. It would be great for them to sit at their office workstation and be able to control a VTR to watch see and pick footage based on real time codes, rather than having to tie up an edit suite to do that. Or the ability to control a deck and capture directly into the Decklink suite and use the Blackmagic codecs for a project instead of having to capture to our velocityQ format, then transcode for use on the Blackmagic. Plus, we could then also even use the 3rd VelocityQ suite as a capture station since that suite could control the decks via ethernet instead of RS422.
We’re just maxxed out when it comes to running cabling through walls and under floors etc. and adding several long, beefy RS422 runs, plus the necessary switches to route it all would require more hardware, more cabling and more work.
It just seems so logical to use an existing network of cabling that’s capable of sending and receiving RS422 data (this is proven), that I’d really like to figure it out. I’m kind of anal retentive that way and just keep coming back to it trying to figure it out. I frankly can’t believe more people aren’t doing it since Harris Corp and DNF controls and I’ve even found a couple more companies online (Vector 3 I think) that are using this method to control VTRs in TV stations and large duplication and satellite feed facilities.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Thanks…that’s what I thought… but I wanted to make sure. Thankfully this client is very savvy and already suggested they didn’t think it was long either.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
There are also plug-ins (usually have “transient” in the name) that can help. We used one called Transient Shaper, and it can add to or reduce room acoustics. So while these were developed to give audio a particular ambiance…they also work in reducing echo when used properly. I bought transient shaper because they had a tutorial on how to use it to reduce boomy audio.
It does not elimiate it and if you make the wrong adjustments it can actually distort or cut off your critical audio, but it really helped on one project where we were forced to shoot in an old school room that was unbelievably boomy.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
We have a Decklink HD Extreme that we use with Vegas. When we capture via SDI, we are able to see the output simultaneously via component on an NTSC studio monitor. So it definitely sends the SDI signal from the input back out to the component output.
The hardware setup utility (and the manual) have settings for downconverting and upconverting in real-time from a couple of HD formats and vice-versa. I haven’t tried it to see if it loops out in real-time from the analog outputs, but my assumption would be that it does since it’s using hardware to do the conversion in real-time.
If I get time I’ll test it next week. I can only test going from SD to HD though since we don’t have any HD-SDI decks.
I also believe it will throughput the SDI signal, but again, have not tried it. I imagine an email or post in the Blackmagic forum here on the Cow could also answer all your questions.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Rich,
You have everything you need to compress video for Flash. Flash player doesn’t need or require .flv files. It can natively play Quicktimes, H264 and several other containers and codecs…even .avi if I’m not mistaken.
So all you need to figure out is how to put your video into a player interface (or skin). JW player is great but isn’t exactly the easiest or most intuitive one if you’ve never done it before or aren’t at least familiar with how websites work and with FTP.
There are other 3rd party apps that will take your compressed video file and create everything you need to either embed it or link to it as an .html file…without recompressing the video. A couple I’ve demo’d are Wimpy Wasp publisher and Socusoft FLV publisher. They’re both about $50 if memory serves and do a nice job of just adding a player interface to existing videos. They have limited format support but I know both took .mp4 files because that’s what we were testing. You can create playlists, customize the player and they both come with dozens of player designs. Most of the players are garish, but there are enough decent ones to make them worth the cost.
There are also third party apps that will do the compression and add the player interface for you. We own 2 of those. Turbine Video Encoder and Flash Video Studio. Both are also about $50, both can compress to .mp4 and both have a ton of flexibility. One thing…ALL of these are Windows based I think. I don’t recall seeing Mac versions of any of them but it wouldn’t hurt to check.
Hope that helps.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com