[Matt Killmon]

I thought I’d read that FCP’s old codebase manually corrected for the (then-default) OS X gamma setting of 1.8, so the correct course of action was to go back and set SL’s gamma to 1.8 so that FCP would be right. Was that fixed in a point-update?

[Matt Killmon]

If they are actually stereo audio that somehow got ingested as monaural stems, you could mark them as a Stereo Pair (Opt+L, different than linking). That should accomplish what you want.

[Matt Killmon]

Not directly related, but I did have a situation like this where I shot a video with a Canon T1i at 1920 x 1080, not realizing it was limited to 20fps at that resolution. Imagine my shock when I imported the file and noticed how juddery it was! Fortunately the clip in question was very low-motion (shot of a talking head, done handheld but pretty smoothly), and I was able to use the Optical Flow image retiming in After Effects to boost it artificially to 24fps (didn’t feel like pushing my luck to 29.97). It ended up working out—the few weirdo motion artifacts were so minor as to be unnoticeable in realtime, and no one said a word.

Depending on the nature of your clip (and, obviously, if you have After Effects) this might be a good way to go.

The initial convert is probably best done in QuickTime Pro, honestly. Dave, how is MPEG Streamclip for duties like this? I’ve never used it as a general purpose video converter, just for situations where I needed to go from an MPEG-2 source.

[Matt Killmon]

The data’s still there though, it’s got to be a metadata or flagging problem. In fact, when I run the files through JES Deinterlacer, it decodes them out (mostly) properly (not half-res). There’ just a slight border around the edges.

The main reason I can’t re-capture the same clip exactly is because it’s live capture from gameplay, not from a recorded tape. There’s a great shot in here that I’d like to salvage.

Oh well, I’ll just keep messing around with JES or other apps and seeing if I can retrieve the shot. Thanks anyway.

[Matt Killmon]

I saw the thread and solution, but I’m less concerned about fixing the crash (which is still infrequent) and MORE concerned with whether or not there’s a way to fix the QuickTime files that have the half-res decoding problem.

I’ll give clearing out the thumbnail cache and rebuilding my project from XMLs a shot to avoid the crash in the future, but do you have any ideas on the two files that I’d like to repair?

[Matt Killmon]

Would CatDV allow for integration into the existing Active Directory network to inherit user information, and allow users outside the edit suites (i.e. the marketing team) to look through and do basic interaction with our assets? I’m envisioning scenarios where I can mark projects as “ready for review” or “ready for approval,” have e-mail notifications go out to the appropriate parties, or where marketing brand managers can use encoding presets to create small files for themselves which they can then deploy to the necessary parties, without having to interrupt myself or my associate from ongoing edit duties.

I was mostly interested in FCS because it’s more Apple kit, so I assume (perhaps wrongly!) that it’s tailor-made for managing Final Cut projects well. Plus I know it integrates with Mac OS X Server, which in turn can join AD domains through OD (allowing it to integrate with the existing company-wide Windows-based network). Is your recommendation of CatDV over FCS based on CatDV being a more effective, less complex solution, or a cheaper solution, or some combination of the two? Are their lurking horrors in FCS that I’m not aware of, having never used it before?

I’m guessing these might be better questions for the FCS forum.

[Matt Killmon]

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the information. So, essentially, you’re advocating a setup where we’d have (essentially) a 10GigE “cross-over” connection between the two systems, with direct-attached storage on one of them, file sharing over that 10GigE connection? Or am I misunderstanding something here?

The other main reason I’d prefer to get away from direct-attached storage is to keep the loud, hot storage arrays out of my (or the associate video producer’s) edit suite since I also do some audio mixing, and would like an environment where I’m able to hear properly. Currently that’s a bit tough with two constantly-running XServe RAIDs in my office. Plus, this office and the adjacent one are already wired with 62.5 micron multi-mode fiber to a nearby IT server closet. With this in mind, would it still be possible to engage in a setup like the one you’ve described, with the storage located off in a nearby server closet?

[Matt Killmon]

[gary adcock]The Hi5-3G does this now – takes Dual Link, 3G or single link HDSDI and converts to HDMI

Useful for someone, but that’s actually the opposite of what I want to accomplish—unless that is bi-directional. I’m trying to convert from HDMI to dual-link HD-SDI in the case of using the KONA 3.

However the content you are attempting to capture has HDCP copy protection on the HDMI and that would keep you from capturing that content digitally.

Actually, the good news there is that the content is NOT protected by HDCP. I work directly for the publisher (in house with one of the dev teams), so I do all of my capture from test consoles which do not use HDCP on their HDMI outputs. So it sounds like the LHi would be perfect for this.

The question about ingesting converted (decoded to 6-channel AES) surround audio with the LHi stands, though.

[Matt Killmon]

I guess my question is more: is Apple XSan overkill for two clients (plus the marketing department accessing assets via Ethernet file-sharing from the Final Cut Server)? If the case can be made from a technical standpoint that the greater investment is worth it either in terms of capability, reliability, or future-proofing, then I think it would be made.

That said, if the other Fibre solutions you’ve named are just as capable of meeting my needs—in terms of future expansion of capacity and/or bandwidth, being able to support more than two clients (three, I suppose, if the Final Cut Server machine is counted)—then I’m happy to go with one of them.

I’ll give some of the companies you mentioned a call and ask them some questions as well.

[Matt Killmon]

I’m a big fan of using JES Deinterlacer for tasks like this. It’s fast, free, and handy!