Graeme Nattress
Forum Replies Created
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Frame tagging is to keep the tape running at a constant speed. On P2 there’s no need for it at all.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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If you’ve not already, I’d ask this question over at the Xsan forum here at the Cow. But to answer briefly:
Yes, Xsan does slow things down a bit. For editing full HD with two users, I’d be looking at 2 Xserve RAIDs.
For Xsan you absolutely need a fibre switch and a controller mac. There’s not really any way around that. Yes, you could use one of your edit macs as a controller, but I wouldn’t recommend that as a reliable way to work.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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FCP doesn’t work like M100 at all. What you’re describing sounds like a cheesy hack film look in M100. You don’t need cheesy hacks in FCP – check out my Film Effects for instance at http://www.nattress.com which does full 24p simulation etc.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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All depends on what you mean “Displayed Properly” 🙂
As for 4:2:0, and just about all other colour samplings, it’s not what it looks like when it’s displayed, as most displays don’t have the rez for 4:2:2 never mind 4:4:4 colour to appear any different, and all good output devices will smooth the chroma anyway, it’s what it’s like to work with, doing effects and such.
4:2:0 on progressive makes 2×2 blocks of chroma, and that’s not too bad at all. It’s a very reasonable compromise.
On Interlace, however, you get 2×2 blocks on a field basis, so that 2×2 block gets stretched out over a 4×2 area, interlaced with another 2×2 block, and as you can imagine, this makes it hard to deal with for compositing etc. That’s why I don’t like it. Not because of how it looks on display, but that it’s a right royal pain in the **** to deal with in post production.
As for MPEG4, it’s what HDCAM SR is using, so it’s not at all bad. And as for gradients – any codec at low data rates is going to do that. HDCAM uses 440mbitspersecond, so it’s very, very lightly compressed with a highly efficient codec. And yes, it’s also highly expensive.
MPEG2 has just about proven itself for delivery, but even today I get DVDs that are poorly compressed. There’s very little room for manuever in it’s SD DVD data rates, and HDV’s data rate is very close to the edge also. A 50mbits MPEG2 for HD acquisition would make total sense, but I’d still want to edit it uncompressed.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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Jan, are Panasonic going to be producing any kind of automated P2 to optical media backup device (with bit checking verification to keep Peter happy)? I’d think that kind of device, if affordable (and why should it not be?) would be a great seller.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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DVCpro is much more robust than DVCAM though. Codec is the same, and that’s all that really matters. As for format wars – XDCAM doesn’t fit in camcorders. It’s too big and bulky. If people are buying XDCAM, it’s because of one thing only, and that’s the name Sony on the front of it. You may as well shoot tape as XDCAM.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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I’d hope that’s not the price, as that’s quite ludicrous for a hard drive!!
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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Well, indeed, that’s exactly what they are doing, giving it away for free….. How times change.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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News people regularly re-use tapes. They don’t seem to have a problem with it.
As for erasing your original footage – wiping P2 memory after making a backup is no more dangerous than hitting “save” in your word processor, backing up what was in memory to hard drive, and regularly making CD backups. Everyone does this all the time.
With the current tape process there is NO BACKUP. At least with P2 you have to consciously make one. The weakest link in the current tape process is shooting onto tape. There’s no confidence record, you can’t just plug your data into a laptop to see if it’s all come out all-right. You don’t know if you had a head clog, or some dirt got in, or whatever.
You seem to be trying to make P2 meet higher standards of data security than everyone already applies to tape.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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You are indeed right that under $10k for a DV, DVCpro50 and DVCproHD camera is an absolutely awesome advance forwards, and it’s probably $10k less than it should be by dropping tape.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP