[James Orlowski]

I’m new to the Blackmagic world. On my BM Control Panel for my Decklink Studio 2, it says up top 7.6.4. Does that mean I have version 7.6.4 on my system?

I am experiencing random PPro CS5 crashes and a few other annoyances. If I do have an older driver installed, I was hoping the updated software would remedy most–if not all–my issues.

—
James Orlowski
RYNO Production, Inc.
http://www.rynoproduction.com
800-860-7966

[James Orlowski]

That’s a HORRIBLE flaw in their system(s). 95% of my stuff gets outputted to Betacam, and if I have to render everything to avoid this ‘shift’, it’ll be very time consuming.

They need to address this.

—
James Orlowski
RYNO Production, Inc.
http://www.rynoproduction.com
800-860-7966

[James Orlowski]

Start a new CS5 job, and import the older CS4 job. That should solve your “desktop mode” issue.

—
James Orlowski
RYNO Production, Inc.
http://www.rynoproduction.com
800-860-7966

[James Orlowski]

If you have any Red Giant Software plug-ins installed, try removing them systematically until your dynamic linking works again.

For me, Knoll Light Factory on my MAC system running CS4 suite of apps caused dynamic linking among apps to fail, which caused the Adobe Media Encoder not to work.

For others (on the Adobe forums), the Magic Bullet Suite was the culprit.

I informed Red Giant about this, and told them there are other CS4 users out there with the same problem, but since they couldn’t recreate the problem on their end, I don’t expect an “official” fix anytime soon.

—
James Orlowski
RYNO Production, Inc.
http://www.rynoproduction.com
800-860-7966

[James Orlowski]

Well, we downgraded to PPRo CS3 and the 3.5 AJA drivers, and on the same hardware/setup, HD 1080 clips playback perfectly.

So, something must be up with PPro CS4.2.1 and the AJA 4.2 drivers. I’m not going to worry about it right now. I’m just happy it works.

Thanks.

—
James Orlowski
RYNO Production, Inc.
http://www.rynoproduction.com
800-860-7966

[James Orlowski]

That was something I was thinking about, but was trying to avoid it. If I must, I will.

I took this opportunity to upgrade to CS4 on that system since it handles AVC-Intra and better integrates P2 material. But if I can’t get it to work well, I guess I’ll have to lose those added features.

The system specs should be acceptable for 1080/720 playback, right?

It should be noted that we also have a similar LH system running on an HP XW8600. On that system (dual Xeon 2.5 GHz 4 GB RAM Vista 32-bit), I can’t playback 1080 clips. But 720 clips playback fine. I was hoping our newly-configured 3.06 GHz system would perform better. But at this point, it performs worse.

—
James Orlowski
RYNO Production, Inc.
http://www.rynoproduction.com
800-860-7966

[James Orlowski]

Thanks. We actually demoed the 3700 yesterday in house. Nice camera, and a worthy replacement for our tape-based VeriCam, but it doesn’t look like it can overcrank. It can only undercrank.

That’s a deal breaker, as one of the major reasons we were thinking on upgrading was to shoot in-camera slow motion.

Apparently, the 2.1 million pixel CCD (2010 x 1120) can’t handle processing more than 30fps, so anything more wouldn’t be possible.

The 2700 has a smaller resolution CCD, 1370 x 744, which is similar to our AJ-HDC27FP, so it can do the overcranking.

We couldn’t find any “official” reference to the 500’s CCD resolution. I assume this is because Panasonic doesn’t want you to know (or compare). But I did find somewhere that it is believed to be 960 x 540.

Can anyone confirm this resolution? How much of a hindrance does this put on the 500?

—
James Orlowski
RYNO Production, Inc.
http://www.rynoproduction.com
800-860-7966

[James Orlowski]

Yes, I’ve been doing a lot of reading on this, and I just don’t think with our current set-up I can utilize over/undercranked footage from our tape-based VeriCam (the AJ-HDC27FP). As you said, everything is 59.94.

That said, I think I “fake” 200% slomo by shooting at 60p (so every frame is unique), and placing that footage in a 30p project. We’re going to test this theory to see if it produces good results (albeit, very, very slow motion).

However, we may be looking into upgrading (if you want to call it that) to a newer P2-based camera. Our tape-based VeriCam has done it’s job for us, and now we’d like to move on.

We’re looking at the HPX500, or possibly the 2700 or 3700 (if we can get our local Panny rep to let us do a side-by-side comparison).

But I think the lower-priced 500 might do the trick for us for what we produce.

Any thoughts on this?

—
James Orlowski
RYNO Production, Inc.
http://www.rynoproduction.com
800-860-7966

[James Orlowski]

Thanks for the feedback. I’ve been doing a lot of reading on this, and I don’t think I’m able to utilize my current set-up for acquiring over/undercranked footage.

We’re actually looking at a newer P2 camera to replace our aging AJ-HDC27F. It seems like the market is shifting towards tapeless anyhow, which may be why Adobe doesn’t natively support it.

—
James Orlowski
RYNO Production, Inc.
http://www.rynoproduction.com
800-860-7966

[James Orlowski]

We import DVCPRO HD 720p 60fps all the time from our AJ-HD1400 deck into our AJA Xena LH card with no issues.

—
James Orlowski
RYNO Production, Inc.
http://www.rynoproduction.com
800-860-7966