[Job Ter burg]

If you master clips appear in the media tool, there must be SOME media present for those clips. Under Bin Headings, select “Offline”, and that column will tell you what part of the media is offline (probably video is offline, with audio still present or something like that).

[Job Ter burg]

Giacomo,

Your postings are a little vague for me, but let me try and explain what I think you need to understand.

When you capture or import media into the Avid, generally, you import into a bin and this gives you master clips (a metadata entity) with related media. Those mediafiles will reside in the mediafiles folder.

In your mediafiles folder, at finder/desktop level, you will see a bunch of XYZ123456.mxf files. You won’t see these filenames in the Media Tool.

When you open the Media Tool you tell the Avid to look at the mediafiles folders and have it tell you what’s there. If you look for master clips, the Media Tool will look for any media that belongs to master clips, and it will display these as master clips (which you then may drag into a bin if you like).

You mention MOV files. These should NOT reside in your Avid MediaFiles folder. But if you have been importing QT movies, you may certainly have master clips named XYZ.mov.

You say that earlier on, you have lost a drive with media. If these were imported MOV’s (as I deduct from what you wrote earlier), the best way to bring them back in is to select the previously imported master clips (now offline), and select Clip->Batch Import. This way, you simply “fill” the metadata entities (master clips) with new media, and all your sequences will link to those instantly.

If you have lost mediafiles for imported MOV’s, and you manually imported those clips again (not with Batch Import), you will probably not have Tapename entries for those original clips, nor for the newly imported clips. And relink works based on Tapename and Timecode. With either one missing, it’s a no-go.

Hope this helps.

[Job Ter burg]

I still think it is a bug in the H264 codec. When you do H264 straight from Avid, your source is 16-235 when it enters the H264 encoder. When you first do the export in Animation 0-255, then the H264 encoder in QT Pro gets a 0-255 source to begin with.

As far as I understand, the Avid export module simply uses the QT exporters, nothing else.

You could test this. Export same-as-source with 601/709 levels. Then encode in QT Pro to H264, then reimport into Avid. Does the same gamma shift occur?

[Job Ter burg]

Make sure that simple file sharing is turned off (in Win XP).

[Job Ter burg]

If anything, your RAM sounds low to me. Other than that, why not download the 30-day trial version and see if it works?

I’ve read on the Avid forums that since there usually is little difference between Apple models of the same series, as long as the graphics cards match up to the specified ones, you generally should be OK. You might want to drop your question on the Avid Community forums as well, lots of folks who might be able to tell you more from first-hand experiences.

[Job Ter burg]

At this point in time, I think anyone should feel totally confident choosing one or the other. MC runs more than fine on either OS, and support for both platforms is solid.
You may prefer one OS over the other because of third party tools you may want to use.

[Job Ter burg]

I hear and read a lot about gamma issues with H264.
Here’s someone how explains how he could fix it my modifying the QT file in QT Pro:
https://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-327725.html

How to fix an H.264 video conversion ‘wash out’ issue
By: ccedit (https://www.macosxhints.com/users.php?mode=profile&uid=1047792) on Thu, Jan 4 ’07 at 3:54PM PST
I have also searched high and low for a solution to the “washed out” look. After an almost sleepless night I came across the fix without having to mess around with color profiles. I’m working from a PC so some of the commands might be slightly different.

After you create the QuickTime/h.264 file, open it up in QuickTime and select “Show Movie Properties.” Highlight the video track then click on the “Visual Settings” tab. Towards the bottom left you should see “Transparency” with a drop-down box next to it. Select “Blend” from the menu then move the “Transparency Level” slider to 100%. Right after that, choose “Straight Alpha” from the same drop-down and close the properties window. AND finally, “Save.”

[Job Ter burg]

You can download (and install) the Avid codec package for free:
https://www.avid.com/codec or https://www.avid.com/dnxhd. Comes with all Avid resolutions.

[Job Ter burg]

The best downconversion is with a high end standalone converter. An HDCAM deck will do a pretty decent downconversion. Don’t know about other HD decks, I don’t ever use those.
Avid Nitris and Nitris DX hardware based systems will do a decent downconversion as well, and I think flipping the project type to SD will give you an OK downconversion to SD on a Mojo as well, as long as you set the video quality switch to green/green. Transcoding in Avid software will look very soft.

Avoid DV25. It has limited color information, and is compressed about 5:1. Use 1:1x or 1:1 or 2:1, or even 3:1 if you don’t have fast enough storage.

[Job Ter burg]

You could download the 30-day trial version of MediaComposer, add the MXF to the mediafiles and do a QT same-as-source export.