Mark Spano
Forum Replies Created
-
I can offer suggestions, but I haven’t used this workflow, so I can’t vouch for any of this working. As far as audio being out of sync – not sure. Maybe there’s some camera delay between the XLR outputs vs. SDI. Why not capture both audio and video over HD SDI? I don’t know the camera’s capabilities in this regard but it’s worth looking into. As far as your capture workflow, here’s how I would try to set it up. I assume you’re not capturing to HDV via firewire, so you’re probably capturing via HD SDI to a full raster codec. In FCP, choose easy setup “V4HD – Apple ProRes 422 1080 29.97 (1920 x 1080)”. In the V4HD control panel, under Setup, choose HD SDI as input, Auto Detect=Format and Genlock. This sets up FCP to capture the video on the tape as it is recorded (23.976 over 59.94i). I do not believe the V4HD has the capability to remove the pulldown on capture. The manual is confusing in this regard as it says certain conversions are supported, but in trying out a 23.976 capture setup with HD SDI feeding the V4HD at 29.97 doesn’t seem to give me the option to remove the pulldown. Perhaps there is a setting in the camera to remove the pulldown prior to output over HD SDI? If so, then you’d use the 23.976 easy setup. Otherwise, you will have to either edit at 29.97 or find another way to remove the pulldown. Perhaps FCP’s menu option will take care of this, or the reverse telecine option in Compressor? I don’t know for sure, but there are things you can experiment with. Hope that’s helpful.
-
Steve’s not lying – we’d all buy standalone Blu-Ray recorders if they existed. Since they don’t, we are stuck with authoring drives hooked up to computers.
-
If you have Compressor and Flip4Mac Export installed, then it’s here, in the inspector:
Call up a quicktime export preset, and change the file format to Quicktime Export Components. The rest is under the drop down menus and in Options you can set all the usual WMV parameters.
-
to clarify, I was never suggesting that DVCProHD was full raster. I was stating that the V4HD supported full raster capture and playout (with the appropriate codec of course). This is what marks the V4HD different from its predecessor (V3HD).
-
Shane, we are in complete agreement on that front. I even met the MOTU guys at the AES show when it was in NYC a few years ago and they had the V3HD but it was not hooked up and no one knew how to use it! The most I could do was turn it on and jog through the parameters of what it said it could do. Going by specs and our needs as a facility (support for audio post), we went with it. I use it as a front end for Pro Tools (via lightpipe) as well as FCP for basic editing and prep for broadcast delivery. It is useful, but I would hesitate to give a full thumbs up to other workflows simply because I haven’t experienced its functionality and usefulness beyond my means. One good thing was that we had the V3HD and when MOTU announced the V4HD they offered us a swap without having to cough anything up. Aside from that, they’ve been slow to address the few complaints I’ve had and there’s no forum or even a real FAQ on any issues others have had. For a long time I thought I was the only one who had one!
-
Yes – supported, but encoded using CPU. Full raster monitoring over HDMI and DVI as well as HD-SDI, and analog component. It’s a shame this piece of gear hasn’t been peer reviewed much in comparison to the Matrox and AJA counterparts, as I think for some it might just fit the bill.
-
Wrong – the V4HD runs full raster over FW800 and can support ProRes and ProResHQ. There are some caveats with this hardware, but I’ve been using it for quite some time and have been mostly pleased. A very nice up and downconvert that can operate in standalone as well.
-
Gary, when you say it’s a standard 2vuy codec, where can that be found? I assume some codec packages exist for PC independently of pro video software? Many of the folks I’m dealing with are often reencoding using some hardware or software destined for either broadcast or web publishing. The fact that they open my files and tell me “there’s just a blank screen, no video, but the audio plays” tells me they’re missing a suitable playback codec that doesn’t come preinstalled with whatever software they’re using. This is the point in the conversation where I’ve struggled to find some common ground in codecland. And yes, even these “pro” users sometimes don’t have permissions to install codec packages or drivers to play non-compliant files.
-
Of course, that is the ideal scenario, but it is *way* too often that I have a deadline and no contact info for the ultimate destination/user. Being a processing front for a producer who has a relationship with a client often means the people I’m talking to are many levels removed from the people who will handle the material I output. In many cases, they do not even know who gets it, just that it gets uploaded to some drop box (e.g. Hulu) or burned to a disc and gets messengered or Fedexed to “Library”. It’s obviously someone’s job to be connected in this, but as a facilitator for the “grunt work” on the job, I often have just enough time to do the actual work, and no time to network or chase down this or that person. It’s these scenarios where I’ll get the call from the ‘right’ person *after* the delivery/deadline has been made, only to find out what was needed and what had been misinterpreted or not relayed through the client to the producer etc. etc… Even then, the ‘right’ person often doesn’t understand enough about what they’re doing to ask for the right thing. Often I get responses like “usually they just give me a Quicktime” – that as we all know is about 10% of the info I’d need to properly deliver. It is all too common for broadcast corporations to hire people at low pay grades to ‘ingest’, basically training them to ‘load this here’ and ‘capture from here to here’. I think what I was asking for could have been more clearly described as not just a foolproof but an idiotproof codec to deliver to get them something they can work with without jumping through too many hoops. You guys as usual answered above and beyond the call. I could say I hope these situations occur less often as we proceed into the future, but I am already perturbed more and more by the descriptions of jobs that come in with the info “it’s an HD job” or “they want a Quicktime” (umm…specs, anyone?)
-
Animation’ll probably do. I am constantly dealing with folks in the pro broadcast world who do not read Apple Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 in their systems. I tried to deliver this to someone at Hulu and they could not process it. I had to deliver H.264 (which then would be recompressed !) for advertising on their site. I tried to deliver uncompressed to another encoding house which also couldn’t handle it. Then required me to deliver as “uncompressed AVI” as they were working on PC without the FCP codecs. I hate uploading an 800MB file for a :30 spot only to have to reencode and upload again… so maybe I’ll just suggest Animation from the getgo. Thanks for all your input.