[Dan Riley]

Although you are doing something different than me, in the sense that
it’s the same audio track for each take, I still would make multiclips
of each take of 4 cameras. You sit and you watch them and memorize
the good and the bad of each. Then you watch the next one.
After you watch all four takes, drag your favorite one, or at least
the one that starts out the best, to the timeline and edit to that one.
You can always load the other takes in the viewer and find
better shots, but you need to lay down a starting point.
For me, looking at all the takes at once, in 16 very small screens,
doesn’t seem useful. But that’s just me.
If it works for you, who the heck am I to tell you to change.

As for the RAID playing back all 16 streams, how many drives
are you getting? What SATA PCI card are you getting?
It’s tuff to say if it will work or not. There is the issue of
your CPU. Is it a dual machine or single?
FCP doesn’t run too well for RT multistream playback
unless it’s one of the newer ones. I use a dual 2.5 gig.
But I only run 4up for multicam. No trouble most of the time,
but I occationally get dropped frames. But it’s only
while all the screens are ganged, not for just the
sequence playback. I have a 4 drive SATA RAID
using the Sonnet 4+4 card.

My issue right now is since I’ve been using FCP5.0.2
I’ve been getting random crashes of FCP. This almost
never happed with 4.5, and I’m pissed off about it.
My system didn’t change, just the OS (tiger) and FCP to 5.
It’s not ‘pro’ anymore in my book right now. The lost
productivity from all the restarts and resetting and
redoing lost edits is making a move back to the AVID
a more financially viable option. The Media Composer
costs much more upfront but it is rock solid and you get
your work done and out the door much faster.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

I offer the following as only from my perspective.
Take if or leave it.

If you have 4 cameras and four takes,
that’s 4 multiclips, each with 4 cameras and a take.
Yes?

I edit multicam shows all the time (4 or 5 camera
simultanious timecode studio shows) and that’s
the way I make multiclips. Did it that way in AVID
for years too. Why would you want to see all
the takes running at the same time, with different
audio and different timing and movements?
Watch all four multiclip takes separately and pick one.
If you don’t like one of the camera shots,
go get another one from another take from another multiclip.

Now, as for trying to get FCP to playback 16 streams
in realtime from one drive…..what are you smoking?
You need a RAID for that; I don’t care what the FCP
marketing stuff says.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

I didn’t know either what he meant because I’d never used it.
In the browser if you control click while near the column headings
you will see, ‘show thumbnail’. It changes the way the bins
are displayed in the browser. If you had a bin with a bunch of
clips in it and you had selected to show images for each,
then when you did the thumbnail setting and you clicked on
a bin, it would display all the first image frames down a column
in the browser. Anyway, it’s not something I would use.

Hopefully his other suggestion about turning off the
desktop interpreter for quicktime movies will help the crashes.
As for your crashes on export, that problem I’ve never had.
I’m using Pipe Studio though, not the Igniter.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

Well, I never use the thumbnail column but I do use the desktop
interpreter. I’ll turn it off and restart. Hopefully this might help.

This is just crazy. I’ve never seen anything like this before.
It just quits and goes away. This is the first time in five years I’m no longer
comfortable using FCP. If I’m the only one, fine. But if this keeps up,
I’m not going to be recommending FCP is the way we go here
when we upgrade to HD. They already have AVIDS and they are
very solid. This feels like a toy app, certainly not a “pro” anything.
This from a guy who’s used FCP since version 1.2.5.
If it wasn’t for the multicam, which I need, I’d revert back to
version 4.5 in a heartbeat. That one I could beat to death and
it would not die on me. This one, you just play a clip and it quits.
I can’t even imagine anyone thinking about using this version
in any mission critical situations like air playback.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

Hmm,
perhaps some people should glance at the manual.
Go to the view menu, select ‘show multiclip angles’.
This give you the multiple camera boxes you have playing
in the viewer (connected to your timeline) in your
external monitor.
My experience has been the client doesn’t want to see it
all the time, just when they want to explore using a
different shot than the one I already picked.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

You will love FCP5 for multicam based on your present workflow.
I’ve been doing multicam shows for 20 years and for 10 with
the AVID. Apple did a nice implementation of multicam editing
with FCP5 but of course it could and will get better.

