[Earthworm]

I’ve done DIY fiber setups using SANmp. It keeps costs down and I think it’s an ideal setup for a small company (we’re currently running 5 Final Cut systems.)

Since you already have fiber storage, all you would only need to buy the fiber itself, a fiber switch and the SANmp fiber card/license bundle for each station.

There are a lot of different SAN solutions. SANmp has it’s drawbacks (mainly one one user can have write access to a partition at a time) but it’s solid and saves you the cost of a metadata server. I’ve used it for about 5 years and never lost data.

And, no I don’t sell it. I’m just a very satisfied customer.

[Earthworm]

I was capturing via RS-422. I tried the FW capture and I am not getting phantom breaks. However, I came across an actual TC break (7 frame break) and FCP was unable to continue capturing. After a while in which the deck didn’t seem to be doing anything, the capture dialogue box states ‘finished’ even though only part of my original logged clip is captured. I’m thinking to chalk this one up to the HDV format and/or a cameraman mistake (dont know how the tape was run 7 frames forward… power on/off?).

Still, the FW device control is an improvement. Thanks, Walter.

[Earthworm]

I’ve seen this happen with subclips trying to capture the entire source clip (even after managing). There may be a better way but I believe if you duplicate as a new master clip and try to recapture it should capture just the desired section.

You should be able to find the offending clip(s) by changing the view in the browser to show duration in descending order, find which one it wants to capture too much of. Or you can scan through the browser and look for clips with the subclip icon and do the same.

[Earthworm]

Walter,

I agree with your response. While Color does ‘democratize’ the Color Correction field what I believe it will do is lower the standards of picture/color quality. Sure there will always be high end clients who understand quality and are willing to pay for it, it’s those mid-range clients who will unknowingly accept lower quality. I’ve experienced executives and upper management-types who make the decisions based on money alone. Instead of accepting the cost of color correction/finishing they’ll just say ‘hey we have this software, lets just have an assistant editor learn how to use it.’ (I’ve heard almost that exact sentence…)
Now that they’ll have Color there’s no buffer to prevent this thinking.

An analogy… 30 years ago in the jewelry industry you couldn’t find the quality of diamonds that are sold at most mall-type jewelry stores today. Mall stores came in and started selling diamonds that were previously considered only for industrial use. Since the average consumer didn’t know the difference, they thought they were getting the same thing but for a lower price. Now there are very few mid-range jewelry stores… just the very low quality mall stuff and the high end Tiffany’s of the world..

There are plenty of clients who may not know how good something can get and just ask for their projects to look their best. If every kid out of film school has these tools there will be a large number of clients who settle for what they think is a properly color corrected project, thinking they are getting the same thing for much less.

I am not a professional colorist but I’m very excited about learning Color (I was close to purchasing Final Touch when Apple purchased it) and I am excited about only paying for the FCP upgrade to get it.

Still, I feel I should have to earn the right to call myself a colorist and that includes knowledge, commitment and training that a lot of people are going to now assume costs just $1299.

[Earthworm]

Sorry, I didnt fully explain this…
The Blackmagic Decklink card does a lot of HD-SD downconverts but does not downconvert 720p24 to SD 29.97.

Strangely enough it is able to convert 1080 23.98 to SD 59.94

Don’t know why it can’t add the pulldown to 720p24… Blackmagic doesn’t seem to be a fan of the 720 format.

Here’s the Blackmagic downconversion spec sheet, just FYI.
https://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=103

[Earthworm]

My Blackmagic card doesn’t do the DVCPRO-HD 720p24 to SD 29.97 center-crop downconvert that I need (wish I had the Kona).

Switching to an 8bit timeline did the trick, no strange differences after I render..

Thanks.

[Earthworm]

You add the Broadcast safe after (below) all other filters, right? I’ll give it a try.

[Earthworm]

I had a similar problem. The fix for me was disabling the host cache flushing in the xRAID admin.

[Earthworm]

The cheap and easy way is to make one yourself. The only catch is you don’t have a choice of font. I’m sure there are better ways to do this but this work, it’s easy and free if you have any version of FCP.

1st create a sequence at whatever codec you prefer.
Put a 5:00 clip of either slug or a color matte.
Place the Timecode Reader or Generator effect on the clip.
In the Filter tab, delete the label text. Choose the font color and background color you want to use (easiest thing to do is either black on white or white on black so you can later use the background as a key). Also, for more flexibility later, make the font size as large as will fit on the screen.
If you want, use the Crop tool under the motion tab to cut off the frames counter at the end of the reader or generator.
Nest the slug in the sequence and use Modify Speed to reverse the clip.
Export a Quicktime file and now you have a countdown from 5 minutes.
Use the composite mode to key out the background and you can put it over whatever you want.

[Earthworm]

I checked out the CalDigit RAID. Looks great and definitely worth the money.
The only reason i brought up the Firmtek is because it works well for 8bit 1080 and is inexpensive. I use them just because we already had some and all we needed was 8bit at the time. I agree, having 8 of those eSATA cables would be a hassle, it still beats a $5000-$10000 RAID.

Thanks for the info. I’ll definitely consider it when I need uncompressed 10bit HD.