[John Rofrano]

[Bruce Richard] “should I leave the other two options, “Video Format” and “Pixel Aspect Ratio” where they default to, which is “Automatic”, or should I override those and force them? (As in Square Pixels (1.0) for Pixel Aspect Ratio)”

That’s up to you depending on how you plan to use the template. If you think you might render HDV some day, which is 1440×1080 PAR 1.3333 then I wouldn’t force the PAR to 1.0. I would leave it automatic. In general, I never override “automatic” settings unless I’m having a problem.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Bruce Richard] “Mediainfo says the file is YUV. Any ideas on what’s happening there? Do those reasons point to something you’ve seen before in your experience?”

Like I said, I’ve never worked with the UtVideo codec so I don’t know what might be going on. Apple ProRes 422 file is definitely YUV 10-bit.

[Bruce Richard] “Is maintaining 10 bit important? “

You tell me? Is it important to you? If not, don’t worry about it. While 10-bit is more accurate and will stand up better to processing and re-processing, unless you are going to do a lot of color grading and processing, I wouldn’t worry about it. All of my cameras shoot 8-bit so I don’t work in 10-bit but it’s nice that your film was scanned at that high a quality but it may be overkill for what you need.

[Bruce Richard] “You said “Of course if you want maximum quality, choose one of the FilmScan options”. This is probably taking you out of context, (you probably meant max quality out of the Cineform options)”

In Vegas Pro, the CineForm quality options are: Low, Medium, High, FilmScan1, FilmScan2, & Keying. I was referring to the FilmScan1 & FilmScan2 options.

[Bruce Richard] “are you saying a lossy (if that is correct) Cineform codec, at max quality is better than a lossless UtVideo codec? (again, if correct)”

CineForm is a “visually lossless” Digital Intermediary 10-bit codec that will have better quality than an 8-bit UtVideo codec because once you choose the 8-bit option, you are losing quality. So while the codec is lossless 8-bit to 8-bit… you are losing information going from 10-bit to 8-bit. That’s why I said go with CineForm instead. If you can get the 10-bit option to work with UtVideo then use that.

The CineForm codec was designed to be rendered over, and over, and over, and over again and not loose visual quality. That’s what a Digital Intermediary is for. I wouldn’t worry about losing any quality while using it. Apple ProRes 422 is also a “visually lossless” Digital Intermediary 10-bit codec. So going from ProRes to CineForm is a good move.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Derek Charles] “Whats the difference of me delivering 60p footage at 0.4 or 0.25x playback as as 60p
vs
60p normal speed straight up delivered as 24p (because I’m mixing with other 24p)”

It should look the same (no difference). In both cases you are showing 24 discrete images over the duration of one second. In the first case, those 24 images are spread across 60 frames by duplicating frames. In the second case, the 24 images are represented as 24 frames.

[Derek Charles] “But I read there’s my technique of 60p at 0.4x playback is the same thing as turning it into 24p but isn’t it still just slowed down 60p footage on my 60p timeline – ?”

Yes it is.

[Derek Charles] “Or do I render that first as 60p (or 24p?!) to put it on a 24p project to deliver? “

You can for better accuracy when editing but you don’t have to if you’re not doing motion tracking or accurate placement of titles or other images one the video.

[Derek Charles] “I’m shooting all 60p footage at 1/125 shutter speed – and all 24p at 1/50 – That may come into affect as well”

I’m not sure why you are bothering to shoot 60p if you are delivering 24p unless you actually want to make super slow motion video. Otherwise it’s just a waste of frames.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

Just downloaded and watched it. You know the shadows are subtle but they really help sell the shot. I like it! Nice work.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Robin S. Kurz] “I get it. The FIRST part was missing either the backslash OR the quotes! Duh… got it. ;-)”

