[Ed Dooley]

Yeah, the feature isn’t activated with the IO either (not really a card anyway). You’re right about the settings memory. It’s a clip-by-clip process. Luckily we put bars on every tape, so for most stuff it’s one setting per tape, *but* we do run into hot shots every so often. Does the AJA Kona Control Panel have proc-amp features?
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

The Clip Settings tab in Log and Capture is active for 3rd party video cards. For our Beta digitizing, we have a Sony UVR-60 Remote Control unit attached to the deck to tweak the signal while digitizing.
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

If the kids’ heads are not in the window frame, you could duplicate the layer, crop it to cover just the window, and adjust the layer with the kids to bring out their faces, letting the window get as blown out as it wants, then adjust the cropped layer to bring the window levels down to where you want them.
Sometimes adjusting just the gamma can help too because it doesn’t increase the whites and blacks, mostly just the mid-tones (with some exceptions).
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

Western Digital used to have a terrible reputation, but these days their top-end drives
get very good reviews.
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

Barefeats.com did a test comparing the built-in FW800 port to a LaCie FW800 carbus card. A couple of diffrences, but generally the same speeds.
https://www.barefeats.com/fire42.html
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

I’d hate to see what your tape ratio is for a *big* project! 🙂
First, I’m very excited about the camera, I just don’t know if I can afford all the extras needed for what will be a 2nd camera for me. It’s a bit too early to tell what the FireStore unit will actually be, but they *do* have products similar to their announcement, so I think we can assume the new product will be somewhat like them.
I shoot long-form documentaries, in the field a lot. The added costs to the tapeless solution are: extra batteries (the FS-4 batteries supposedly have a 90 minute charge, one’s not enough), at HD resolution, a way to dump footage periodically (and a place in the field, or nearby, to dump it to) unless I buy 2 or moreunits (now we’re up to $4,000+), some way to archive the footage (I use footage across multiple projects all the time, so without tape I need to spend the time and money for more drives to archive footage). If I go with Panasonic’s solution for P2 cards, I still need to spend a lot: Assuming that P2 cards come down in price somewhat, I still need to buy a couple (or more), *and* I need the expensive Panasonic hard drive solution to dump footage to.
I, for one, am hoping for a home-made solution that will enable us to have swappable drives in an enclosure that won’t break the bank.
Ed

[Nick B] “Our production company has just orded close to $1000 worth of DV tapes for 1 small project, so $2000 for a drive for us to go tapeless is good value and in basic terms it would make us $1k on the 3rd job.

These products are not aimed at the hobby market, if you realy cannot afford $2k for storage you are in the wrong business or not charging clients enough.”

[Barry Green] “The current FS-4 Pro costs something like $1700 for the 80gb version. And then you have to spend another $299 to get it to be compatible with HDV.

So, presuming the new product is similar to the FS-4 Pro, them saying “under $2,000” would place it directly comparable to their existing product.

I really hope it isn’t an FS-4 style device — I really, really, really think it’d be more useful if it had user-swappable hard disks. But, we know nothing about it yet. All Focus has really done here is confirm that they will be developing a product for the HVX; I don’t think they’ve committed to any form factor or anything else yet.
“

[Ed Dooley]

I was responding to this statement:
[Chris Babbitt] “A 7200 rpm drive is best, but for a bus powered drive, you are limited to 60-gig capacity.”

The Wiebetech cases are fairly new I think.
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

Not true Chris, Wibetech.com makes a bus powered FW800/400/USB enclosure for 3.5″ drives (120,160, & 200gigs). Of course, a 3.5″ drive will use more of your battery than a 2.5″.
Ed

https://www.wiebetech.com/products/ultragbplus.php

[Chris Babbitt] …..”While it would be nice to have a fw800 drive, there is no real benefit over fw400 for editing dv material. The most important consideration for you is portability & capacity. A 7200 rpm drive is best, but for a bus powered drive, you are limited to 60-gig capacity. I think the largest capacity in a pocket drive is 80-gig, but these are slower, and may drop frames on final playback. Like I said before, I can hook up my Hitachi Travelstar drive to my G5, after editing on the Powerbook, and play back a 90 minute program without a single dropped frame. If you can get by with 60 gigs, this would be your best bet. G-Tech makes a model which utilizes this drive, and the enclosure has built-in heat sinks, which is good, because these drives get very warm.”

[Ed Dooley]

Self-contained just means the file you export is a complete stand-alone file that can be moved to other machines if needed, without linking back to the original material. By not selecting self-contained, you’re creating a reference file that points back to the original material. The advantage is you don’t have to wait forever (as you might for the self-contained file to export), the disadvantage is, since it links/points to the original material, you can’t move the reference file or the original files while you’re using the ref file for compressing or affecting, or you lose the link.
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

I personally put together my own external FW800 drives because I can swap out the drives if needed. But if you’re only asking about the G-RIAD vs the LaCie BDX, the things I’ve heard, which you may or may not find important, are that the G-RAID performance is more constant than the LaCie as the drives fill up (G-RAID has a read/write-the-inner of one drive and read/write-the-outer of the other setup, which keep the throughput constant). There have been lots of complaints on theis and other boards about LaCies fail rate, which seems very high based on the complaints. LaCie reps have responded that it only seems high because they sell so many units that there would naturally be more complaints. http://www.barefeats.com has compared the 2 units https://www.barefeats.com/fire46.html
And if money’s no object, buy the $50 FW800 cardbus card, it’s only (did I say?) $50. Finally, if money’s no object, why aren’t you going to monitor externally? Have you been bad? Do you need to punish yourself?
Ed