Mark Spano
Forum Replies Created
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It’s an interesting idea. I don’t think a service like this exists, primarily because it’s a lot of work wrangling everything that broadcasters want, and every one is different. What they will require, and all of the different variations of things, there are so many variables. I’ve been tasked to do this for various films that pass through my facility, and we basically do them as one-offs for each request. If you get a hold of specs for a few networks, you’ll see what I mean. You might want to get in good with a trustworthy post house and strike up a deal for them to handle all of your conversion and material delivery requests, but I doubt anyone would do this as a flat rate or project rate. The requests are usually pretty unique and therefore billed individually.
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I don’t know. But I think you’re right – he’s crazy.
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Olaf!
I’m emailing you off-list with the AMA plugin and instructions on where to put it…
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It’s simple really.
ALWAYS order surround channels this way:
1 – Left
2 – Right
3 – Center
4 – LFE
5 – Left Surround
6 – Right SurroundThis is SMPTE specification for surround channel layout. Any other layout for surround channels is asking for trouble for the next person. Anyone working in production or post or projection is expecting this order, and when the channels aren’t in this order, it’s a guessing game. Any other “established” ordering was made before the SMPTE spec, and the SMPTE spec aimed at eliminating confusion.
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The simple/broad answer is “no”. The main reason why HD equipment doesn’t improve the SD quality is because HD is square pixels and SD is rectangular pixels. The scaling effects going from HD to SD are generally worse than if the source was SD to begin with. This is not true, however, of 4K/5K/6K downscaling to HD. Both of these are square pixels, so you can get really good scaling between them.
Now there’s always an argument for better equipment. For example, there’s a good chance a great modern camera like an Alexa would capture a better quality signal overall, that even scaled to SD would better your existing equipment. Things like dynamic range, camera color gamut handling, lenses, that type of thing can have a good effect on the overall output. But scaling it to SD will always take a big chunk out of the quality.
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It sucks, yes, but it’s not up to us. It’s up to networks and their specs. If they say it must be center-cut safe, then you gotta comply. For what it’s worth, though, I’ve been able to do my center cut title safety business at 90% rather than the former SD 80% safety, and this has been acceptable. But yeah, there’s not much getting around it (yet).
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Shane’s notes in this thread have an inconsistency, just pointing out that for HD outputs, they should be UPPER (odd) field first. SD outputs are the only time you would use lower (even) field first.
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So you’re saying going back to MC 8.1 on 10.9.5 shows no sluggish behavior? I may have to give that combo a try. I only have used MC 8.3 and 8.3.1 and have had the sluggish playback issue since then. Before that, it was 7.0.3 and no problems.
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It’s definitely software. I’m running 10.8.5, and I experience the same issues. Mine show up this way: hit play, and video stutters to catch up, eventually hitting full speed, but then stuttering again, with red bars showing up all over the timeline, even on single track no effects. Didn’t happen at all like this until MC8. I’ve been going back and forth with Avid support, but their suggestions are all broad and non-specific, so it seems they suspect it’s my systems that are having the issue. However I have 14 systems, and they’re all having it at random times. The latest suggestion I have from them is to completely reformat a system, which I’ve not been able to do (due to having to do the work). I am not optimistic that this will be fixed any time soon.
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Thunderbolt. Gotcha. I can’t personally vouch for it but this might be your all in one:
https://www.motu.com/video-products/hdx-sdi-thunderbolt