Chris Knight
Forum Replies Created
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I had a long conversation with some editing colleagues last night (all of us use Final Cut and Premiere Pro, one of uses Avid MC, so there’s no bias here). The conclusion I came away with was this:
Apple clearly sees online as the future of video broadcasting, and doesn’t see room for trained professionals to provide content. And for that purpose, X probably works just fine. Apple’s core customer base (consumers who love iOS) are generally accepting of the iCNN/YouTube level of production, and don’t care about the why and the how of colour balancing, audio mixing, and (most importantly) good editing.
From what I’ve read about X (I haven’t used it yet), it appears to be fast and efficient at basic editing tasks. This mindset makes sense, when consumers just want to get a video they just shot on their iPhone “on air” as quickly as possible. And X will make the consumer feel like they’re using professional tools (Apple is, much like Coca-Cola, great at selling a lifestyle).
Because the X workflow lacks the ability to collaborate with multiple users and software applications, it appears counter-productive to me (and the work I produce). I’m glad I’m familiar with many editing tools, so I can pick and choose what works best for the task at hand. X might end up in the toolbag someday, but right now, it’s just a consumer “app.”
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Highlight the sequence you’re working on, go to the Sequence Menu, select Sequence Settings, then click the Playback Settings button (top right of this new window). Now, next to the words “External Device” select a monitor, and it should immediately go black when you hit OK. At this point, the monitor you selected will play back full screen video of the Program Monitor. I use this setup in a 3 monitor configuration, and it works very well.
If you mean replacing the current view of a single monitor setup (such as a laptop), I’m not sure if that’s possible.
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Well, since I shoot on P2 chips, there is no capturing, just importing. Premiere can swap audio channels around after the capture or import, which is done in the Clip Menu-> Audio Options -> Source Channel Mapping. This has to be done prior to placing a clip in a timeline (at which point the channel assignment becomes locked – slthough you can duplicate a clip and re-map the channels). Generally speaking, the Source Channel Mapping allows you to kill the channels you don’t want, and/or set the desired channels to mono or stereo.
This has worked flawlessly for me since Premiere adopted this technique.
Until last week. Regardless of how I assign audio channels, and kill the channels I don’t want, all I hear end up with is the 4 channel mix. It seems to me that Premiere is having issues dealing with 4 channel Intra-AVC footage. The same footage in Edius 5.5 presents no issues – the audio is isolated as it should be. Panasonic’s P2 Viewer allows for the same. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m getting nervous about shooting any more multi-channel audio until Adobe provides me with a solution.
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Just to add to this. When I play the clips back in Panasonic’s P2 viewer software (with the AVC-I add-on), I can isolate each channel, and they sound exactly as they should (channel 2 clearly sounds like an isolated handheld mic, not the mix that Premiere plays). Of course, the player software doesn’t allow me to edit or remove any of the channels, so it doesn’t help me, beyond being able to isolate the problem to Premiere.
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I used to get the “Memory is low” every time I opened the Titler in CS3 (XP 32-bit, 3GB of RAM). The Task Manager would conflict with that information (there was plenty of RAM available), but it didn’t seem to hinder performance. CS4 in W7x64 with 12GB of RAM does not have this problem (my AJA Xena/Kona, on the other hand, needs a good smack).
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I’ve been running my LHe for 2 years now, with a few issues here and there, under XP 32 bit/CS3.
I just upgraded the system (Dell Precision 690) to Windows 7, with CS4.2. The AJA 4.2 drivers work in theory, but I have two major problems.
1. Sluggish playback performance in After Effects and Premiere.
2. A complete inability to access AJA Playback settings in the Premiere “New Sequence” window. This means I can’t switch the default analog output from composite (which I don’t want) to component (which I need). I can access these settings in Machina, and only in Premiere after I’ve created a project (which is not a good workaround, because clips won’t play properly until they’ve been dropped into the timeline).
Unfortunately, not being able to create a preset where the default analog output is 486i via component makes the 4.2 drivers useless.Uninstalling the 4.2 drivers, and dropping down to 4.1 fixes this issue. So far these drivers perform perfectly (knock on wood) in Windows 7.
An email to AJA yesterday went unanswered. This is a shame, considering I used to get phone calls from AJA engineers within 5 minutes of me sending a question when I first bought the AJA card (and went through driver migration hell when CS3 was released).
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Alright, the suggested solution – importing CS2 projects into a clean CS3 AJA project does not work. CS3 crashes the instant I touch any content in the timeline.
However, this does work (knock on wood):
– Open CS2 project in CS3.
– Highlight sequence tab (don’t click anywhere in the timeline)
– Select All
– Copy
– Close Project
– Open clean CS3 project (with correct AJA preset). Create new sequence.
– PasteThe only issue is that I lose all transitions. Not too painful, considering I haven’t crashed once since I tried this (6 timelines and counting).
Is there anything else I lose by copying/pasting? Effects, motion data, and audio levels all seem intact.
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I got a phone call from an AJA engineer yesterday (5 minutes after I sent them an email – awesome) explaining how to potentially fix the problem. I won’t be back on the system until Monday, but the solution makes sense (instead of opening CS2 projects in CS3, I should import them into an already working CS3 project).
I haven’t started any real projects from scratch in CS3, but I did import some AJA quicktime files, just to compare things. Performance is about the same (CS2 used 11-15 percent of my CPUs, and CS3 is no different – so 5 of my 8 cores sit unused while Premiere renders), amd playback is fine. I haven’t captured anything yet. To be honest, other than the new bin feature, I wouldn’t have been able to tell that I was in CS3. Except for the CS2 migration issues, that is.
I didn’t notice this in the 2.6 drivers, but that 6dB audio gain switch came in very handy for outputting audio to a BetaSP deck.
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“we’re talking high performance here, and that would require a Matrox card. ”
The AJA allowed me to edit and publish 240 30: spots in under a week, using 11 video tracks in 24 timelines (divided into 2 projects). Not one hiccup, crash, or performance issue. There is nothing the Axio has that could have made this work process go any faster.
Also, 400MB/Sec is great if you want HD, but the original poster didn’t specify that. The 188MB/sec I get from my (very well ventilated) Dell is more than enough for SD work, and certainly adequate for a couple of HD tracks. As for video backup, Premiere’s project manager does a great job archiving content to another drive – and if the RAID 0 fails (which is very rare these days), you just batch-recapture everything.
Spending money for the sake of having the fastest whatever doesn’t necessarily make you work faster. For the same price as a fibre-channel RAID 5 Array, you could buy an entire additional video editing system with a slightly slower hard drive. That, in effect, would double your performance.
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I’ve been using a Dell Precision 690 for the last month, and it performs perfectly (whether it’s 30 second spots, or 30 minute shows). I use Premiere CS2 (and After Effects 7). I’ll be upgrading it to CS3 on Monday. The only bottleneck in the system is Premiere CS2 (during rendering, it only uses 10-14 percent of the CPUs). After Effects 7 goes up to 30 (so, using both at the same time doesn’t cause any issues with system performance). I suspect CS3 will change all that.
The specs:
Dual Quad Core 2.66 Ghz Xeon CPUs (Dell did not offer 3Ghz as an option)
3 gigs of RAM
250 GB boot drive
4 x 500 GB RAID 0 array (internal, SATA, Samsung brand)
External FW800 2 TB RAID 1 array for archiving.
AJA Xena LHe SDI/Analog I/O with the breakout box.