[Chris Carnazzo]

Can you use compressor? It should have come with the final cut pro suite. Bring in all your muxed mpeg files into compressor, have it convert to NTSC DV quicktime files if you’re working in SD, Apple ProRes if you’re working in HD.

It may take a while. Let it go over night and see how many files you have to work with.

[Chris Carnazzo]

I think the frustration lies in the lack of clear information about how to get a sequence from a non linear edit station into the omneon (spectrum) server for playback. As editors, we’re creative professionals, not engineers. Although many of us have picked up considerable technical expertise over the years, I found the literature on file based workflow for omneon to be a little confusing.

What we want to know is exactly how to export from our NLE into your server.

At my shop, we use an omneon spectrum for HD (and SD) playback inside a control room. Although it did plug right into our existing SD workflow, I’ve found providing HD clips to be very difficult. We’ve had to experiment with several file formats and codecs.

If omenon plays quicktime files natively, which codec? What are the export settings for Avid, Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro? Do we need a transcoding program like flipfactory, cleaner, sorrension squeeze or compressor. If so, what settings do those programs need?

[Chris Carnazzo]

There’s a company called video toolshed. They make a product called subbits. It was originally a subtitler, but they have an option to covert subtitle files into closed caption files (.scc). Compressor has an option to insert metadata into your datastream while transcoding.

Use subits to create the caption file, transcode in compressor. It should work, in theory.

A lot of time and experimenting needed. But the program costs $250.

It should work if you have time, rather than money, on your hands.

Here’s a link

https://www.videotoolshed.com/?page=products&pID=12

[Chris Carnazzo]

thanks again for the bug fix. i’ve been on the phone with avid for days. this clear up our final hurdle to getting the machine up and running.

using the sd format. i can now use the client montior. and the 16:9 option on the montior does the rest.

i can’t thank you enough for your help. now, i just have to sit down and do some work!

i agree with the NLE. we’re an avid shop, but recently brough in a FCP station. it does some things really well, but has its pitfalls. neither is perfect, just different trade offs.

but we are also at a cross roads. do we upgrade our avids to hd or go FCP? but i think these fixes pushed us back to the avid camp. too much invested in storage and training.

[Chris Carnazzo]

– source seems to be 180/23.96. It’s the only project seeting that works

– i chose the 35mm 4 perf settings at random. seemed like a good idea. glad to know it’ll work out. kind of lept before i looked.

– If I make this switch, can i switch back to HD without need to redig or uprez?

– Good to know about the pulldown. I’ve never worked with film before. I’ve spent my career in local TV and never had to worry about anything that wasn’t shot on video, or already transfered.

– I will the quicktime fix immideately. Thanks for the info. Very frustrating. To the point we considered scrapping avid for FCP.

– As far as the deliverable, i think my final export will be a quicktime movie with h264 codec for a playback server. But we might want to back up the master to tape. Not sure. If so, what would I need to do to put this back to a sony HDCam ((HDW-1800)). I know the mojo can’t put it back to HD tape, but i have a final cut machine that can.

thanks for your help. I really appreciate it.