[John Heagy]

If you need a compressed 10bit codec that can be read, and therefore transcoded to other formats, ProRes is a good choice. Apple offers a free PC and Mac ProRes decoder. There’s good reason why EVS and Arri chose it.

The below codecs do not allow encoding… for that you do need a Mac and FCP. Really just Qmaster… no serial required.. a little known fact.

https://support.apple.com/downloads/Apple_ProRes_QuickTime_Decoder_1_0_for_Windows

https://support.apple.com/downloads/Apple_ProRes_QuickTime_Decoder_1_0_for_Mac

[John Heagy]

Is this a fixed installation or mobile?… temporary or long term? Do you need to access the media as it’s recording? Do you need matching TC across all 12?

If it’s temporary then I’d say rent 12 Ki Pros… right off the bat.

John Heagy

[John Heagy]

If everything was transferred to 1080i correctly then there’s really no need to return everything to 24p. The only “hard” reasons for a 24p master is international delivery, theatrical release and encode efficiency, and then only if longer than 2 or 4hrs for DVD. 24p will work better for web playback as well. FCP will scale 1080i correctly and will play smoothly on a “TV” not on a computer monitor.

Trying to remove 3:2 pulldown from edited shots will end up with potential duplicate frame at the head or tail when the 3 in 3:2 pulldown has only one or two of it’s fields.

[John Heagy]

Nothin’ beats seeing it happen. I use iShowU and a USB mic to document support issues instead of typing paragraphs to exactly describe every menu and mouse click, only to have support still not understand. It also forces the support person to document the problem in their own words when creating the ticket.

I like iShowU because I can make long full desktop movies that are very small in size. It will take the framerate down to 1fr/sec when the mouse isn’t moving.

[John Heagy]

There are two ways to do this: A camera for every degree of movement as Chuck mentioned, and with just two cameras combined with a bit of 3D image mapping and morphing.

I’ve seen the soccer “frozen moment” and it is the two camera method. It’s done with two freeze frames from two cameras at the same moment in time. The field is mapped onto a 3D plane and all the players are flat objects placed on the plane. A virtual camera then moves to the 2nd camera position. The players and field are morphed during the camera move. Watch closely and you can see the morph.

John Heagy

[John Heagy]

Automatic Duck will do what you need, but you really want to migrate the timeline to FCP, then batch capture… not capture then migrate the timeline.

FCP does not like linking to files named via another app… AVID in your case.

[John Heagy]

It’s not uncommon to have a video server from Omneon or Harris be controlled by automation software from OmniBus. Server hardware and automation is very mix and match and, as Bob said, are very expensive.

Fear not… there are less expensive options:

https://toolsonair.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=69&Itemid=76
https://www.softronmedia.com/products/playout_standalone.html
https://www.bug.tv/CLASS-1.html
https://www.b4m.com/html/playout_xpress.html

These can all use an Xsan as storage and a Mac with an Aja or BM card for video playout. Unlike an Omneon that has guaranteed performance and uptime ($$$) a “roll your own” playout server will only be as reliable as you make it.

Good luck…
John Heagy

[John Heagy]

Not before Quicktime X is fleshed out. I hope Apple has a bunch of 64bit Quicktime APIs up their sleeve. Right now it’s not even close to where it needs to be. I’d hate to be a developer who relies on QT right now.

[John Heagy]

Amen brother!

Reel and TC rule… since the days of Edison.

Linking by filename is a world of hurt.

CatDV gets it, unlike most other MAM’s that started life cataloging images. They are all missing the 4th dimension: Time! To them it’s an ad on, CatDV was built with it from the beginning and it shows.

You want to see something cool… drop files with a reel and TC… then drop an edl, ale, tabbed txt…etc, that have matching reel and are within the file’s TC range… and watch them auto link!

John Heagy

[John Heagy]

Excellent news!

I was confused by the 4.1.5 number in your previous response.