[Hector Berrebi]

[Rahul Duggal] “But I’d say that some of the newer features of Lion are pretty big irritants. And someone who is already pissed off at the lack of Pro control over FCP-X might just be pushed over the edge.”

do tell…

are you testing FCPX on the golden beta?

your description is short but scarey (isn’t everything these days…)

would like to read more.

thanks in advance

about the sluggishness
as we tested X on many systems in past weeks, i can say that hardware and its age is key feature in performance.
RAM+CPU-age+Graphic-card+drive speed makes a very big difference

Hector Berrebi
prePost Consulting

[Hector Berrebi]

[Michael Adante] “Is MXF DnxHD?”

you ask many things 🙂

i’ll do my best to clarify, as i know its not simple to migrate to a new system. may come out a long answer…

MXF is a container, as in xxxxx.MXF, just like .MOV it can support many codecs, unlike .MOV it is much less proprietary.

for example, P2 from panasonic, and XDCAM from sony are MXF wrapped, and Avid supports their codecs and seamlessly supports working native with both.

Avid’s Codec list is long and not all codecs are relevant today or useful to you, many are there for legacy and backward compatibility issues.

on the other hand its free, cross platform, and even the DNX code is open for developers to use.

MXF is and open standard for professional video. read the wiki on it.

when you capture to MC from tape, Avid creates MXF files in the Avid Mediafiles folder. they can be written (depending on your capture hardware) in different codecs depending on your media, and needs.

if you capture DV off FW for example, Avid can write DV files wrapped in MXF (Avid DV25 420, 411) same goes for HDV.
if you capture via SDI or component, you can choose other flavors ranging from IMX to 1:1 10 bits RGB. the different MXF ratios are various levels of offline compression ratios, all comparing to 1:1 uncompressed. they are generally obsolete now that drives are large and fast and rather cheap.

DNXHD is a family of codecs (can exist in MXF or MOV) that are somewhat similar to the ProRes family, but are exclusive to HD (720 and 1080) they range from DNXHD36/45 (changes with frame rate) , similar to PR proxy (36 Mbs about 50% more drive consuming than DV) to DNX185/220 X which is 10 bits, and mastering quality. all DNX support alpha channels, all clip to the 709 luma range, and all are (still) 4:2:2.

hopefully soon there will be a better 4:4:4 option that compares to PR 4X4. recently 1:1 10bit RGB was added, for ultra high-end mastering

when you work in HD, you will rarely need to capture or transcode to 1:1 10 bits. in most cases its an overkill, and you will want to work with DNX.

avid workflows include transcoding in them and that’s the right way to go. (do not mix it with FCP L&T)

in general, working with tapless formats,
you will link via AMA,
files open in a bin
if its XDCAM or P2 you can generally just start working with no need to transcode. some limitations still occur without transcode, but there are workarounds and they will be hopefully fixed soon.
for other formats (DSLR, RED…) you will transcode all media inside Avid to a flavor of DNX (depending on your system strength, drive space available and amount of media) either 36/45 for offline/online workflow or 185/220 for online all the way (the middle flavors are for smaller HD formats, its an overkill to transcode DSLR to 220, 120/145 is largely enough in most cases etc’)

once you transcode, Avid writes the files in MXF to its media folder

now you can rename and organize them, even transcode just part of files based on needs

if you worked online, you can export same as source at the end.
if you worked offline, you can relink your final sequence to original media via AMA and then transcode only it (with handles) to a higher codec for mastering and export.

all this works very well, and like i mentioned, all that’s missing is a high-end flavor of DNX (which is a plausible near future update) , and maybe to possibility to write other resolutions, both larger and smaller than HD (less plausible)

avid media management and file linking is in most cases rock-solid comparing it to FCP

if you look back in this forum you can find many workflow answers (i know i written quite a few here) for virtually any need you may encounter.

here is a good one to start with:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/45/878151

being a user of Avid and FCP and a trainer in both, best advice i can give you is, don’t try to make Avid behave like FCP, and get proper organized training… it will make everything much easier

hope this helps

hector

Hector Berrebi
prePost Consulting

[Hector Berrebi]

[Greg Burke] ” Hey All What AJA Product would do the same thing as Blackmagics INtensity Pro? Thanks.”

if i may rephrase your question…

if you meant to ask if there are IO devices for Avid that are relatively inexpensive, like intensity is…

then you have the MATROX MXO2 mini. it will give you video out for monitoring on HD and SD. no inputs yet.

hopefully with the next release there will be more hardware support

Hector Berrebi
prePost Consulting

[Hector Berrebi]

hi Greg

yes, there is a tool in the smart tool pallet that controls audio keyframes on your tracks

you can map it to a keyboard shortcut… P for all it matters 🙂

then you have to activate it on your tracks. make sure RTAS is open then select “auto gain”

now with the general keyframe shortcut “ on your keyboard
you can place keyframes on selected tracks.

it may seem a little clumsy at first when coming fro FCP, but you’ll get used to it.

avid editors switching to FCP often feel the same

get proper Avid training. it makes it a lot easier.

hector

Hector Berrebi
prePost Consulting

[Hector Berrebi]

[Dave LaRonde] ” I haven’t been able to locate where I read it.”

was it here?

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/9241

Hector Berrebi
prePost Consulting

[Hector Berrebi]

[wayne dupuis] “background when…blink. round ball and nothing.”

here is a small test i posted over at the FCPX techniques Forum..
it says nothing about actual work.. but it does say a lot about short term patience 🙂

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/344/1147

to make it short…

it took me about 15 minutes of beach balls and system freeze to natively link 55 32GB Canon DSLR cards and 20+ audio cards with WAV files,
a total of 4770 files which i had full access to and could work with smoothly
if i actually wanted to edit in X… 🙁

hector

Hector Berrebi
prePost Consulting

[Hector Berrebi]

[Dennis Radeke] ” For DNxHD, the editing experience is okay but definitely not great.”

ok Dennis… no questions on AVF, (can we start calling it that?)

but Avid’s DNX is actually optimized for MXF, is it so complicated for premiere to properly support it? (it does somehow, but less than satisfactory)

i thought MXF was rather open…
RED’s free REDCINE-X does a great job writing them for one… and there are many other tools around to read and write these files..

for a short wonderful time it was even possible to open Avid’s AAF in premiere and link to media… now its broken… last time i checked it worked only for DV files…

i know this lost connection to original thread… sorry 🙂

hector

Hector Berrebi
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[Hector Berrebi]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Color being EOLd is a huge bummer”

Hi Jeremy

It is still…
I’m just finishing the last advanced color course I’ll give in a film school I teach at.
We went in depth for weeks, then I had to tell the class that it’s EOLd.

RIP color

But at least with EDL/XML we can all shift quietly to Da-Vinci 🙂

Hector Berrebi
prePost Consulting

[Hector Berrebi]

[Craig Seeman] “It may well open the door for Sony if they can put together a workstation competitive to HPZ series for example.”

That would be the day… Lol
A Vaio workstation 🙂 optimized for Vegas.

It’s hard for me to believe they ever will… And if they ever do, hard to believe it would be anything close to HPZ series.

Hector Berrebi
prePost Consulting

[Hector Berrebi]

[Craig Seeman] “Note that Sony is supporting Thunderbolt but will be using a USB3 like connector rather than miniDisplay like connector.”

Yup, it was in the second sentence in the post you just replied to. 🙂

The passion Craig, you probably overlooked it…

BTW, i think that as of 2012 apple will have no exclusivity over TB.

Hector Berrebi
prePost Consulting