[Hkingy]

I was wondering if anyone else was experiencing this problem. I had asked a similar question in a post just down the list a bit titled “New Xena user questions”. I list a few other problems we were having but they have been resolved. The only issue left is the lack of a 720×486 1.2 pixel aspect preset in Premiere CS2 and CS3.

I won’t restate everything I said in my other post but I will say that in our engineer’s last call to AJA, they said they’d have that preset for us in a week. So we’ll give them a week but by Friday if there is no solution, we will be replacing it with a Decklink card… which has performed superbly on our other PC.

By the way, I CAN do the 720×486 widescreen setting in After Effects CS3 and it will output through the Xena card perfectly including audio. Also, I can import/export a 486 widescreen Photoshop image through the card as well. I am quite satisfied with the AJA functionality in these 2 programs. I’ll keep you posted on what we find out at the end of the week.

Harlan

[Hkingy]

Our engineer called AJA support a couple of weeks ago and they said there will be a D1 720×486 widescreen preset in the new driver update for Adobe Premiere CS3. Last Friday, we received our CS3 Production Premium and installed the new AJA 3.0 drivers. Guess what, no widescreen preset for Premiere.

Why can you create 720×486 widescreen canvas sizes in After Effects, Photoshop, Sony Vegas, etc but not with the AJA preset in Premiere? Doesn’t make sense. We can do it on our Decklink PC.

Our engineer called AJA support again and they said they’d have something for us in a week that’ll give us widescreen in that resolution. So at the end of this week, if the problem is not resolved, the AJA card is going to be replaced with a Blackmagic Decklink. We simply cannot keep a card that doesn’t do what we need it to do.

On a positive note, after the install of CS3 and 3.0 drivers, everything is working the way AJA intended (other than what is stated above).

[Hkingy]

We capture 16:9 anamorphic Beta SX SD footage through SDI which is NTSC D1 720×486 1.2 pixel aspect ratio and output to the same.

So in our Decklink system, when you start a new project in Premiere, there is an NTSC D1 720×486 1.2 aspect codec(and a few others).

On our AJA system when you start a new project under the codecs, I’ll go to:

AJA Xena SDI—>
Xena LH-LHe—>
SD—>
720x486i @ 29.97fps

Then clicking into the CUSTOM SETTINGS tab, the only option for pixel aspect ratio is 0.9 which is 4:3. This is our main problem. We need 1.2 pixel aspect ratio which I can do in our Decklink system. An interesting note though, After Effects 7 on the AJA system can output a 720×486 1.2 aspect comp perfectly but I don’t want to be doing all my video editing in After Effects.

Is 4:3 the only option for 720×486 footage in Premiere or should I be using another one of the presets to work with my widescreen footage? Any insight would be great!

Also thanks for your answers to my #2 and #3 questions.

Harlan

[Hkingy]

David, I’ve confirmed that the sound from Audition on our system does go through the Xena card. In the EDIT menu, select AUDIO HARDWARE SETUP and choose Xena ASIO for the Audio Driver in the Multi-Track tab and the Edit View tab at the top of the window when selecting the driver.

There’s another tab called Surround Encoder that also has it’s own driver output settings. Since I’m not doing any surround mixes, I’ve left that driver setting on Audition Windows Sound. This should get you up and running.

By the way, I’m using Adobe Audition 2.0 if that makes any difference.

Harlan

[Hkingy]

Interesting, I got Audition to work through the AJA card by selecting the Xena ASIO setting. I’m not at work right now but I’m pretty sure we got that part working properly. And this is with the Tryout version of the software.

I’ll check and let you guys know for sure tomorrow.

The audio mixer solution is a good workaround if we keep the AJA card. Just need to know if there is an AJA preset in Premiere Pro 2.0 for 720×486 1.2 pixel aspect ratio NTSC project.

We just installed the 2.6 drivers today.

Harlan

[Hkingy]

Ok, 8 months later, the problem is solved. Our station uses all Quantel equipment and from what I understand our engineers said, the Quantel equipment has reversed pins on their RS-422 connectors or somewhere in line, it’s reversed. So instead of re-cabling the other 3 edit rooms, we used a crossover cable on the Decklink card to the Leitch device and now our PC is talking to all the decks in our rack!

Harlan

[Hkingy]

Bob, thanks for the reply. I know if I go direct from decklink to the serial port on a tape deck, it works perfectly. So it’s definitely something we have in between the PC and the tape decks that’s causing the problems. Our engineers are looking into it and I hope we get it figured out soon! I’ll let you guys know what we find.

Harlan

[Hkingy]

Bob, thanks for the reply. I know if I go direct from decklink to the serial port on a tape deck, it works perfectly. So it’s definitely something we have in between the PC and the tape decks that’s causing the problems. Our engineers are looking into it and I hope we get it figured out soon! I’ll let you guys know what we find.

Harlan

[Hkingy]

Thanks for the pin info. All our other equipment is standard RS-422 protocol as well so somewhere, maybe we have a bad cable along the way. I’ll have the engineers check.

Harlan

[Hkingy]

Hi Luke,

I just did an export to tape from Premiere Pro 2.0 and it worked great. Both audio and video was recorded to tape through SDI. Let me know if you think there’s an issue in my Deck Control app.

Harlan