Yup, you got it! lol 😀

Glad I could help.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

That’s not bad looking considering it’s DV source but file size is directly controlled by bit rate and nothing else. So if 3.30Mbit/s gave you a 669mb file then increasing it to 6.6Mbit/s should double your file size to around 1.3GB. You can do the math to hit the target you want. DV source is 25Mbps. AVC/H.264 should give you the same quality at 1/2 the bit rate so as you approach 12.5Mbps you will be getting all the quality you are going to squeeze out of the footage but for SD video 6Mbps should be fine.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Robin S. Kurz] “So what am I doing wrong? :(“

You are missing the quotes “” around the source folder name and you’ve used them on an escaped name for the target folder name so both are actually wrong. It is required because there is a space in the name but only use one or the other.

Try this:
ln -s "/Volumes/RAID/Motion Templates.localized" "/Users/robinskurz/Movies/Motion Templates.localized"or you can try it by escaping the space in both names with \ like this:
ln -s /Volumes/RAID/Motion\ Templates.localized /Users/robinskurz/Movies/Motion\ Templates.localizedHere are the rules for working with filenames that contain spaces in Terminal:

• You must either escape a space by adding a backslash \ before it
• or enclose the name in quotes “”
• but DON’T do BOTH!!! 😉

So if you have a file name called: Hello World you can represent it as: "Hello World" or Hello\ World but NOT: "Hello\ World"In your case you didn’t quote or escape the first location and you both quoted and escaped the second. It’s common mistake for people who are not use to using Terminal.

Just to clean up… I’m guessing that you now have a folder called: Templates.localized under the folder you issued that command because the command: ln -s /Volumes/RAID/Motion Templates.localized says, Create a link from /Volumes/RAID/Motion to Templates.localized. Just delete it from the Finder if you do.

Hopefully this explanation will take some of the mystery out of when to use “” and when to use \. BTW, the tilda character “~” is expanded to be the current user’s home folder. So “~/Movies” on your Mac expands to “/Users/robinskurz/Movies” and on my Mac it expands to “/Users/rofrano/Movies”. This allows you to specify a home folder that works for everyone without being specific.

Let me know if that fixes it for you.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

I’ve never used the UtVideo codec but ProRes 422 is 10-bit and it looks like UtVideo Pro YUV422 10bit VCM is the only choice that will maintain 10-bit. CineForm is also 10-bit. If you didn’t care about that, then UtVideo YUV 422 BT .709 VCM or UtVideo YUV 422 BT .601 VCM would be the next choice which is 8-bit but still 422. BT .709 is for HD and BT .601 is for SD. You didn’t say if your film scan was HD or SD.

For CineForm look for the Medium codec. Medium is a good tradeoff between file size and quality and is the default that Vegas Pro used for versions 6, 7, & 8 which use to ship the CineForm codec as an included component in Vegas Pro. Of course if you want maximum quality, choose one of the FilmScan options. After all, you did scan film. 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

If you are delivering in 24p then I would start off with a 24p project and add whatever media you want to it and slow it down or speed it up or whatever you need to do. This way you can trust the preview window to show you how it will look at 24 fps.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Shane Ross] “Thunderbay 4 …Promise Technology Pegasus”

I feel it’s important to note the main difference between these two boxes: The Thunderbay 4 is a Software RAID which is not recommended for RAID 5 although it works, but it works slower because your Mac is doing all the work of maintaining the RAID. This also means it’s not multi-platform (PC+Mac) if that’s important to you. The Promise Technology Pegasus is a Hardware RAID that takes all of the RAID tasks away from your Mac and performs them in hardware. If you are considering RAID 5, I would strongly recommend a hardware RAID.

I have a CineRAID CR-H458 which is a hardware RAID via USB 3.0 or eSATA. You just pop in 4 NAS class drives and flick the switches on the back to configure the RAID level and plug it into your Mac or PC. Couldn’t be easier to set up and I do switch it between my Mac and PC and it works fine on both. Something you can’t do with a software RAID. I have 4 x 3TB WD Red NAS drives in mine for a 9TB RAID 5.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com