Chris Tomberlin
Forum Replies Created
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Mark,
About a year and a half ago I was faced with the same decision. Spend $35K on digibeta, or about $13K on DVCPRO-50. After talking with several people, I took a chance and went with DVCPRO-50 for my main SD mastering deck. After I got the deck, I did some really geeky difference matte tests (like Marco Solario does on his codec sight) to test stuff that had previously been mastered to digibeta and compared the same thing mastered to DV50. There is about a 10% difference in favor of digibeta. You can do the math and see that the difference in cost is far greater. I also compared footage that had originated on film, been mastered to digibeta and loaded into my system at 10-bit uncompressed (via SDI) with the same footage output to DV50 and loaded back into the system. I put the stuff that had gone through the DV50 deck into an after effects timeline on top of the footage that had not gone through the deck and turned the top layer off and on to see if I could visually see a difference. I had to blow the stuff up about 800% to see any pixels moving around.
So the short answer is, go with DV50, you’ll never see the difference. Digibeta may be slightly less compressed, but the algorithm that it uses is aging, whereas the DV50 codec is newer and apparently more effecient.
Chris Tomberlin
OutPost PicturesChris Tomberlin
Editor/Compositor/Owner
OutPost Pictures -
[Tom Matthies] “FCP 5 and the new G5 is still a little too buggy for my taste.
But is IS faster! ““Faster” like a PC running windows is “faster?” Once you factor in the crashing and trouble shooting, FCP 5 on Tiger can’t possibly be faster at the moment. Plus, there are some real problems with the 10 bit codec right now. Do search in the After Effects and Blackmagic forums and you’ll see what I mean…
Chris Tomberlin
OutPost Pictures -
Hold down Command-Option-Shift and select “tools” in the main menu bar. In the list that comes up, go to “internal tools” then “playback meter”. I think this not only measures processor use, but throughput in general, i.e., if you have a drive that can’t keep up it will be indicated here in the form of a stall.
have fun
Chris Tomberlin
OutPost Pictures -
[Richard Squires] “I wonder if you have this problem too.”
Yes, I have this problem too. Check out this entire thread in the AE forum:
https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=856696
There is definitely a problem with the 10-bit codec in Tiger. I’m pretty sure that Apple added this new “feature” with the newest unompressed 10-bit codec that comes with Quicktime 7 and Tiger.
I sure hope somebody is working on all this. It’s not very satisfying when all the stuff that is supposed to be new and better really just breaks everything.
Chris Tomberlin
OutPost Pictures -
[Luke Maslen] “please post it so we can check it out”…
I guess I should have been more specific. I posted this thread July 14:
https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=124&postid=854921A similar thread with additional detail is here:
https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?univpostid=856611&forumid=2&postid=856611&pview=tI also sent this same info to Kristian Lam, who reproduced the problem on July 18th and forwarded it your engineers. Now, I know that it has only been about ten days, but you guys have spoiled me in the past with your incredibly fast response to issues! So, it would be great if you could check in to this.
FYI — It is the same problem posted more recently (July 27) by Richard Squires here:
https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=124&postid=855168This particular issue is a real problem for a workflow like mine that involves both FCP and AE, and in particular, using AE for color correction.
ALSO, a potentially related issue is noted in this thread, started July 15:
https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=124&postid=854946I would be happy to talk with you or any of your engineers, as I have done quite a bit of troubleshooting and may be able to save you some time. I do know that there seem to be no satisfactory work arounds for either of these issues, and that action is needed by BMD and or Apple to correct these issues.
Thanks
Chris Tomberlin
OutPost Pictures -
Locate the AE preferences file (Users/Library/Preferences/Adobe After Effects 6.5 Prefs) and open it with a text editor. Scroll down toward the end of the document until you find a section that looks like this:
[“QuickTime 64-bit Input Codecs”]
“DV10” = “1”
“Mczm” = “1”
“NO16” = “1”
“SVQ1” = “0”
“Shr7” = “1”
“v210” = “1”[“QuickTime 64-bit Output Codecs”]
“DV10” = “1”
“Mczm” = “1”
“NO16” = “1”
“Shr7” = “1”
“rle ” = “0”
“v210” = “1”You will probably have more lines than this, but it will be the right section. Replace the v210=1 with “v210” = “0” and you should have a work around. Be advised though, that unless I’m mistaken, this essentially turns off 10-bit file recognition on import and makes the file process as 8-bit.
Good luck
Chris Tomberlin
Editor/Compositor/Owner
OutPost Pictures -
I think this is a problem on the second render. I think the problem is actually when you bring a file into AE that uses a codec that is in the v210 format, rather than when you render that file. In other words, if you change the AE preference file so that the [“QuickTime 64-bit Input Codecs”] section is set with “v210” = “0” and the [“QuickTime 64-bit Output Codecs”] section is set with “v210” = “1”, you can render a 10-bit quicktime correctly. What I believe is going on though, is that by setting the input section to “v210” = “0”, you are telling AE to see 10-bit quicktimes as 8-bit files, so either way, you can’t keep a file 10-bit through the whole process.
-Chris Tomberlin
OutPost Pictures -
Felix,
I’m seeing some related problems with uncompressed 10-bit codecs. Can you tell me whether or not you are working in 8 or 16 bits in AE? When you render, are you rendering to millions of colors or trillions of colors?
Thanks
Chris Tomberlin
OutPost Pictures -
OK, I’ve narrowed down the problem, but unfortunately don’t have a solution. The problem is during the importing of any “v210” codec into AE. Basically, by turning things on and off in the AE preferences text file, I’ve been able to determine that you can bring in footage at 16bit (as long as its not v210) and you won’t get the green lines in AE when set to 16bit. You can also render out to a “v210” codec and no green lines. Unfortunately, if you are capturing uncompressed 10-bit in FCP, you are capturing with a v210 codec.
This must be a Quicktime bug. Anybody geekier (and I mean that in the best possible way) than me able to support this argument?
Thanks
Chris Tomberlin
Editor/Compositor/Owner
OutPost Pictures -
I’ve seen the same problem here too. Haven’t had time to track it down yet though…
Chris Tomberlin
Editor/Compositor/Owner
OutPost Pictures