[Joseph Owens]

[Peter Chamberlain] “when we can make it easier and more open”

I hate to say it…, but, that is when you will start making sales to the members of this forum, most of whom have the expectation of a full and complete post production system for about… what was FinalCutStudio3? $900 bucks or so?

Very very few subscribers here run post houses on the scale of Laser Pacific or Modern or Rushes or Company3 and so on, and the generous lease of something like 6 or 7 grand a month pretty much exhausts the possibilities for a cottage-based freelancer or single-person shop. Given the rates that producers are willing to pay for a few days’ grading (when they even consider it and don’t have their editor do it), maybe this is actually the new business model that really should be considered.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

Interesting to me that as more “new” features are added, or, “functionality” would be a marketing word, the more questions and qualifications get asked, about does this system do this, or do you need that, and does it work with this, or do I need to buy another system, or who needs to build this and if I want to do that, do I need something else… or, you need to buy our “special” system…

Beginning to sound like a familiar story… like “AVID”…

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

The only control panels qualified to function with BM Resolve are the Tangent Wave and DaVinci Resolve dedicated panel. The Wave will only work with the Mac version, and the Linux version requires the DaVinci control panel.

Just because something is a Blackmagic product does not mean that it is qualified to function with all other Blackmagic products, this application in particular.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Rory Hinds] “So basically for $85k you get what the Mac version give you”

Not really.
Point #1: This figure is still only 10% of what a daVinci system used to cost, but is functionally equivalent. The Mac price, which is what most people see first, is for the software only.

Point#2: A single GPU Mac version with either no control panel or a Wave basically is a closed-ended system that will choke beyond HD, while the Linux version requires the dedicated DaVinci control panel and is open-ended. An operator can make it as big or as fast as they can afford. Essentially it starts where the Mac version leaves off. So a serious A-List facility would opt for this with no questions and pay it off 10 times faster. A daVinci system used to take about a week to install and get functional, especially with all the fudges that needed to be put in place for telecine work.

I don’t see it being aimed at an “enthusiast” market, and the business plan initially appears to loosely mirror (although there is bigger scaling factor for Blackmagic) the original Silicon Color concept for Final Touch, which was to offer an HD version for about $5K, and a 2K version for about $30K. There was an SD package which no one ever purchased, to my knowledge.

Of course Apple put the boots to all that, and I guess most of us are just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Patrick Woodard] “new Quadro 4000 coming to the Mac in October”

Looks good on paper, but even if nVidia does release a Mac version in about two months or so, does that translate to Christmas 2010 before anyone has enough confidence in it to recommend it as supported hardware for their application… plus whatever the GUI GPU might be by then (in the case of BM Resolve)?

I’ve been “worked over” by Apple too many times to have anything but growing concern.
Good thing I’m in no rush — no one in my market seems to be interested, as long as the product I’m supplying meets their criteria.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Jeremy Garchow] “undulate”

the word is “ululate” and its that weird warbling noise that fanatics make as they are dispatching infidels and apostates. And anybody else that misbehaves.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Keith Davies] “For 4:4:4 HDSR into FCP Via AJA Kona3.
1. Connect HDSR HD SDI A & B to a 2 to 1 barrel connector.
2. Attach this to SDI input of the Kona3.
3. In FCP select 10bit RGB codec.”

That would be a disaster, but you would likely have only seen garbage at the inputs anyway. I’m just worried about what would have happened “shorting” the outputs of the SR deck. People forget this is electricity that they’re dealing with. “Dual-Link” DVI is NOT the same as “Dual Link” HD-SDI.

a Kona3 card and K3 breakout box combination has 4 HD-SDI BNC connectors: one pair each for Dual-Link A/B In and Out. On the back of a 4:4:4 optioned SR deck there will be SDI Dual Link I/O labelled as A and B, which you connect accordingly with separate BNC cables, preferably of identical length, so there are no clocking issues.
According to the 5500 manual, there are only specific “downconvert” paths for 24PsF 4:4:4, and SD output does not appear to be an option in either NTSC or PAL. Conversion to 4:2:2 requires the HKSR5001 Converter board option.

In the Kona3 control panel, you must select “Dual Link” to correctly re-encode the HD-SDI inputs, and then you have some options regarding transcode and codec within FCP. Make sure that you select the correct base frame rate… 24 PsF in your case.

The facility you work for turns individuals loose on $150,000 machines with no training? Fascinating. I hope their insurance is paid up.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

I did a short stint for a major electronics manufacturer, and after awhile working for them, was introduced to the practical acronym for the company name: Soon Only Not Yet. There were more, but they’ll send ninjas to kill me, even after all these years.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Michael Cinquin] “Color should work fine in a DaVinci setup ; the only drawback is that Color will then be using the very small video card the monitors are connected to (GT120) instead of a big one (GTX285,FX4800) : “

I would not bet the farm on this one. There is more than one drawback. Although I have a single anecdotal report that COLOR has booted with more than one GPU resident (and active), the history is that it won’t run with that configuration, so you will likely be intervening in the hardware setup at bootup to successfully run both applications from the same platform. Also, COLOR is not 100% compatible with nVidia, most obviously in its bit-depth rendering. To date, to get anything beyond 8-bit, you need to select “float”. Maybe this isn’t a problem for most consumers.

Unless Blackmagic somehow finds a way to bring ATI into the CUDA club, these very basic, read “crucial”, differences make Resolve and COLOR uneasy bedmates.

This is NOT an Apple application, (neither is COLOR, to tell the truth) and as far as I can infer, Apple is not helping, and is unlikely to.

On the hackintosh/Linux issue:
Silicon Color lost control of how its subscriber/user base implemented their application, and the unsuccessful do-it-yourselfers got busy bad-mouthing the app as fast and hard as they could muster, when the app failed to perform as advertised.
I sympathize completely with the BlackMagic’s concern in preserving the hallowed brand of DaVinci by keeping control of its configuration.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?

[Joseph Owens]

[Michael Cinquin] “Other solutions would be to put 2 big graphic cards in the computer, and leave the Quadro Fx without any monitors attached, or use the computer only for DaVinci “

I get the feeling that the “use the computer only for DaVinci” is the plan and the swiss army knife might be too much to ask.

And, what would the BlackMagic HDLink Extreme3D be for? … besides the SDI I/O you will require and where are you going to put it in your 2008 MacPro? I thought it was for attaching a Grade Monitor so that the 4800 is the CUDA GPU that is doing the calculations and passing the image on for SDI display? Sort of like the Apple COLOR ATI/GPU plus Kona/Video I/O approach…

Correct me if this is not within the “no hardware variations” directive.

jPo

You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?