[Matt Devino]

Thanks Del I will try that… for those who are interested I got this email back from Blackmagic which is a bit disconcerting…

Hello Matt,

We have been notified of this issue from other customers as well in the past
few weeks. We did get in touch with Apple and apparently this issue is not
only isolated to our cards but across other venders too which makes us think
this might be something that the Final Cut crew have to address but we are
seeing if there can be anything done on our side to rectify this issue.

I assure you we have been working with Apple continuously to track down this
issue and what exactly is causing it. I have gotten many system profiles and
workflows of how to regress this issue. But I will go ahead and add the
information you have provided me to the list that I have.

We are attempting to facilitate this process even more by supplying more
diagnostic information to Apple rather then system profiles and steps on how
to reproduce the problem. Apple now is looking for a Batch Capture list and
the associated Project file for when this error is happening.

My guess is that they are looking for a particular pattern or they have
narrowed it down a bit more which is why they are requesting only this info
at the moment. If you get a chance to get me that, I’d really appreciate it
so we can finally fix this issue.

So at this point there is no immediate fix, but it is something we are aware
of and are actively trying to address. If you can give us that information,
it would be most appreciated.

(I left the Engineers Name out here)
Support Engineer
Blackmagic Design Inc. USA

[Matt Devino]

Update:

I tried a new breakout cable from the card – NG.

I tried a new RS-422 cable from the breakout cable to the patch bay – NG.

I tried routing that new RS-422 cable to a different position on the patch bay – NG.

I’m starting to think it’s the card…going to re-seat the card and see what happens.

[Matt Devino]

My Mac is actually in the machine room and I use a KVM switch to monitor in the editing bay. I thought it could be something in the patch bay as we use tie lines to patch from one side of the room to the other, so I tried patching right from my MacPro to my digibeta deck which are right next to eachother in the patch bay (and right on top of each other in the rack) in order to rule out the tie lines. It still has major issues. I’m guessing it has to be either the connection to the patch bay coming directly from the MacPro, the RS-422 cable coming from the card, or the card itself. I’m going to see if I can figure it out but in the mean time any other ideas would be very appreciated. Thanks.
-Matt

[Matt Devino]

Everything is run through a patch bay, so I don’t have the option to plug the deck into the same electrical source as the computer. We have a pretty maxed out machine room, but the decks work fine with our Avids and our other final cut system (G5 dual 2.0 with Decklink HD Pro).

[Matt Devino]

Yes, each deck is running off of it’s own cable and is accessed through a patch bay. Thanks.

[Matt Devino]

I have a Western Digital raided 1TB MyBook firewire 800 drive, and ProResHQ at 1080p24 works perfectly. My computer is an old G5 dual 1.8GHZ. Maybe my system is a freak of nature, but I’ve been doing ProResHQ editing on it since 6.0 with no problems at all. I just need to render more often than on the 8-core at work. I think you should be fine.

[Matt Devino]

Not in the same way. In 5.1 you would need to capture as DVCPRO HD or Uncompressed if you have a capture card, then remove the pulldown in cinema tools. Hopefully you shot in the “24PA” mode, which is where the camera always records a constant A-frame. Otherwise you’re looking at a big headache.

[Matt Devino]

“Correct me if I’m wrong but it looks to me like the Panny camera was not focused on the same objects (the scenery shot with the hedges in the fg is a good example of this). Even the test pattern looks like the Panny sample was shot off-angle or something”

Like I said the test wasn’t entirely scientific. We just placed both cameras next to each other and shot the same scenes with “close-enough” framing. Nothing too serious, it was just so people could see the general differences. This is why the angle is different for each shot, but I think the test still shows a good general comparison of the EX1 looking a certain way compared to the HVX. We aren’t trying to discredit either camera here.

[Matt Devino]

No problem. I think Sony has done a very good job with their long-GOP compression cameras. I own a V1U and shoot snowboarding with it a lot and very very rarely see any artifacts. It seems the EX1 is just as good if not better at avoiding artifacts, and 35mbit/s is nice too.

[Matt Devino]

Whoa, didn’t mean to post that 3 times…