[David Jahns]

To follow up…

Our engineer said that you can’t have 2 different kinds of sync at the same time, which makes sense.

He said the thing to do was to put the KONA, (which is at 23.98) into FREE RUN mode, and then set the NTSC DECK sync to VID INPUT, which will take it’s sync from the KONA’s downconverted NTSC signal and all will be fine.

It worked like a charm.

[David Jahns]

You are correct – it SHOULD maintain consistent A frames. I would call the facility that did the downconvert dub and ask them if there was something wrong with the dub, and hopefully they should be able to redo it for you.

Just curious, how long until the first frame slips? There must be an extra field inserted every so often, right?

[David Jahns]

I would also add… are you sure you’re footage is actually interlaced?

I see stuff all the time that people tell me is 50i, and technically, it may be when it’s on tape – but when you look at the frames, it’s 25p. So you might not need to do any de-interlacing anyway. How was it captured, do you know?

(Who would shoot interlace video for film delivery these days, when progressive cameras are readily available?)

But if it was shot interlaced, I would agree with Jeremy – get it in native form and control the process yourself.

[David Jahns]

It’s a Tektronix SPG 422- but I’m not sure if it’s configured properly, as when I patch “tri-level sync” to my KONA, it still says the Ref in is 525i29.97.

I’ll put in a call to our engineer who set things up originally.

Thanks for your help, J.

[David Jahns]

Thanks, Jeremy.

That makes sense, but I’m wondering if the deck is confused because my KONA card is receiving 29.97 reference, but working in 23.98, adding pulldown, then outputting 29.97. Should the KONA be able to maintain proper sync in that scenario? If the KONA switches to 29.97 (1080 or 525), all is well.

(our facility has been pretty stable, so it’s been a while since I’ve had to deal with ref sync issues or deck settings, and I’m a little rusty on these kind of things, especially with tri-Level sync involved…)

[David Jahns]

Hmm. Not sure about that.

I’m always feeding the deck NTSC, but when the KONA format is 525-29.97, everything’s great, when KONA is at 23.98 and the SDI is a downconvert signal, that’s when the Digi output goes split screen.

Does that sound like a internal deck setting? We’ve used the deck for years and never had to change a setting, but we’ve usually been doing straight up NTSC.

I probably should have mentioned that this is all going through an HD-SDI router, too.

[David Jahns]

We’ve just put in an EditShare system, and I’m really impressed so far.

We have both Avid & FCP (11 total edit stations) – the Avids have been on Unity for years, and we tried the new version of Unity 5 (supposedly supports FCP) – and didn’t work at all for us. Captured media (files created by the Unity) was fine, but any media copied to the Unity, then IMPORTED would go offline every 20 minutes or so.

The Avid Sales Rep & Tech support had no clue at all how FCP worked – they suggested capturing everything through Log & Capture – audio, graphics, quicktimes, etc… Yeah, that’s a good workflow!

We also looked at Facilis/Terrablock – but decided Volume Level SAN didn’t fit our workflow. It’s great for high-bandwidth, but we needed a file level SAN.

Anyway – we just installed a 24TB EditShare system that works with BOTH FCP & Avid – and it rocks. Not only is it shared media, they’ve even developed a way to share FCP projects almost as seamlessly as Unity.

We even have some systems running both platforms – FCP-KONA and AVID/MOJO on the same Intel Mac, with the same SAN connection! (different start up disks)

It’s Gig-E based, not fibre based, so Uncompressed HD is not an option, but we’re using DV, Uncompressed SD, DVCProHD, ProRes HD – and 1GB Ethernet is consistently delivering 60MB/sec to a dozen workstations. We have one system set up as an HD finishing station with SATA Raids for Uncompressed work, but all of the other stations can do SD finishing or HD compressed . (Actually – they do have a 10GB E-net option, if you need to share Uncompressed HD, but that gets really expensive.)

It’s not cheap (at least for 24TB & 11 users) – but it works. The Admin tools & server organization take a little while to wrap your head around, and there is definitely some workflow adjustments, especially with sharing FCP projects – but it is SO worth it.

And their tech support is outstanding. The president of the company wrote me back on a Saturday morning answering in-depth tech questions. And for normal weekday support – I’ve gotten e-mails returned within the hour, and even follow ups – “hey, just checking to make sure that solved your problem.” I’ve never had any other company do that.

If collaboration in FCP is your goal, EditShare is the best thing I’ve seen.

[David Jahns]

but the link on that 6.0.1 page does not download an installer, it takes you to a general FCP Download page,

https://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/download/

where all of the latest versions are available, but not 6.0.1.

[David Jahns]

Do you mean it’s 4×3 anamorphically squished, with black bars on the sides?

It should stretch the HD 4×3 anamorphic footage out when you render it out 320 x 180 with square pixels.

I have had issues in the past with “export using Compressor” directly from the timeline – it would squish the text layers, but not the video.

Anyway – Try Exporting the HD seq as a self-contained QT, then take that into Compressor and you should get a fullframe 16 x 9 QT.

[David Jahns]

Interesting, but no – I have never seen it before.

We just installed an EditShare system, and I must say that I am really impressed so far. It was fairly pricey, but it works! And it will allow true Avid-Unity style project sharing amongst our 8 Final Cut Pro edit rooms.

I’m not deep enough into yet to write up a whole review/endorsement, but so far, so good. It lives up to its’ claims, and so far it’s rock solid.