You can make multiclips from in point, out point or timecode.
When you capture, in the angle box in the capture window,
put 1,2, or 3 to tell FCP which camera is which. Then after capture
all you do is put an in point on each of your clips when the
strobe hits. Then highlight the three clips (camera angles)
in the browser.
Then go to modify-make multiclip.
If you have multiple takes FCP makes it very easy to make
many multiclips at once, all automatically. Highlight all your
captured clips and use ‘make multiclip sequences’ for that. And uncheck the
make a complete sequence of all the clips, unless you
find that useful.

FCP’s implimentation of multicam is very similar to AVID
and in some ways faster and in some ways more cumbersome.
But in your case, I think you will love it.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

Drizzt_G

My understanding is the 45MB/s HD signal that is transmitted via Sat
from NBC for example, to the local stations, is then compressed
to 19MB/s to fit on the 6Mhz bandwidth the station has for it’s digital
channel. And now I’m hearing they are compressing it even more
so the can have an HD channel and two or three other SD 480p
channels. Broadcast HD is fine if nobody is moving. But when there are
pans and movement, it falls apart pretty badly. And on local
cable it’s even worse. I believe they compress the HD signal
down to 14MB/s or more. ESPN HD on a cable station doesn’t
look anything like what ESPN HD is sending down the line
on the HD Sat feed. I know it has the potential to get better
as the compression technologies improve. But is seems like
the instant that happens, instead of passing on a better looking
picture to the customer (viewer to them) they opt for more
channels. It certainly is up to them how to run their business,
and actually it provides a large opportunity to people who
would like to give customers the best viewing experience
and that is where DVDs have already and DVD-HDs soon
will be snapped up.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

I guess I got off on a rant above. Too much coffee maybe.
Please forgive the off subject response.

Not speaking for Shane, but the uncompressed data rate
is approx 24MB per second. I can’t find the list that says
8 bit is 21MB and 10 bit is 28MB but it sounds about right.
If I remember correctly, One Inch videotape was in the
area of 8 bit, although analog, and this was a very good
picture which was the standard for years. I believe D-2
digital was also 8 bit. The thing that’s good about 10 bit
processing is the extra range of greys and colors per sample.
This is good for chroma keys and other graphic and effects.
The difference however, between 4:2:2 processing
(which is used with 8 and 10 bit uncompressed cards) and 4:1:1 is large.
DV is 4:1:1. There you have half the chroma
information to work with and it really shows when
doing colored text and graphics.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

Acceptable to Broadcasters?
What does that mean TODAY ?
There was a time when if someone said “broadcast quality”
we all knew what that meant. No anymore.
They are not the arbiters of what is good quality
by any means. Just look at the stuff local stations
and the networks are putting on their air.
Now it’s all up to what you, your customer and/or your
client thinks is good. It’s all a quality/price judgement today.

A good buddy of mine works on sports trucks here
in the Seattle area, doing loads of national games
with the HD trucks. It breaks his heart to see how
beautiful the pictures are when they come out of those
Ikegami and Sony HD cameras only to be trashed
through the mud and compression of “broadcast” transmission
once it’s on the air. The end result is the home viewer is
seeing only a imitation of what was really produced
and this is causing people to say, yeah it looks good
but not $2000 better. Broadcasters have lost the
quality argument. The problem is they don’t know it.
Have you seen the DVDs of television programs like
Friends, etc. ? There is simply no comparison between
what those pictures look like and anything you will see
coming out of your local station once the station
loads the programs into servers that compress the hell
out of everything. It’s all so sad because there was a time
when broadcast management did care what stuff looked like.

Just try the different codecs and compression levels for yourself
and see what is acceptable to you and your client/customer
and what you can afford in cameras, decks and drive space.
Don’t let anyone tell you what it “has” to look like.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

Would you happen to be the Frank Muldoon that worked at
WXLT TV Sarasota in the 70s?
If so Hi. Remember Dan Riley?

As for FCP/AVID. I was a media composer guy and
transitioned over the last few years from AVID to
FCP online. Sitting with someone who uses FCP
is probably a good idea because like someone said
earlier, you can compare what you want to make the
software do on the AVID with how you would do it
on FCP. I find my editing to be much faster on FCP,
but imputing footage and media management to be
cumbersome with FCP. Those are the two areas
where it’s just not where it needs to be.
But for getting work done, I love FCP.

Dan
dan@rylow.com