Joe Murray
Forum Replies Created
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I built my last set of drives using a rackmount enclosure and drive sleds from Granite Digital. It was a SCSI setup with 8 drives, and I saved a good bit of money doing it. However, I just bought a 2 Terabyte SATA RAID from Promax for less than $3000. It’s working great, and I wouldn’t have saved that much (considering that my time researching and building it is worth something) had I built one on my own. A good 1-800# for support is also a wonderful thing.
Joe Murray
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same experience here. I wasn’t sure what fixed it, because I was able to switch over to the Kona 2 for the moment, but I did at one point open up the IO Control Panel, so that must be the fix.
Joe Murray
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I use the Pioneer DVR-310s, and I get them on Ebay for a little over $200. No advanced menus, but you can record separate chapter points by hitting stop, then record again with each spot or segment. This means you can use the skip buttons to go quickly between spots. Doesn’t really let you build a menu with links on it though.
Joe Murray
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In my experience the DVDs created with these near-realtime burners are better quality than iDVD, and they have a wider compatibility with older players. Also I have three of them hooked up to an analog audio/video DA…it’s rare that I only make one DVD when it comes to client approvals.
Joe Murray
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I understand the points about excessive bitrate. I’m just going off the spec sheet I was sent by the spot distribution company. Their minimum is 10 Mb/s and PREFERRED is 25. Is there a good mpeg-2 player that will output to NTSC, for instance through the AJA IO or Kona 2? Maybe that way I could check the files without involving a DVD.
Basically I’ve got to be able to guarantee to my clients that this will look just as good as if I sent a DBeta to one of the big networks. I know cable and satellite clip the bandwidth severely, but network is a whole different issue in terms of QC requirements.
Thanks again for all the help with this-
Joe Murray
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>>>Were they “jerky” when they were transfered to 29.97 and edited?
No, just normal 3:2 pulldown, film motion
>>>Are you using the telecined transfers for the compression?
I’ve edited the spots in FCP 10 bit uncompressed using the telecined transfers, then exporting either an uncompressed Quicktime or uncompressed AVI (the Pegasus encoder doesn’t take Quicktime). Using the same framerate when encoding…
>>>As far as your bitrate, there really is no reason that you should encode to 15000kbps, especially if using 2-pass. I doubt that the quality is any better for 15 compared to 7, 8, or 9 for MPEG-2 SD. At 15000kbps, you may even be taxing your hardware too much to play back the MPEG-2 files at full framerate, hence the “jerkiness”.
By hardware do you mean the computer? I don’t try to play them back via a software player. My test of the encodes is to burn them to DVD so I can watch them on a decent NTSC monitor. I’m encoding these spots for digital delivery to stations including national networks, and I’m following the specs of the company that does the actual delivery to stations…minimum 10000 kbps, max 25000, average 15000. I’ll try a lower bitrate to see if that helps, but quality is THE issue. It’s not just ending up on DVD, it’s going straight to air/cable from the file I create.
>>>Basically, if you are getting errors with all of the apps you mentioned, then there is something wrong on your end. Because I would expect MainConcept (are you using the mac version?) to be able to compensate in most cases where the others you named would not.
I’m sure you’re correct about where the problem is; I’m certainly not looking to blame the software. This is a new process to me so I expect my inexperience is indeed the problem. I’ll do some more tests with non-telecined footage and lower bitrates and report back. Are there any other apps you would recommend instead of Main Concept or Pegasus TMPGEncode?
Thanks for your response-
Joe Murray
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Check out http://www.ecinemasys.com. I’ve heard really great things about their monitoring for HD. Only drawback is if you want a really big monitor, it doesn’t seem like they offer that right now, but they do have a product (EDP100) that does a good job of converting an HD signal for an Apple 23″ Cinema Display.
Joe Murray
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>>>So this is last version of Cleaner?
I guess I really can’t answer that definitively. But there have been no updates for a really long time and other programs are taking the lead now. Cleaner still works fine in Panther, but with no Realmedia options and Windows Media only up to v7.
Joe Murray
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Technically speaking, you may be able to accomplish a lot of what a DaVinci can. Artistically speaking, don’t expect to compete with a great colorist with lots of experience. There are also certain advantages to working directly from the film (resizing, etc.)
Joe Murray
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I’ve been told by a couple of engineers that this cleaning tape should only be used if normal cleaning (Texwipe or other lint-free cloth wipe + denatured alcohol) does not work. The cleaning tapes are extremely abrasive to the heads; they’re good at getting rid of head clogs but shouldn’t be your first course of action.
Joe Murray