[Graham Jones]

Hi,

it’s possible that my LH is not working correctly or set up correctly, as I wasn’t able to get it to downconvert a non-letterboxed format to my SD monitor, no matter what I did in the AJA control panel. Plus, even the letterboxed downconversion was giving major jitters.

I am under the gun for delivery and can’t spend any time trying to diagnose the issue with the LH card at the moment. Your method does sound easier, but I’ll have to wait until I get a break to do any further R&D.

Thanks,
Graham.

[Graham Jones]

Hi,

Thanks Walter and John. Actually I solved it in a different way, with some very important notes.

I used my initial method of changing the sequence settings from DVCProHD 1080i60 to the KonaLH 10 bit uncompressed SD preset (720×486 non-anamorphic). Then:

1. Motion Filtering Quality for the sequence (in sequence settings) MUST NOT BE SET TO “BEST”. This creates field issues. Using “Normal” solves this for most footage, if note #2 is applied.
2. Must use the “Shift Fields” filter, set to “-1” — this is applied automatically by FCP to new footage that is edited into the sequence, but an existing sequence must have it manually applied to each clip.
3. Because of the order in which FCP processes its effects, any clips that have speed changes must be nested first before the “Shift Fields” filter is applied. If the “Shift Fields” filter is applied to a clip with a speed change, it will have field issues.

This lets me pan-scan each clip in an SD sequence, and monitor on my SD monitor, rendering out 10-bit uncompressed exactly as it will be seen. To my eye, the quality this way is superior to the hardware downconversion on the KonaLH.

I hope this helps other people with similar issues.

Thanks,
Graham.

[Graham Jones]

Hi,

I’m still experiencing this with FCP 6.0.5 and MacOS 10.5.6 on a Mac Pro with DVCProHD footage.

Nasty.

– Graham

[Graham Jones]

Hi,

Were you able to solve this? I am experiencing this same issue on a Mac Pro running OS 10.5.6 and FCP 6.0.5, with DVCPro HD 1080i60 footage. I am under a tight deadline for broadcast delivery and am pulling my hair out!

Thanks,
Graham.

[Graham Jones]

Hi Joe,

That’s good news… sort of. Can we trade system specs and see what’s different about your system? Obviously lots of Mac users are having the same symptoms as me, and we need to isolate what’s causing this.

I have tried on:

– Mac Pro (Intel) 2xDual Core 2.66 GHz 8 GB Kingston RAM, Mac OS 10.5.1, QT 7.3.1, Adobe CS3 (no updates at the time– this was about 2months ago), Sony & Pioneer internal burners.

– Macbook (Intel) Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz 2 GB Kingston RAM, Mac OS 10.5.1, QT 7.3.1, Adobe CS3 (no updates at the time– this was about 2months ago), Matsushita internal burner.

– Dual G5/2.5 GHz 4.5 GB Kingston RAM, Mac OS 10.4.11, QT 7.3.1, Adobe CS3 (no updates at the time– this was about 2months ago), Sony internal burner & external LaCie. Decklink SP card also installed, I think with 6.0 drivers at the time.

Media tried was Verbatim 16x, Maxell 8x, Fuji 16x, but always burned at 4X speed.

Thanks,
Graham.

[Graham Jones]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for your comments; no problem.

– Graham.

[Graham Jones]

Hi Jeff,

I have to disagree, and this is from years of experience… I’ve burned many thousands of DVD’s authored with the nearly free iDVD and with DVD Studio Pro, and while there have been a very (stress “very”) small number of discs not playable on clients’ machines, I get around a 98% or 99% success rate, and the 1 or 2 % are most often because of clients using cheap players.

Compare that to a 0% success rate with Encore… If I pay the large sum of money for Adobe’s authoring program I would like the discs it burns to play on at least ONE player.

And… I am very skeptical that the disc image I create in Encore will not have the issues if I get it replicated. To me there is obviously something that gets missed in the code it creates on the Mac side.

In case you doubt my success numbers, let me explain that with iDVD and DVD Studio Pro I always create a disc image and burn from the disc image rather than from the authoring program, I never burn faster than 4x (slower for replication masters), I always enable verification, I warn clients about using older or low quality players, and I always use the highest quality media.

Using the same safeguards with Encore always produces an unplayable disc.

– Graham.

[Graham Jones]

Hi,

I agree— the firewire input on consumer DVD decks (even good brand names) introduces a very noticeable degrading in quality. They must use really low-grade firewire circuitry.

ADS also makes a pretty low cost Firewire-analog device, which also inputs and outputs component video. You can get it for about $150.

https://www.adstech.com/products/API-558-EFS/intro/API-558_intro.asp?pid=API-558-EFS

Hope this helps,
Graham Jones.

[Graham Jones]

Hi,

check out the drive compatibility database at https://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/drivedb/search.drivedb.lasso — I would suggest that that LaCie external burner will probably give you the least trouble.

– G.

[Graham Jones]

Hi,

I had to abandon testing and rebuild in DVD Studio Pro, because of a deadline. Luckily, all of the Encore menus are Photoshop files and can be used in DVD Studio Pro without too much trouble.

– G.