[John Davidson]

Fantastic. When these are available for purchase I’ll be in touch. Thanks!

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

We’re very interested in this trying out this solution over the summer. Assuming we had the server connected to a mini-sas RAID5, would a single gigabit line be theoretically capable of digitizing HDCam ProRes 1080i to a disk over ethernet connection?
Thanks!

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Kyle, I ran into the same thing with an almost identical mac pro to yours with a Decklink Studio. Tried to find an offset option in Premiere similar to FCP7 and the closest thing I could find didn’t seem to work. Do you have FCPX 10.0.4? When I played back on X it was perfect, so I think the issue is how the BM card interprets what CS6 outputs. I’d cross reference with AJA but, well, there aren’t any AJA drivers yet.

That said, our After Effects seems pretty great, it was just premiere that was causing issues.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Right now we have 3 systems with local raid5’s that are all connected via ethernet with one main system holding most episodes. The second system copies over whatever is needed, and sometimes we media manage finished elements around from one system to another. Our current process is very sloppy.

We’re very interested in putting together an affordable shared storage system and it looks like the thunderbolt PCI expansion box from small tree with a mac mini server (don’t quote me on that one) is going to really be great for us. We work in ProRes, so all signs point to that being a good workflow for us. I’m honestly not even sure how that server will work for media. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Thanks for the feedback. The transition from a primarily single system edit to group storage is a very good (but challenging) growing pain.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

I think I really like that concept best. We can break down shows by seasons in subfolders, which can make this much easier to navigate around. Thanks!

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Wouldn’t a regular insert edit also create filler/gap, even without the audio tracks selected? I’m still not figuring out the point. It seems like a massive roadblock to efficiency with lots of additional key clicks for the sake of a rather obscure feature that can easily be replicated with an insert edit.

Maybe I just need more coffee :).

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

I’m talking playback offset in FCP7 under system settings / playback (the one that delay the computer playback). We’re working at 1080i ProRes 422 (non-HQ). Oddly enough, one client sent us a show at 1080p 23.97 ProRes HQ and it was much more in sync. I’m thinking less frames plays back easier, but maybe these systems like HQ better.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Odd thing – we turned sleep off years ago. I”m curious how the thunderbolt BMG decklink handles offset….

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

So weird. I guess our systems have something funky going on. Whatever the case, X works right when others don’t. Premiere CS6 on the Blackmagic has a delay too, but I haven’t found a way to get the offset correct on it to sync up right.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Your FCP7 frame offset is set to 0? And there’s not a single frame delay when playing back over componant or SDI?

For ours tape layback is fine, but when editing the AJA wants a 4 frame offset and BMG wants 7. X didn’t ask and just got it right the first time.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.