[John Pale]

They probably just asked for a data DVD because most of the films are very short (its a shorts festival)
Probably didn’t give it a lot of thought.

I stand by my thumb drive suggestion. Its the only way to give them the file format they want.

[John Pale]

Having actually tried the Lightworks beta (in a very limited way), I think its even less usable than FCPX in its present state.

This is not the Lightworks used to cut academy award winning films. Not exactly anyway. This version is much less stable (yes…its a beta). Its also extremely feature incomplete. If you think FCP X is missing stuff, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Its interface is also very different than Avid/FCP classic and will take a great deal of getting used to for anyone coming from those worlds. Some may find the editing paradigm clunky and outdated, others will find its simplicity very liberating.

I am not as hopeful about open source editing software. While Apple’s hubristic (is that a word?) attitude of thinking they know better than professional editors, and taking no input is certainly troublesome, having a clear vision for the interface is essential for it to work well. I am sure longtime Lightworks users must be a little scared of letting the masses turn their beloved interface into a hodgepodge of FCP and Avid features, just to achieve familiarity, when it does go completely open. Just try to get a room full of editors to agree on anything. One person’s essential feature is completely irrelevant to another.

[John Pale]

Not possible.

If they need a Pro Res file, buy a 16GB USB drive and put it on that.

[John Pale]

Yep. I get all sorts of playback problems like this with Blackmagic Timelines, regardless of the footage codec.
Even with a fully rendered timeline. Not that it’s much consolation, but problems have been reported with AJA cards too. Premiere’s interaction with third party capture cards on the Mac is not as mature as FCP “classic”.

Right now, I can’t really make Premiere Pro usable. People have been suggesting that my Mac Pro quad core system is not powerful enough…however you have a much more powerful 8 core system, and are seeing the same thing.

Try this, as an experiment. Create your own preset using Blackmagic Uncompressed as it’s basis. Change the codec used for Preview files to Pro Res (only works if you have FCP installed on the machine). I find the performance is quite a bit better than the iFrame MPEG codec used by default.

[John Pale]

[Ross Spears] ” It was suggested to me that I buy a Black Magic Decklink Studio deck to use.”

Not a great suggestion.

[Ross Spears] “Will it work with AVID?”

No. Avid does not support any capture cards from Blackmagic at this time. Media Composer Version 5.5 does support, in addition to Avid hardware, the AJA iO Express for capture.

You could conceivably use the Media Express 3 utility, which is bundled with Blackmagic cards to capture the footage to a Quicktime codec readable by Avid, then import the files. If you upgrade the Media Composer 5.5, you could also use AMA to edit with the Quicktime files captured by Media Express.

But again. No. You cannot use this card directly with your Avid system.

[John Pale]

Thanks. It’s even worse in my case, as I have an early MacPro, which can run 64bit apps just fine, but can’t run the 64 bit kernel. This affects how the computer can talk to hardware, like I/O cards.

A new machine isn’t in the budget right now, but I may look for a more recent 8 core on the used market.

[John Pale]

Honestly, tape is way more secure an archive than a hard drive.

A drive can go bad just sitting on a shelf. I think DV tape will still be around in 5 years, so playback should not be an issue.

When solid state drives get larger and cheaper, I would think about getting all your stuff off tape.

[John Pale]

Filler doesnt jump in. Its always there. All the empty space in the timeline is filler. Think of any gap as a black clip. If you want to move everything together, you need to select the black space too. If you do that, everything moves.

[John Pale]

All “empty” areas of timeline in Avid are Filler. That behavior can’t be turned off. If you have sync locks on everything ripples.

What exactly are you trying to do but can’t? You most certainly can move clips around the timeline in segment mode (red or yellow arrow).

[John Pale]

It’s the same with Blackmagic Decklink, based on my tests. Maybe a bit worse.
Sorry I wasn’t clearer.