Don Greening
Forum Replies Created
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For us Blu-ray will be the easiest way to get our HD content out to the most clients. If a customer is asking about HD now and wants their project finished in HD you can bet that they’re thinking Blu-ray because that’s the only game in town as far as today’s consumer knows.
We’ll be doing the Final Cut Pro – Compressor – Roxio Toast with Blu-Ray plug in route starting this year. If it wasn’t for buying other equipment that was more pressing we would already have a Blu-ray burner and starting our tests.
Up ’till now we’ve been supplying the odd client with H.264 HD versions of their project just to give them a “gift with purchase”. These files have been copied to their own computer so they can show their clients.
– Don
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[Michael Slowe] “I appreciate that files can be stored on Blu-Ray but you can’t feed files into a projector or even HD TV can you?”
No you can’t, and if you were able to then you would have done your archiving improperly. What we’re all suggesting is a backup of your native EX files to alternate mediums such as Blu-ray or XDCAM disc. With programs like Toast® 10 it’s never been easier to backup to Blu-ray media. When you consider that dual layer BD-R discs will hold an advertised 50 Gbytes of data it makes sense to at least give it some thought.
As has been pointed out already, backing up data, and in this case EX video files, you simply copy the files to your backup medium. It’s just a drag and drop thing. There is no encoding to another format such as an MPEG2 or H.264 video stream that you can view with a Blu-ray player. To do so defeats the whole purpose of backing up original format files.
– Don
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[Frank Manno] “Why would I ever need/want it since I have the MXF files? “
When you were shooting tape did you toss them in the garbage after capturing what you needed to your computer or did you throw them in a box to collect dust?
Your answer will tell you what to do about the BPAV folders after you’re done importing what you want from them, because these folders are the new video tape.
– Don
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[Jamie Kennerley] “PS. This shouldn’t ever really be a problem when it’s exporting should it? Or could it still have problems building a movie?”
If you’re not seeing a picture problem when the playhead is parked on a frame then there’s nothing wrong with the actual footage. It’s just a playback thing. You shouldn’t see any glitches in anything you export from the timeline, either. Remember, if you’ve set FCP to play back using “unlimited plus dynamic RT” Final Cut Pro will lower the playback resolution (sometimes severely) to avoid dropping frames so you can have smooth playback.
As my esteemed peers have mentioned, your best indicator of the actual picture quality should be judged using a broadcast monitor. Failing that, open an EX clip in QT Player set to full res. and have a look that way OR use the “Digital Cinema Desktop Preview” view option within FCP. This is where it’s nice to have 2 monitors for editing where your 2nd one is a 23″ display so you can see the full raster 1920×1080 EX image in all its “native” glory.
– Don
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One of this forum’s hosts, Craig Seeman, had a similar issue with one of the early EX1’s with super slow zoom speeds. After some attempts to have it fixed Sony ended up replacing the whole camera. Of course, since you didn’t mention what kind of camera you’re having problems with (early or more recent EX1 builds or any EX3 builds) this info may or may not be helpful to you.
– Don
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Make sure your playback is set to Unlimited RT and also Dynamic RT. That way FCP will try to play back everything without dropping frames. In order to do that FCP will lower the resolution in the playback window first and then start dropping frames if lowering the resolution still isn’t enough.
[Chad Simcox] “Footage is on an internal drive.”
Is this one (1) eSATA internal drive in one of the Mac Pro’s 4 drive bays? Have you tried transfer rate test using something like the AJA Kona Systems Test app? It’s free at the AJA web site and will tell you what the read/write speeds of the internal drive is.
– Don
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[Paul Burgess] “It states there will be a new driver issued in December 2008 but I cannot find that driver – has it bee issued?”
Yes it has. It’s available at the Canada Sony web site. Below the Mac version of the SxS Pro driver it clearly states that: “The new Macbook Pro released after October 2008 is supported.”
Here you go:
https://www.sony.ca/promedia/drivers.htm
– Don
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Your Macbook Pro is missing the codec that you exported with from your Mac Pro. That’s why you’re getting the blank/white screen on playback. There are many, many QT codecs available (just look at them all in your easy setups window) and they all end in the MOV suffix after export. Go back and find out what codec you used for export and make sure the same one is available on your Macbook Pro.
– Don
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[Beom Koh] “I think my sequence setting was wrong. It was set to HDV. “
With the release of Final Cut Pro 6 you can create any sequence you want. When you drag your first video clip to the “Overwrite” dialogue in the Canvas window, if the sequence settings don’t match your clip settings a dialogue box will come up. You will be asked if you want to change the sequence settings to match the clip settings. Choose “yes”. After that your sequence will retain all the attributes of your fist clip. No more problems with trying to create a sequence manually to match your video clips.
Not that I’ve ever tried monitoring video via a Kona HD-SDI output I wouldn’t think there would be any quality difference between that and an Apple 23″ or 30″ HD Cinema HD display. If you have a broadcast monitor for colour correction/monitoring then that’s one of the purposes of having a SDI connection from the Kona board. Any picture quality differences would be because of what you’re watching it on and wouldn’t have anything to do with the actual difference in video processing.
– Don
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This EX3 focus glitch issue is fast becoming just as common as the vignetting/back focus issues with the EX1 during the first half of last year. Hopefully when it’s time to buy my EX3 this year Sony will have it all figured out.
– Don