[Floh Peters]

So how do you export from Media 100? You should export as “By Reference”, and then use e.g. Episode to do all the transcoding. Make sure that you set Episode to correctly read your source footage settings. I am not really sure that there is something wrong with your export from Media 100 (since Media 100 usually does not remove fields when exporting), I would expect that either your source footage is progressive, or there is something wrong in your Episode settings.

[Floh Peters]

[Andy Taplin] “So there’s no need to off-line at say 90KB and then On-line at 360KB – which is what I tend to do now with V8 – just acquire to the DV codec at 3.6 MB/s (144KB/s) which will effectively be the maximum quality DV provides and save a lot of disc space?
“

Yes 🙂

Of course you could offline at maybe 40k and online in DV if you really need to save HD space… 😉

[Floh Peters]

[Andy Taplin] “So if I should capture via Firewire and then edit using DV PAL there is no transcoding of the material at all?
“

There is no capturing for storing the data on your HD. If you go out to SDI the material needs to be uncompressed. If you render an effect on your material it gets transcoded. If you just acquire it via FireWire and play it back via FireWire out of Media 100 you play back exactly what is stored on the tape.

[Andy Taplin] “In theory this should be better than capturing to the M100 MJPEG codec in version 8 and before – So 3.6Mb/s DV will look as good or better than 9Mb/s (360KB) M100 codec? “

Better is always very subjective. There are no artifacts introduced I could see or measure from DV transcoded into Media 100 i codec on the V8 systems. The native DV files out of Media 100 SDI output are maybe a little clearer than e.g. compared to the S-video or component output of a DV player, so you probably can see problems better. If this is an advantage or not is up to you. Some like the slight softening that a component transfer of DV footage is doing to the material and think it looks “better”, although a little bit softer. Anyway, when transferring via FireWire you get exactly what is stored on the tape, which in most cases is considered a benefit.

[Floh Peters]

[Andy Taplin] “Q1. Firewire or SDI capture?(not keen on the extra expense of an SDI board for my DSR 1500 if it’s not necessary)
“
FireWire capture will give you 1:1 the data from the tape. No transcoding is done, you get exactly what the camera stored. The extraction from 4:1:1/4:2:0 to 4:2:2 is done inside Media 100, and I think it uses the same routines as QuickTime and FCP.

[Andy Taplin] “Q2. And which Codec is going to be best for editing – particularly when going in and out of AFX? M100 does not list vanilla DV as a codec option only DVCPro which is 4:2:0 and not DV/DVCAM 4:1:1 so no bit-for-bit import of DV/DVCAM?
“

You can use the DV PAL or NTSC codec (and DVCam, which is the same as DV) inside Media 100. Not really sure why it is not listed (btw. which list are you referring to?). It definitely is an available codec for editing, and for mastering out via FireWire.
The nice thing is that you can mix all available codecs in realtime (and not only some and only for playback like in FCP). So you should acquire your DV footage into DV codec, and your SDI/DigiBeta or whatever footage e.g. into ProRes and place that on the same timeline without any problems. And if you want to master to FireWire/DV, all non-DV files will get recompressed into DV (or DVCPro if you want) in realtime during playback or mastering.

[Floh Peters]

[Nickel] “Hi. I’m configuring a new Mac Pro for use with Media 100 HD. If I plan on using Apple Pro Res and/or DVCPro HD for most of my work, will the offered internal drives be fast enough? They are listed as: 750GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s.
“

They should be fast enough. But I would get 2 internal drives for storage and pair them as a RAID0 drive to be sure.

[Floh Peters]

This seems to be a V12 rendering bug. It happens to me on renders, too (no ColorFX needed). I hope we will see a patch soon…

[Floh Peters]

Do you use Media 100 i or Media 100 HD? The newer systems can acquire into many codecs that are supported in FCP, like ProRes, DV, DVCPro50,…

[Floh Peters]

I would expect that an update to Red gets posted to the Boris website soon. I think there have been some changes made to Red to integrate better with Media 100.

[Floh Peters]

[Matt] “It only happens with imported AE files, rendered as “native” M100i files. If M100 creates the file, “importing NTSC track filename.mov”, it’s fine. Media Digitized by M100 is fine. “

Then you should give it a try rendering in Media 100 i codec (not lossless), and limiting the data rate to 6000k/sec.

[Matt] “Under the local project tab in graffiti I see preferences for straight, premult with white, premult with black, composite over black/white. Does this only affect the output of the graffiti file or does it also affect the compositing of the finished file to the timeline? “

This does not affect Graffiti in combination with Media 100 i.

[Floh Peters]

David,

congratulations to the Media 100 and Boris team for shipping V12.

The new features in this Version are really great. Personally I have to say that the extended, clip based integration with Boris Red is something that I wanted to see for years, and now that it is here I am really thrilled about the possibilities it gives us for building deep and complex composites directly in the Media 100 timeline.
Another really very helpful feature for our daily work is the SD 4:3<->16:9 realtime cross-conversion on the HD Suite systems. A big part of our broadcast productions are still in SD these days, but many of them are 16:9. To be able to play out a broadcast-quality letterboxed version on the fly is brilliant. This is one of these real-world features that dramatically improves our workflow.

Thanks a lot and keep up the great work!!!

Floh