[Kieran Matthew]

Hi Greg,

OEM equipment is made by one supplier (AJA) and sold to another (Media 100) so that they can sell it as their own. Here, rather than Media 100 running on retail Kona cards, AJA is providing Media 100 with a special card that meet its specifications and requirements. This is common practice in the computer industry and AJA does it for a number of other companies.

This is the cause of the issues over whether Media 100 and FCP will ever be able to co-exist on the same hardware. The beta v11 was running on Kona hardware, but until people can get their hands on the OEM stuff, no-one can tell whether the OEM cards can take the FCP drivers.

Media 100 HD-AJA is a complete hardware/software solution and is sold together. According to Media 100, you won’t be able to buy the software/drivers on their own.

K

[Kieran Matthew]

I’m in a similar situation and have been keeping an eye on developments before taking the plunge. I don’t yet have an answer but I’ll share some observations.

1. Whatever path you take (FCP or New media 100) you’re going to need a new Mac – PCI-E is more than likely going to be used in the new intel Power Macs so buying a PCI-E based card is important as you’ll probably want to upgrade the mac before the card. Getting PCI and PCI-X cards out of the equation puts the relative cost issues on more of a level playing field.

2. There are many card makers, but it seems from discussions here and on other cow forums, that AJA is the card of choice for FCP systems. Comparing the costs of AJA (OEM) based Media 100 and AJA (Kona) based FCP systems (card + software only as drives, monitors and the mac are the same for both systems) are again more favorable, though I believe still in FCP’s favour.

3. Although it has yet to be proved with a shipping system, FCP might be able to run on Media 100’s hardware. But,

4. You can’t build a media 100 system by buying an AJA card and the software separately. It comes as a whole so if 3 above proves to be the case, a joint system would have to be based on a Media 100 system with FCP sotware added, rather than the other way round.

The best thing to do is wait a while and see what happens when people get their hands on the new media 100 systems. That said, Boris (the man and the company!) are aiming the new systems at existing users – they see that as their primary market – so the system is going to be developed with us in mind. That alone is a good reason to stick with Media 100 even if it does prove to be a slightly more expensive option.

Just my two cents worth!

K

[Kieran Matthew]

Hi Jerome,

Assuming that the effect is being applied to both the audio channels of the clip, and that “bypass” isn’t activated, the remaining hum could either be because of a harmonic of the 60hz hum, or that the hum you are hearing isn’t mains (60hz) in nature.

The best way I find is to set a single filter to “notch”, give it the widest possible width and then whilst playing the clip slide the frequency up and down. You’ll hear the affect of the filter in real time, so you should be able to zero in on the offending frequency.

Once you’ve found it you can then narrow the notch to filter out the hum but leave other nearby frequencies (that might be part of say speech) less affected.

You may need to use another notch to catch a harmonic if one is present.

K

[Kieran Matthew]

Thanks for the suggestion Floh.

When you mention compatability issues, how do they manifest themselves ? Are we just talking about geometry or something more fundamental ?

K

[Kieran Matthew]

Hi Chris,

I’ve opened and repaired a couple of BOBs for this issue and you’d be suprised at just how low tech they are inside. Simply unscrew, carefully peel back the copper shielding and just solder the appropriate wire back into place.

[Kieran Matthew]

In my experience, it’s gone I’m afraid. These files, as you say, get deleted automatically after a while.

K

[Kieran Matthew]

A note of caution here. My understanding of the whole FCP & Media 100 on same hardware issue is that although it may be possible to make FCP run on the AJA hardware shipping with V11 – Media 100 have no plans to sell the V11 software/drivers without the hardware.

So whereas you could (in theory) add the FCP software to your V11 Hardware, you won’t be able to just add V11 software to an existing FCP/Kona system.

My advice would be to wait until the first V11 systems hit the streets and make a decision then.

[Kieran Matthew]

When were you there sheepy? I was hoping to say hello, but didn’t know your real name! (somehow I doubt you had “sheeplove” on your ID badge ;-))

I’m up for the user group thang…

[Kieran Matthew]

Hi Tony,

Sorry for the delay. I’m using Media 100 – Bitvice – DVD SP as my workflow, mainly as I’m on the Mac. DVDSP takes m2v and ac3 files in and muxes them without altering them, which is good as I have to use Bitvice for the colourspace issue I mentioned.

I’m in the UK and work in PAL, but the scaling issue you mention may be because of slight differences in NTSC frames sizes (480 & 486 vertical I think, I may be wrong).

K

[Kieran Matthew]

I’ve never had a chance to use DVDit, so hopefully someone more knowledgeable will be along shortly with some answers.

In the meantime though, what are the artifacts like ? From experience of other users issues, artifacts can be caused by field dominance issues and by the software attempting to scale the files to fit its resolution. I’m just guessing though. Do the files look OK when played back on your computer before being imported into DVDit?