[Jimmy Brunger]

Thanks Aharon,

I knew what a codec was, just wondered if lossless ones really were lossless, but I guess it depends on your footage.. I’ll keep it uncompressed for now for maximum compatibility with other machines, but will look into it for the future. Cheers.

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[Jimmy Brunger]

Thanks Adolfo/Moldybot,

Didn’t realise the component o/p on the Decklink was 8bit..that might explain it. That said, all our NLEs are currently 8bit anyway (old Quantel Editbox and v7 Media Composer – tell me about it..we need to upgrade!) so unless I output directly to the final tape from my machine all my GFX get downsampled anyway. Good to know about the component thing though, thanks.

I guess the noise filter will continue to be the fix then…

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[Jimmy Brunger]

Red and black are notoriously dodgy together..it will look fine on a PC monitor, but TV by it’s nature struggles with reds. Try to keep your red as unsaturated as possible to avoid ‘bleeding’. Try to avoid red on black or black on red. If it’s unavoidable sometimes putting a slight blur on the text can help, or a white keyline to separate the red and black. Not ideal but that tele for you! Not sure if HD LCDs cope with it better (?), but even when reds are well under broadcast safe they can still be troublesome on standards CRTs…and be safe in the knowledge they will look even worse on an old 14″ domestic TV.

Good luck.

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[Jimmy Brunger]

So Aharon,

When you say ‘lossless’ codecs are they TOTALLY uncompressed? There must be some slight degradation if you are gaining smaller file sizes?

If not and using a lossless AVI codec instead of true uncompressed, is there still any benefit in QT over AVI? Will AE in turn also run faster if my file sizes are smaller comparatively? I think I’d rather use AVI unless there’s some big gain with QT, as some of our systems are a little iffy with QT (Newtek VideoToaster, Premiere to an extent? and I have a feeling Lightwave prefers AVI…)

Thanks for your advice,
Jim.

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[Jimmy Brunger]

Didn’t realise TGA seqs (or similar) slowed AE down – thanks for that tip!

I’ve been wondering whether to go the AVI or TGA sequence route since I got my Decklink. I used to grab/playout via a clipstation which only accepted targas, but I now have to grab to AVI in Premiere I believe, but we are thinking of getting a Smoke as our main NLE sometime soon and I understand they only read image sequences?

TGA seqs are useful if you need to break off from rendering temporarily and if you have a crash you can still salvage the frames that did render, but AFAIK you can’t do that with a video file? It is easier for me to pull out a ref still frame into Photoshop with TGAs aswell..

..HOWEVER, there is the problem though that most image sequences don’t hold any PAR info, so you have to keep re-interpreting the footage when you bring it into an app. Plus you have to render a separate wav file for audio.

I’ve never really touched QT for AE work…is there any benefit using them instead of AVI on a PC?

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[Jimmy Brunger]

That said, I preview uncompressed component via a Decklink Pro to a Sony broadcast monitor and I still get nasty banding on subtle gradients out of AE or PS. I’ve tried 8bit/16bit in PS and AE to no joy. It is a bit of an annoying problem. My old Quantel Paintbox Express had no such banding and as far as I’m aware that was just bog standard 8bit with component monitoring.

Does this mean it’s an issue with Adobe software then? I’d love for someone to once and for all explain why this happens!…

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[Jimmy Brunger]

I’ve heard the new Hewlett Packard HP xw8400 has 8 cores (2 x quad 2.66GHz Xeons) and is lightning fast..I’m trying to get info about prices in UK, but no joy from HP yet. I believe they are out in US already though. Should be alot cheaper than similar Boxx or 1Beyond systems..not sure though if there’s something in these other systems that puts them above the HP?

The 2 x dual-core version of the HP box currently runs Autodesk Smoke 2K very fast, so an 8-core one with Nucleo Pro should blast it’s way through most stuff in AE I would have thought. Fill it up with RAM and let me know how it goes if you choose this! When AE8 surfaces I’m guessing it will be 64-bit and hopefully have better multicore capabilities, so you should be laughing. Get a high-end nVidia or ATI card in there too and some fast drives.

Good luck. Hopefully I can get my hands on one soon..

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[Jimmy Brunger]

You could just use 3D layers but not put a camera in there?

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[Jimmy Brunger]

Ahhh….that’ll be it. that explains why some AI’s & EPS’s I get sent DO preview and some don’t. I have CS2, but I guess some of our clients don’t!

Glad to help Betty.

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[Jimmy Brunger]

This is something that CS2 ‘blocks’ I think..some snide way of Adobe making sure you use Bridge to preview images. I hate bridge, so found a work around – something like changing a little bit of code in the registry, which worked a treat. Can’t remember what it was or where I found it, but if you google search ‘psd thumbnails windows explorer’ you should find plenty of results on the subject. If you find one and you’re not sure if it’s legit, just post the link on here and I’ll see if it jogs my memory.

Good luck. Bloody Adobe!

Oh, btw – did you do anything special to enable AI file previews in WE? I can’t seem to get AI or EPS to preview, which is annoying. I rarely use those filetypes though, unless it’s something I’ve been sent to convert…but it would be useful.

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