[Grinner Hester]

missed you too, man.
Been trying to work less and play more.

it hasn’t been working though. 😉
heres what I’ve been up to:
https://grinnerhester.com/Magnums.html
I hope to have a pilot worthy of pitching in a couple of months. Not a Monster garage type of show… more of a show about car enthusiasts themselves.
I’ve always dug cars and have always loved video. Just makes sense for me to be makin’ car videos, man.

[Grinner Hester]

You’ll need to get external scopes.
I would have thought by now there would be a realtime plug in for this but to my knowledge, 3-promg is the only one addings scopes. They have to be rendered though, and it’s displayed on your NTSC monitor. 🙁

I remember 10 years ago wondering why there were no windows for scopes measuring output.
…still wondering.

[Grinner Hester]

dead? Man, I speacialize in cheating death. Just been buried in work. I’ve become a very dull boy… all work n no play.
I’m not really looking at DS Nitris or BS Nitris. DS Editor wouldn’t make sense for me, DS is just too expensive for me and Symphony Nitris is well, not even funny.
I’ll end up goin with Adrenaline once it supports HDV natively. Gonna try to milk it till then.
as if I havn’t been milkin’ it for the last two years.

ever notice how ya push buttons more gently when yer box is illin? I’ve been doin the one finger slow-motion button pushin “cmon baby, hang in there” thang.
lol

[Grinner Hester]

Man, I get to reformat that those drives about every two years weather they need it or not. This means it aint due for another 18 months! Seriously, I can’t take everything oiffline and won’t be able to for a while. I’m always looking for a window of opportunity for that. Since I don’t seem to find em, this ole girl is just providing em, I guess.

thanks for the help, man.

[Grinner Hester]

Your best bet is to print out samples of your fonts and keep that as a reference. In title tool, all you can do is select a font at a time to see whats what.
With a print out, the client can just tell ya what they want.

[Grinner Hester]

[ian mccann] ” What makes it worth twice the asking price of FCP?”
The fact that you already know the interface. Outside of that… not a thing. FCP offers better quality and the stability is about the same as that of Adrenaline.
The two shouldn’t be compaired. If your a multi-Avid house with Unity, I could see having Adrenaline tucked away in a corner somewhere but if you’r wanting to do pretty HD projects, it’s DVE alone leaves it out.
As for the differences between it and you current sytem, animatte is the biggest one but you have animated masks in AE.
I’d milk the Xpress longer, unless it croaked… and I doubt it did. Avid use to make workhorses. That’s why so many of us still lean on em.
Their only product that is a significant upgrade to what you have is Nitris… uh that’s the DS Nitris not the other thing. You’ll wanna wait until it’s price comes down to reality though. It’s worth 70 grand. Until that’s what it costs, I either keep milkin’ my old symphony or move onward.

Dunno how much HDV you do but Vegas keeps growing and may be worth looking into for you. Not as a replacement but as an addition. It’s very affordable, has true 5.1 surround, offers native HDV support and is probably the bast value on the market in the consumer and even prosumer world.
On that note, you may wanna look into Xpress Pro with Mojo. Again, not as a replacement but as an addition.

Don’t get in a hurry. Shop slowly.
Good luck with whatever you decide on.

[Grinner Hester]

thanks chris.
I have a Symphony, v3.1 with lotsa plugins.
I use alot of glows, as you saw.
I also use AE alot, as my DVE is close to worthless.
When time provides, I use SoftImage 3D and every now and again, I get to bust out some stop motion coolness.

[Grinner Hester]

I’m pretty rusty on those ever-changing prices but I did just get an email from Autodesk offering me 70k off any product with trade in of my Symphony.
Last number I heard (on SGI) was 140k, I think.
Don’t hold me to that.. it’s been a while.
They did look outstanding at NAB, for what it’s worth.
… but then, So did eQ and DS Nitris.

[Grinner Hester]

eQ is around 120.000$ complete, Nitris DS complete is …….?
$100k
Realtime compositing effects will be probably the same athough I heared somewhere that the 3D DVE and Character generation in Nitris DS is 8 bit only?
As far as I know they are 10 bit, but then, Avid said that about Symphony too. Not sure now that you bring it up.
What is the difference between the Nitris DS and Nitris DS Editor?
the 3D DVE. I wouldn’t bother with editor. Quite the teaser.
Is the compositing on a higher level (in terms of tools and possibility) then After Effects?
No, not at all but having the same capabilities within the DVE saves alot of time, and therefor, makes it more powerful, imo.
At what point is there a process or render button needed to push on. For example when I do scaling, positioning and glow fully animated on four layers do I need to render? HD and or SD.
Yes to both of those. Anything ya do is considered a stream.. even a dissolve when an effect is there.
It really aint that bad though. You can render and keep rocking on, without having to wait for it.

If effects are your thang, eQ is your buddy. It’s just freakin’ awesome. If hard-hitting editing that requires effects is what your looking for, Nitris is the bombdiggity. While I do feel forced by Avid to buy this product, the bottom line is it’s great. 100k great? Well, no but it’s well worth $70k and Avid doesn’t offer any good products for 70k. That leaves the question… $120k for eQ and have all you ever wanted in effects land while spending a little extra time than needed editing… or overpay for Nitris, edit quickly but wish you had more power in effects land (like that SWEEEET tracker that trakcs off screen with no problemo in eQ).
Only your workflow can answer that question.
Have you looked at Smoke?

[Grinner Hester]

Adrenaline (or a used meridien-based MC) would be best for what you’ve described.
Getting technical, digibeta is 2:1 so, no you can’t really do 1:1 with it but you can do it as uncompressed as any linear bay could.
Not trying to confuse the issue there. Based on how ya asked it though… no.