Marisu Fronc
Forum Replies Created
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I’ve never had a problem with batch capture of clips from 00 hour up through 23 hour – the only problem is if there is repetitive code on the tape or if earlier tc segments are after later hour ones. It works well in Pro 2.0 – I can’t imagine why it would stop working in 3.0.
slainte,
marisu -
Steve-
We’ve been using firewire drives for ease in passing projects back and forth. We’ve had no more problems with them than we have with the SATA II internal drives (with DV-SD projects, that is). However, we did have issues with the drives themselves not being robust enough – we lost a couple of Seagate 320’s before switching to WD drives (which, so far at least, have been much more stable). My advice – backup regularly to another drive, just in case.
slainte,
marisu -
Yeah – that’s what we’re doing, but now I’m bumping into projects too big to fit on a single drive – which means even MORE hassles (not to mention the time wasted trying to reuse things already captured – I’d like to be able to have EVERYTHING available ready to import with out trying to find it first). Push comes to shove, it works fine – but I still need a SAN!!!
slainte,
marisu -
Steve-
I wouldn’t be surprised if the server is the problem – we tried using a single fibe channel SAN for all our workstations about a year ago – after MONTHS and MONTHS of hassle we had to finally go back to sneaker net to pass things around. We were NOT using ANY video cards (Matrox, AJA or anyone else) and all approved systems – everything worked without the SAN, just not with it (and ANY level of RAID beyond RAID 0 was completely undoable).
I agree it is a serious limitation NOT to be able to get a SAN to work – especially in today’s collaborative environments.
If you ever DO get it working, post your SAN specs – I’d love to find a solution that isn’t just a money pit of pain.
slainte,
marisu -
Why does this remind me of the client who manufactured those tacky clear vinyl slipcovers for sofas (this was back in the 70’s) they wanted to shoot their “before & after” spot themselves – “look at the stain this grape juice makes on the white couch, if they had only had our wonderful couch covers it would still lok like this” and voila the couch is unstained – unfortunately they didn’t understand that they needed to shoot the couch with the cover & no stain FIRST (you could see the stain through the slipcovers after all). VERY unfortunately (for them at least) it took them 8 tries (on 8 separate occasions with 8 different couches) before they finally wised up and “got it”.
slainte,
marisu -
You need to make sure of a couple things for this to work dependably – you need to assign the drive the same letter on each workstation you attach it to and you need to make sure all the workstations are set to “same as project” for the location of all the files. We’ve been doing it for months without errors as long as both those parameters are set properly.
slainte,
marisu -
Steven-
All great and wonderful suggestions. Unfortunately when you’re sitting there with the director they want to see all their selected shots and swap them out as quickly as possible, I can’t tell them I only have half of their pull list because the software can’t handle it all, they don’t care, that’s my issue not their’s, and rightly so. As projects pass back and forth between various people (art, sound, editing, etc) they may well need something that I decided I didn’t and then they’re stuck. As it stands I can’t even begin to cull a project until the final voice over stage (which is often 4-6 months or longer after its inception) and can’t cut it to the bone until its heading out the door for closed captioning. Even then I need to save a copy of the project with everything in it for the next round of revision or adaptation.
If bridge worked it could certainly streamline the process some, but it doesn’t work dependably (for stills certainly, for video it bogs down and eventually hangs then crashes). Besides, I already use two monitors just for editing. The other problem is probably specific to the nature of what my company does, we need to be able to make constant revisions and updates to keep the product current or customized, paring a project down to just what you’re using means spending even more time trying to find and import all the stuff you eliminated when the next round begins. It is especially tedious when all the shots are batch digitized by ID number from a database (no long captures, every shot is separate from the get go) – once you enter a useful description for each shot on all the footage for a large project (which usually ends up as 1-3 hours of finished material) you don’t really want to have to re-enter it every time you re-import. I have found that rebuilding a legacy project from an EDL is probably the worst offender in terms of the number of clips it creates, those projects are ridiculous from inception with nothing available to cull, even if I wanted to.
We don’t nest sequences so the only new renders are the ones caused by new editing decisions – I’m busy all day every day, nights are for backups (because while I haven’t had problems with corruption I have lost disk drives so everything has to be backed up) Time used to render then re-render, etc. is seen as wasted time just as much as the hangs and restarts. Bottom line is that Premiere probably can’t handle what my company is asking me to do with it (which I suspected going in . . . but it wasn’t my decision). Perhaps they’ll decide to make a change, or I’ll continue to battle with it. In either case, my job is to deliver what I’m asked for, the way I’m asked to with the tools I’ve been given.
I do appreciate all your suggestions though, thanks for taking the time and thought to post them.
slainte,
marisu -
Vincent-
No offense taken – my remark was in response to Mike Veldt’s comment that large project sizes (the ones that seem to cause the most problems) are often caused by editing on the timeline – I was just totally shocked by that thought . . . once you have a rough cut and are trying to fine tune it to meet your director’s/producer’s/customer’s needs how else WOULD you fine tune the edit except on the timeline?
As far as our editing systems go – yes, we do still have 3 Discreet systems, we have hundreds of projects that we need to redo in Premiere as they get updated – but our editing is all being done now on our 5 seats of Premiere (updating my COW info hasn’t been my highest priority, I’m lucky if I have time to post at all). Of course, as we are definitely having problems with the size and quantity of projects we are working on that may not continue for much longer – then I’ll have 2 legacy systems to have to update projects from.
I understand that many of the people using Premiere do not have the needs of the company I work for. I didn’t choose the software (nor did I choose edit, nor the Grass Valley editor I used in the linear suite before that). My job is to edit the product I’m asked for with the tools I’m given to work with. If your needs are simpler and Premiere is working fine for you that’s wonderful, I’m merely trying to see what (if anything) I can do to manage the task I’ve been set – that’s been my goal for the last 20+ years and will continue to be my goal in the future.
slainte,
marisu
marisu -
Not in my case, just tonnes of asssets – although it puzzles me to hear that an editing program that can’t handle editing?!
slainte,
marisu -
Some of the projects I’ve had the most issues with are indeed over 100Mb – 106, 117, and 122 for three recent troublemakers. However, I’ve also had major problems with some projects in the 65 – 75 Mb range that used lots of PSD’s and one that was only around 21Mb but had dynamic links to AE for all the animation (at least, for a while it did – removing the dynamic links and replacing them with .avi’s rendered out of AE solved that problem). Definitely over 100 Mb seems to be where the big problems start (for me at least)
slainte,
marisu