[Jeff Markgraf]

Well, that’s what I was afraid of. I was told we were getting the Panasonic (?) 17″ broadcast LCDs I’ve already seen. Instead, this thing appeared one day.

Now the task is going to be to explain to these guys why this won’t cut it. I’ll try to get them to look at the JVC or maybe the “level 2” grade Flanders.

The points to make, based on what I’ve read here, are crushed blacks, loss of detail in the highlights and limited angle of view. Any specific issues with actual color accuracy outside of the high/low-lights? Walter, Shane, etc.?

I already can hear the “well, it looks fine to me…” from these guys. Sheesh. Thanks for any help guys.

[Jeff Markgraf]

Good point. Never done eBay, but there’s always a first time.

[Jeff Markgraf]

Wow – that’s much less than I thought.

Hey Bob Zelin – are these any good? I know Sony has produced some stinkers in the past.

Makes me long for the days when monitors were simple. You were either a Barco man, an Ikegami man or a Sony man. Nobody bothered with JVC or Panasonic. And everybody just worried about the guy with his old Conracs…

[Jeff Markgraf]

Bret –

This would have been mid 90s. Started with the original, then upgraded to the Turbo. I was told at that time that the guts were Unix with Mac OS (7 or 8) just acting as the interface. The actual heavy lifting with the cube was done with hardware running under Unix (all cleverly hidden in the box that sat next to the Mac). This makes sense to me, as Unix was usually run in a shell that provided the GUI.

Yeah, the wavelet compression was pretty good. Much better than Avid. Since I came from the online world, I just always cringed at the video quality of any NLE of the time. Heck, Avid’s AVR77 was supposedly the best thing since sliced bread when it came out, and it bugged me to no end with the flicker, chroma shifts and nonexistent color depth. Grrr…

The recompression I’m talking about is what you’re describing – essentially doing a mixdown. There was no equivalent to just rendering uncompressed. The mixdown baked in any compression artifacts, then that clip was subjected to more compression, and so forth. This became an issue for us because we had to render most of our spots in order to have the titles (the show credits) changing faster the system could keep up with. 20 titles with alpha channel, each lasting anywhere from 1 sec to 1 sec 15 frames, on top of short edits (average 2-3 seconds with realtime aspect squeezes and repositioning, not to mention color correction) just choked the realtime capabilities!

But hey, this was before Avid even had real time transitions at all.

Yeah, I really did like that box. Where were you using the Cube?

[Jeff Markgraf]

Hi Bob.

Yeah, I knew the 23″ were discontinued. My local dealer still has them in stock, but I wasn’t interested in paying retail for an end-of-life product. And I know the new 24″ isn’t compatible with the dual DVI on my laptop. Plus I have zero interest in the shiny, reflective screens.

I also assumed that Apple would just send a new monitor rather than repair (hence the flat fee). My gut told me the whole operation was probably pointless. I just wanted some confirmation from you guys.

Certainly not an Apple “fanboi” when it comes to these things. I’ll certainly be checking out the Dell monitors, as editing on a 17″ laptop screen becomes tedious after a while.

And I’d rather rent or bite the bullet for a real picture evaluation monitor than spring for an MXO and a new computer monitor. How do like the 17″ or 24″ Panasonic broadcast LCD monitors? Isn’t the 17″ around 3 grand? Worth it? (I know they’re not CRTs, but I’ll never have THAT kind of money!)

[Jeff Markgraf]

Yay Video Cube! My favorite NLE ever.

Back in the day at NBC, we started this thing called NBC 2000. You probably know it as those @$%^#! squeezed credits. The engineers at NBC were, to put it nicely, uncooperative. Not only were we nonlinear, we sere non-union. Very bad. They made it clear that Avid’s video output was unacceptable. They said the blanking was wide. Not on our network, so sir. They were right, of course. But still obnoxious.

So our bright people found the Video Cube. Hey, what do you know – full-raster video. And broadcast quality. Actually, kinda’ like 3/4SP is “broadcast quality.” Which is to say, barely.

So we took in material from the D3 show masters & video we shot on Beta SP, did our thing and output back to D3. Sweetened the audio in our facility. Walked the D3 down to Edit 10 for QC & it was hard-shipped to NY for integration.

As a linear guy & sometime Avid guy, I LOVED this editor. Very easy to work with. Mostly real-time. To this day, the fastest editor for short-form (promo) editing I’ve ever used. Loved the jog wheel interface (being an old Grass Valley guy). Hated the rendering quality, as it essentially recompressed the video with each new render. Hated the incredibly touchy Ultra SCSI storage (we had custom 6 foot cables made up to reach the rack of storage drives). Kinda’ dug knowing I was working on a Unix system underneath the PowerMac GUI. Loved the improved quality of the Turbo Cube when it came out. Never got to use the StratoSphere version, ’cause by then NBC made nice with Avid AVR77.

Much as I like FCP, I do miss the Cube.

[Jeff Markgraf]

Shane – Read you loud & clear. (Now I know how our hair got so curly!)

Walter – Quite right. I got the Apple Care on the MBPro. Already used it. Didn’t bother with they keyboard & monitor (purchased later). Never again. If it costs more than a couple hundred bucks, I’m in for the extended warranty.

Anybody have a good use for a 23″ boat anchor? Target practice? Really skinny aquarium? Ikea store prop?

[Jeff Markgraf]

Ooh, ooh – can I play? I remember it like it was yesterday…

The earliest removable storage (the “bricks” you refer to) were called R-Mags – probably for “Removable Magnetic media” or some such nonsense. They were 2 gigs each. One box (like 4 rack units high) held 2 R-Mags. But hey – removable!

Then Avid went to a new docking station that used “Shuttle” drives. They were a little smaller and more squared off (the R-Mags had rounded tops). They had either one or two drives inside, depending on how you bought them. 4 gigs or 9 gigs.

Then the IS9 drives came out. 9 or 18 gigs each. Half-height, so you could put 8 drives in the docking tower. And you could stripe them for AVR 76 or AVR 77, real broadcast resolution & limited realtime effects. Man, that was livin’ large!

Believe it or not, I know of one facility here in Burbank that still has some R-Mags & the chassis laying around for the strictly offline clients.

[Jeff Markgraf]

KABC just did this last night at 6:28 pm. 2 minutes of promos on the digital feed. Didn’t see the analog feed. Wonder how many in the LA market freaked out? Then again, how much of the questionable group would even be watching the news rather that Andy Griffith reruns?

[Jeff Markgraf]

Thanks for the feedback.

My company (can’t say who) is going to be delivering these spots to a station group (can’t say which). We’re trying to pin down the group tech guy as we speak. They should all be 720p. We’ll either convert our HDV 1080i spots to 720p before posting them on a secure FTP site, or just put up the HDV and let them do the conversion.

Right now, we’re fighting with synch when we do the conversion. The converted spots seem to be out by a couple of frames. Not sure why. Something flaky caused by the HDV source perhaps? All that long GOP compression gives me the creeps anyway. Maybe converting formats is too much to ask?

As always, all thoughts welcome. Especially from Mr. Grumpy – er, Mr. Zellin. 😉