Gary Hazen
Forum Replies Created
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I think it’s safe to assume that Chris means Nitris DX because he said “purchased a Media Composer Nitris”. Media Composer was never meant to work with the Nitris BOB used with DS and Symphony.
Regarding the work flow I agree with Job ter Burg, run the signal down a HD-SDI pipe and capture using the DNxHD codec. HDV is a poor choice for editing.
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I’m not an expert by any means, but I’ll throw this out there.
Fast Blur. As the name implies it render fast, however it’s not as accurate as the other blurs.
Box Blur. Renders take a bit longer than fast blur, but it’s more accurate than fast blur.
Gaussian. The most accurate of the three. Longest render time of the three.Compound blurs and Lens blurs require an additional layer (map) that’s drives the blur. These blurs are more complicated to use, but can produce some interesting results.
That’s way over simplified, but it can help out when deciding which blur to use. Fast blur works fine in many instances.
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“Can an LCD monitor really be trusted for decent/accurate color correction?”
Given the budget ($4k) you can expect a decent LCD display. All of the monitors on your list will get the job done, OK.
For critical accuracy, color grading for example, you’ll need to ramp up the budget quite a bit.
TV Logic (mid range), eCinema and Cine-Tal (high end).
The bottom line is that a high grade LCD display will cost nearly as much as the BVM.Next up…
Someone will chime in and say that an Apple Cinema or Dell is just as good as a Cine-Tal or e-Cinema monitor. -
The only thing I would add to Sam’s post is to tell your graphics guy to install the Avid codecs (Meridien and DNxHD). They can be downloaded from Avid’s site.
AE’s new colorspace management is a good addition to the program, but it’s easy to muck things up if you’re not careful.
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I love the lyrics to the theme music.
“When you look into a mirror
do you like what’s looking at you?
Now that you’ve seen your true reflection
what on earth are ya gonna do?”– True Reflection by Boyd Tinsley
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They (the client) produce a lot of videos and I know they use other companies too, and I’m really wondering if they (the competition) all bend over backwards to make these kinds of deadlines – Eric
It’s a safe bet that your competition is working just as hard or harder than you in maintaining their relationship with this client. It’s the nature of the beast. As you already know this business is fiercely competitive. You do whatever it takes to keep going, which typically means working long hours to meet tight deadlines. As Mark said charge a fair rate and all will be well in the universe. For the job that had to be turned around in 24 hours it wouldn’t be unreasonable to pass through overtime charges that were necessary to complete the job on time. For the highlights video I would charge them 2 full days of editing (Fri/Sat.) with no rush or overtime charges. Yeah, it stinks that you had to work another weekend, but at least you made some money.
“As a new small production company owner…” – Eric
I don’t know how long you’ve been in business – you may already know this. It is much easier to retain an existing client than it is to find a new client. Meaning bend over backwards if that’s what it takes to maintain the relationship. The exception is if the client is a grinder, i.e. they expect you to do a one day shoot and a two day edit for $500 and they complain about how much money they spent. Ron has an article here on Grinders that every new business owner should read. If your client is a grinder it’s time to move on and find a better client.
The question isn’t, are they taking advantage of me?
The question is, am I allowing them to take advantage of me?
If you’re getting a fair price for your efforts then no one is being taken advantage of. -
Take a look at Thomson Grass Valley’s Turbo iDDR. It will handle SD and HD.
https://professional.grassvalley.com/products/turbo/
You might be able to rent the Turbo or other DDR from your local staging company if this is a one time event. If it’s an ongoing program you should get a demo and see what you think. The cost is about the same as you would pa for a low end Betacam deck – about 10K used or 13 – 15K new.
Although this sounds like a sales pitch I don’t work for GVG. Our company does use their K2 file servers as well as a Turbo unit. A clip server (DDR) is a good solution when the situation calls for playing out many clips & formats. If the Grass unit doesn’t fit your needs or budget have a look at the other DDR’s out there: Abekas Clipstore, Drastic Technologies, Digital Rapids, RaveHD, BUGtv (Mac based), AVstumfl and others.
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Without a vectorscope you can’t adjust the SC phase with any certainty. In simple terms the color might be out of whack. If you’re not doing critical work I suppose you could eyeball the sync and phase. “Close enough for government work”, as they say.
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” Is there anything more to it than that? ” – CW
Well, yes there’s a lot more to it. You need a decent waveform/vectorscope and an engineer to properly time all the sources.
I don’t recommend trying to resurrect the KM-2000. You could throw a bunch of money at it just to find that it’s not a very good switcher. Sorta like spending a bunch of money fixing a Ford Pinto’s brakes and then have the transmission fail a few weeks later.
It sounds like you need a switcher with built in frame syncs (so you don’t have to worry about system timing) or you may need a simple 4 x 1 router. I’m not clear on what the intended use for the switcher is.