Jeff Markgraf
Forum Replies Created
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And a Fanghoulie is a fan of Sven. Usually restricted to Chicago.
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Thanks guys. I thought this guy was off base. I’ve certainly digitized and laid off to tape frame accurately with FCP 7 using serial control of a deck (all bets are off with firewire). No reason VTR exchange shouldn’t be accurate as well. I would guess that’s why there are capture and record offset adjustments in the preference panel. Maybe they did a test without adjusting the offsets.
I know tape is dead for many of us, but the networks still need tape. Even if the promos and the shows are delivered as files now, they still need to archive to tape, and the tape has to be frame accurate.
Off topic, but interesting, is the networks’ issues with Apple’s licensing of X. Apparently they won’t do a bulk license to, say, on-air promo. I’m told Apple insists on individual licenses, per user. It’s not the $299 cost times 20+ users, it’s the fact that the software is not under the direct control of the network. That makes the IT people froth at the mouth, because they are incredibly paranoid about malware and viruses. It’s definitely a deal-breaker for at least one network. Too bad, because I could be doing my current work faster and better with X than with the 5 year old Avid and Unity I’m using now.
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Bumping, hoping for an answer. Craig Seeman?
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Which brings up an important point: the engineer guy at the large network (which I can’t name) I freelance at swears that AJA’s tape capture & layback utility is not frame accurate. At least not the layback. For those who archive or deliver on tape this is kind of a deal breaker.
Anyone have thoughts or experience with this? Specifically, the AJA VTR Exchange?
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Hi Bret.
No, this was mid 90s. (The unit was called NBC 2000 because it sounded good.) The first units we had were the original Cube, then we upgraded to the Turbo. The wavelet compression was pretty good, but the actual horizontal resolution was not quite Betacam at that time. The realtime playback looked good, and as you point out, the downstream keyer was sharp as a tack. But we usually had to render the titles, because the system couldn’t keep up with titles less than about 40 frames. Those credits flew by pretty fast, except for the mandatory 2 second DGA cards. Because everything had a squeeze and reposition, more than 2 layers also had to be rendered. So it started to deteriorate pretty quickly.
The Stratosphere kicked it way up, but by then NBC 2000 had switched to Avid. (On-air promo used avid just for offline, and finished in the linear bays.)
I really liked the Cube. The controller was nice, especially for us old on-line guys. Except for FCPX, I rarely use the upper video tracks on NLEs except for compositing. That goes back to keeping a clean video track for a clean EDL for finishing, but I realize I’m old fashioned. Using connected clips in X feels a lot like going back to the Cube, even with the connected audio on the b-roll track!
I generally use just one monitor to edit, except for Avid which really wants two monitors. Having the “viewer” and/or picture monitor switch between “source” and “record” is just like the linear bays worked. 1 edit monitor and 1 picture monitor is just fine.
It occurs to me that old folks (such as myself) may have an easier time adapting to X than those who learned on an Avid or FCP Classic.
Jeff M.
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Favorite NLE ever. Bar none. It was the NLE of choice back in the early days of NBC 2000 (the fine folks who gave you squeezed credits and the “seamless sweeper” ID).
The video out of the Cube was roughly comparable to 3/4″ videotape. The Turbo Cube was akin to 3/4 SP. The main reason NBC chose the Cube over Avid was the full raster. The engineering people insisted on a full raster picture, which seemed to knock out any NLE at that time (which was precisely the result NABET and the engineering staff wanted – but that’s a whole other story). Avid output 720×480, not 486. Only the Cube output 486.
We digitized from D3 masters, did our thing, added credits (via the downstream keyed) and output back to D3 for integration into the air master. (Our audio guy did a proper mix and layback.)
In retrospect, it had a number of FCPX-like features: a true A-roll/B-roll timeline (though the b-roll was not “connected” like FCPX), lots of real time fx (although pretty simple stuff by today’s standards. Not ther standard interface, but once learned, you could really fly on that thing. Really fast for promo work – much faster than Avid, at least for me.
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Well that explains it a little bit, I guess. FCP estimated a 3 gig file, but created a 5+ gig file. Hit or miss, indeed.
I get what you’re saying about the rendering. I don’t expect miracles from 8 cores, though the i7 is supposed to be faster than the Xeons in my old 2008 MacPro tower. Since the timeline – oops, project – had mixed sources, both long GOP, there’s no way in this case to avoid the messy transcode. And in this case, I followed the oft-repeated advice on this board NOT to render the project before sharing, since it has to be transcoded anyway.
I wonder if it being a 5 camera multicam project has anything to do with the long prep & render? BTW, the footage was on a combination of fiber channel raid and FW 800 via Thunderbolt adapter. So throughput wasn’t the problem. It also seemed the DVD transcoding was much faster than making a “master file” or a ProRes file. Don’t really understand that.
As fas as dvd goes, I’m a total lightweight on compression & dvd stuff. I just used the closest matching preset.
Thanks for the advice.
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X has been almost unusable on my macpro 1,1. Sluggish, constant beachball, etc. even with a new graphics card. Trying to cut a 5 cam multicam project with mixed ProRes and HDV was painful beyond belief. I figured I would simply have to get a new computer in order to use X.
Downloaded the OS update last night. Suddenly FCPX is behaving. I can actually use it. So I guess whatever Apple did to Open CL worked.
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Just to throw a little gasoline on this little brush fire…
Back in the day, (I guess “my day,” since I’m apparently now an old man), stations had fairly straightforward and consistent technical standards with regard to horizontal and vertical blanking (what the kids now call “those strange black bars”). If your video had wide blanking (esp. horizontal), your tape was rejected. Period. Wide blanking was considered amateur and not fit for broadcast. Having vertical blanking descend into the active picture area would get you laughed out of the room. This all served to generally keep the riff-raff out of the edit bay.
Heck, when NBC first set up their broadcast quality nonlinear operation (for the infamous NBC2000 “seamless content & branding” operation), they rejected using Avid because the video wasn’t full raster. No ifs, ands or buts. That’s why they used the Video Cube from Imix. Eventually Avid provided a full raster codec (AVR 76 and 77) and they switched to Avids.
The bottom line was “keep the blanking legal and within our standards.” Which was not a problem if you knew how to deal with color framing, system timing and good engineering practice. If you couldn’t deal with it, get out of the edit bay (or at least stay in offline with the “artistes”).
Now, all bets are off at most stations. I mean, if people are shooting with formats that aren’t full raster (I’m looking at YOU, DV, HDV, etc.), this kind of thing is going to happen. You could squeak by in SD and CRTs with the usual overscan. But HD, little or no overscan on flat screens, and pillar-boxed SD in HD feeds…it’s a mess out there.
So suck it up, boys. Zoom in the video to lose the vertical and/or horizontal interval. If you’ve got VITC or other crap in your active picture area, then you’ve probably got bigger problems than worrying about any loss of quality from a 2% zoom.
Uh oh, here comes Zelin. Run for cover.
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Had this same problem about a year ago. Drove my tech guy crazy for a few hours.
It turns out the behavior appeared after installing WMV Player (it plays .wmv files in a Quicktime window). Somehow, it corrupted something. Deleting the program fixed the hiding/unhiding problem. Re-installing WMV Player had no ill effects.
So it seems that installing or updating can sometimes have unpredictable results — even when it shouldn’t.
OT – Heck, I remember when (many years ago) my Avid came to a grinding halt because of a single piece of bad media. It crashed the system and actually corrupted the MAC OS. Required a complete wipe and reinstall from ground zero! How the heck does THAT happen?
So I’d look askance at the iTunes or Security update. For what it’s worth…