[John Street]

Hi,

Not sure if this helps, but I ran into a similar problem early on … I own a Sony M25u deck which plays DV, DVCAM and HDV … this deck will not play ANY progressive format … Sony eventually upgraded the model of the deck (I think to a M25ua or M25AU) which DOES handle Progressive formats.

The thing that was confusing is that the message on the unit didn’t say “can’t handle progressive” …

If you’re using this deck, try your footage in a different deck …

thanks,

js

—
John Street
http://www.inpoint.tv
Mac OS 10.6.7, FCS 7.0.3, QT 7.6.6, Mac Pro 2x3GHz Quad-Core, 16GB Ram

[John Street]

Hi All,

As Craig has said, I definitely see a huge speed increase when using the Matrox Compress HD card, but I’m not using it at all these days because the video quality (that I’m getting) isn’t as good as I’d like it … I don’t remember it always being this way, but I haven’t been able to figure out how to improve it. The image has a lot more macro blocking going on and is real edge-y like an extra-strong sharpening filter is applied.

Has anyone had a similar experience?

I’m typically compressing XDCAM EX 1080i footage to a QuickTime as 854×480 2Mbps or as 640×360 800kbps.

thanks,

JS

—
John Street
http://www.inpoint.tv
Mac OS 10.6.7, FCS 7.0.3, QT 7.6.6, Mac Pro 2x3GHz Quad-Core, 16GB Ram

[John Street]

Hi Greg,

The Ki Pro workflow is pretty simple. These units record on a regular firewire 800 hard drive that is inserted in the recorder. The drives hold either 250 GB or 500 GB, so one important thing is to make sure you have enough hard drive space to record your entire event. You can switch hard drives if one gets full but it’s not a super speedy process. By the way, the Ki Pro typically wants to stop recording when the drive capacity is down to 10% … this can be a surprise if you’re not prepared for it.

Please read the manual to double check my information, but here’s the workflow when you’re done recording:
1. Press the “Slot” button on the Ki Pro and wait until it says “No Slot” … It is unmounting the drive while you’re waiting. If the Ki Pro has already been powered down you do not need to do this step.
2. Press the “Eject” button on the Ki Pro. This is the physical release for the drive.
3. Slide the drive out of its bay by pulling towards you (towards the keypad, not upwards)
4. You’ll notice that the back of the drive has a single FW 800 port. Simply connect it to your computer by FW800 and transfer your files. Since the files are ProRes QuickTimes, they do not need to be re-wrapped or converted before use in Final Cut. There is not a complicated directory structure like there is for SxS cards, it’s simply one file equals one clip.

Do not underestimate the time it will take to transfer these files!

Have fun!

—
John Street
http://www.inpoint.tv
Mac OS 10.6.6, FCS 7.0.3, QT 7.6.6, Mac Pro 2x3GHz Quad-Core, 16GB Ram

[John Street]

Hi Rick,

Thanks for your input … I was very interested to read in the B&H post that the filter is “clear and colorless.”

I am an EX-3 owner, and I use a Tiffen IR filter to cut the unwanted color from IR pollution.
https://secure.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=TIT1IR77&N=0&InitialSearch=yes

In general I’m happy with my Tiffen filter — it’s astounding how it fixes the blacks in a scene … but there’s definitely a significant amount of light lost when using it, and there’s a visible green cast that needs to be eliminated by white balancing on a proper white card before the shoot.

So I find myself constantly switching back and forth between the IR filter and my regular UV filter — inconvenient and time-consuming.

Tell us about your experience with your filter. Do you find that it is indeed colorless and that there’s no light loss (just like a normal UV filter) but that it is effective at cutting out the unwanted IR pollution (like muddy or maroon blacks in a scene) without coloring the rest of the scene?

This would be pretty cool!

thanks,

—
John Street
http://www.inpoint.tv
Mac OS 10.6.6, FCS 7.0.3, QT 7.6.6, Mac Pro 2x3GHz Quad-Core, 16GB Ram

[John Street]

Hi,

I appreciate your comment Dave because we can all learn to resist the quick-fix temptation of putting H.264 in the timeline …

However, I wonder if something different is happening here. I receive the same error when dealing with ProRes422 files and it has me stumped.

Here’s the situation that happens to me:

I use a 7D and a timer to shoot several hundred JPEG stills as the basis for a timelapse shot. Then I open them as an Image Sequence in QuickTime Pro. From QT Pro, I export a QuickTime movie in ProRes422 format.

Since the file dimensions are too huge to work with (5184×3456), I change the output size to a smaller size.

If I choose one of the QT presets like HDTV 1920×1080 then I have no problems in Final Cut. But I prefer to use a larger size (like 3000×2000) so I can drop the clip in a 1920×1080 ProRes422 timeline and add zooms and pans.

This 3000×2000 QT appears to work fine but I can’t render with it … it plays well in QT Player … it plays well in Final Cut’s Viewer … but when I put it in a 1920×1080 ProRes422 timeline and try to render I get the error about hardware codec not found.

Oddly, if I change the codec of the timeline to an older technology like Photo-JPEG or Apple Intermediate Codec then the clip will render fine. It’s only when it’s a ProRes422 timeline that the problem presents itself. And I want to reiterate that even though the footage was shot on a 7D, it was never an H.264 file — it was a JPEG image sequence converted directly to a ProRes422 QuickTime.

This only happens in the middle of hectic time-pressured projects (isn’t that always the case?!) so I haven’t done any super-extensive troubleshooting …

Has anyone else run into this situation? Or do you know if ProRes422 is restricted to certain file dimensions?

—
John Street
http://www.inpoint.tv
Mac OS 10.6.6, FCS 7.0.3, QT 7.6.6, Mac Pro 2x3GHz Quad-Core, 16GB Ram

[John Street]

Michael,

Thank you very much for your post … and I’m excited to hear about the broad acceptance of 16:9 footage … here in the US we’re seeing a very similar thing … with one exception …

It still seems that most corporate meetings are run in a 4:3 format … the non-centralized production of PowerPoint graphics in many corporations seem to default to a 4:3 shape and much video that is prepared for these meetings is produced to match the 4:3 “look” … it’s painful but true … even on very high-end live meetings, if the event producer is faced with accepting videos (and PowerPoints) from unknown (or uncontrolled) presenters then they choose to stay conservative and build their show around the 4:3 format … no one wants to risk being in a situation where the playback environment is not set to handle an anamorphic image and accidentally have the CEOs video look ‘screwed up’ …

Best wishes and thanks for the input!

John

—
John Street
http://www.inpoint.tv

[John Street]

Garbage matte is a great filter … it’s the thing that does the cropping for you … you’ll have to play with it a bit … turn off the “eyeball” visibility on V1 so you can see the effect that the Garbage Matte is having on V2 … apply the filter to V2 … double-click the clip on V2 to load it in the viewer … click on filters tab of Viewer to see the parameters … click on the “+” for point 1 and then click on canvas at the corner of the window and drag the point to get the necessary cropping … repeat for the other points … you’ll get the idea …

—
John Street
http://www.inpoint.tv

[John Street]

Duplicate your clip on the track above (like V2), apply a garbage matte to the clip so that only the window is visible, then apply the color correction to that clip … so your V1 clip is uncorrected, but V2 is corrected.

JS