Chris Blair
Forum Replies Created
-
That’s exactly what we were going to try. Good to know I was thinking correctly. And we said the same thing on the playback comments. We did tests with the videos using flash player from our website and they played great. So not exactly sure what they’re seeing. Hopefully they’ll send us a link.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Nope…just hit the “download now” button. I thought that too. It works without even inputting any info!
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
That’s the problem. I’M the developer! The project isn’t large enough to hire a web person. It’s just a one-time deal. As noted, we know how to do it, it’s just a pain. Since there are several apps out there that do it for single files (one at a time) and for creating playlists with dozens of videos, it just seemed natural that someone would’ve added the ability to load single files in a batch and have the program output the needed player files, folder structure, code etc. for each idividual file.
Thanks
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Kristian,
I’m not sure I’ve explained the issue clearly.
The issues work in both directions. If we output an AVI based video file from our Velocity systems (using either the Harris software based AVI codec or many common 3rd party codecs like Matrox and others), Blackmagic and Premiere will import the files fine… but then almost immediately crash if you play the timeline. This only happens on Blackmagic based timelines (set up to use Blackmagic codecs)
If we conversely create an After Effects comp and render it out using the Blackmagic avi codec, then import that into Velocity (there are several importation methods), the import crashes either Velocity or the other import apps that Harris provides. If we bring that blackmagic avi into AE on a machine without BM hardware and using only the BM software codecs, it too crashes.
Velocity’s avi codec is proprietary and I have no idea what the FourCC is.
Perhaps these applications just don’t like each other’s flavors of .avi codecs. But we output avi files for use in other apps (encoding, compositing, 3D animation) from Velocity all the time, and none of the other apps ever complain about those avi files. Some do complain about the Blackmagic avi’s since we have to install the blackmagic software codecs in order for those 3rd party apps to read the Blackmagic avi’s.
So this isn’t only an issue between our NLE system and Blackmagic. We see the issue when bringing the Blackmagic AVI’s into other apps that have nothing to do with our NLE system.
I guess my biggest frustration is that when we install the blackmagic codecs they consistently show up as “broken” using apps that check for installed codecs. This occurs even when we install them on a brand-new, clean install of Windows XP.
I should point out this isn’t ONLY a problem with Blackmagic codecs, the same thing happens with several of Premiere Pro CS3’s Main Concept codecs when you install Premiere Pro. I realize codecs can conflict, but we’ve wrestled with this for over a year…and seen it occur on PC’s (without BM hardware)that have nothing installed except for WinXP and Premiere or WinXP and After Effects along with the software based codecs.
It’s just frustrating because it makes sharing video and projects very difficult on systems that don’t have the Blackmagic hardware installed.
I don’t know if that gives you more info or not, but the bottom line is it isn’t just a conflict with our NLE and that particular AVI codec. It’s a broader problem that we’ve seen across mutliple workstations that are otherwise stable workhorses which work fine with dozens of other codecs from other manufacturers (Avid, AJA, Matrox, Apple etc.)
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Try Blackmagic’s Media Express. You can get it by downloading the basic Intensity Drivers and doing a full install of them. If you don’t have the hardware it doesn’t install the drivers, just the codecs and little extras like the Media Express player.
I believe they have both Mac and PC versions. It will load and play .avi, .mov, and .wmv videos for sure. It steps frame by frame though any of those 3 for sure.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
The software only codecs have been a constant issue. The latest drivers only resulted in the Premiere Pro CS3 timeline issue I described.
The sofware codecs to my knowledge haven’t changed in quite a while…in fact, you can no longer find them for download on the Blackmagic site. I only reinstalled by finding them on one of our hard drive backups from from over a year ago.
The software codec problems occur across multiple workstations that otherwise are stable workhorses with many other broadcast and graphics apps…so this is definitely not a memory issue.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
A one minute uncompressed 8bit NTSC standard definition file should only be about 1.2 GB uncompressed. So at the length your file is ending up (2:45), at most it should only be about 3GB. Since you’re using ProRes, it should be much smaller.
So something has to be wrong in your target output settings. At 14GB it sounds like you’re outputting an HD file.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Just opened Flash Encoder CS3. It only encodes to .flv files using either the On2 VP6 or Sorenson Spark codecs. That’s it. Very limited settings compared to more robust encodind apps. And I couldn’t find anything that will publish the files ready for inclusion on a web page.
I did find some tutorials that walk you through some action scripting using Flash CS3, but going back to my original post, we were looking for a way to do this without learning a whole new software application, much less learning the action script part of it.
We’ll probably eventually learn Flash CS3, but for this project, it’s just not an option to struggle through the time it takes to learn a new software app.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
We don’t really need asset management, that’s not a problem. We’re just looking for an easier way of doing it. I had figured scripting was likely part of the answer. It just amazes me that somebody hasn’t written an app that can do this.
We’ll probably just do it the way we’re doing it, which involves copying and pasting code, then changing the reference to the mp4 file. It’s not difficult, just time-consuming and cumbersome.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
We’ve tried the Flash Encoder that comes with CS3 and I wasn’t aware you could add a player skin from as part of the encoding setup. We’ll give it another look…but in the times we’ve tried it we weren’t very impressed with it as an encoding app. I don’t recall anyone on these lists that’s using it as their main encoding and compression application.
The other issue we’ve had with it is that it’s incredibly quirky and buggy on WinXP. We have it on an HP xw8200 system and an IBM intellistation and in the limited time we’ve usee it, it locked up or crashed constantly.
We typically use Carbon Coder to encode our files and it’s a total workhorse when encoding in batches. We often have the need to encode to several different target audiences and/or file types and we have presets developed for the majority of this. Many of which took many many hours of testing to get to where clients were happy with the output.
But I’ll give it a look.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com