[Max Kaiser]

Please do let us know. Just got the card and this issue is a real bummer.

Max Kaiser
Hand Crank Films
http://www.handcrankfilms.com

Quad G5, 4.5 GB RAM
FCP 5.14
OS 10.4

[Max Kaiser]

I got the decklink sp and put it in the 4th slot.

[Max Kaiser]

Just in case anyone reads this:

I was able to fix it. It required tweaking the card up in the slot so that the left end of the card is on top of the little black release lever. The card appear to bend slightly up and to the left after this is done. It doesn’t look good, and it doesn’t feel good – but it works.

Thanks,
Max

Max Kaiser
Hand Crank Films
http://www.handcrankfilms.com

Quad G5, 4.5 GB RAM
FCP 5.14
OS 10.4

[Max Kaiser]

Matt,

What you say sounds correct. I tried the “Get Info” and recreate method but it always gets rejected even when I match the specs exactly (1280×720, H.264, 24fps, AAC music LC) no good.

Also, the export from QTPro is okay and looks pretty good, but it does seem to cut off my bottom and top by around 50 pixels for some reason. Kind of stinks for my commercials since I often use that are for text, etc.

Not sure about the 1080p going down to 720 or 540, will check, but I think it is only on the 29.97 stuff that it goes to SD.

Thanks!
max

[Max Kaiser]

sorry – I should clarify – I’m talking about Final Cut Pro Express here (FCE).

Thanks,
Max

[Max Kaiser]

Never mind. Just read a post on sorenson’s site saying this a documented bug and to downconvert our audio to 44.1 until they have a fix out.

Max

Max Kaiser
Hand Crank Films
http://www.handcrankfilms.com

Dual G5, 4.5 GB RAM, 9800SE Graphics
FCP 5.02
OS 10.4

[Max Kaiser]

Thanks guys, but none of these things did it.

What did do it, and I wanted to post for anyone else who is going through this is: I called Sorenson and talked to a very nice, helpful tech there. He said, oh, yes, you should get Squeeze 4.5, it is faster, but more importantly, you should create a “forced non-deinterlace filter” and apply it to your movies. He said that the default in Squeeze is now to apply auto-detect deinterlacing and that often it gets it wrong. If you apply a filter in which you turn off the deinterlacing you’ll get better video. I did it, and now my video has lost the hazy fog that was obscuring it and I’m back in heaven – not to mention, my vids are compressing extremely fast.

Sorenson kicks ass. Cleaner, does not.

Thanks!
Max

Max Kaiser
Hand Crank Films
http://www.handcrankfilms.com

Dual G5, 4.5 GB RAM, 9800SE Graphics
FCP 5.02
OS 10.4

[Max Kaiser]

You guys are great – that is just what I needed to know!

Thanks,
Max

[Max Kaiser]

Thanks to all. Unfortunately, I don’t have my own analogue tone receiver (or deck) so I’ll take some different tone down to the station. I can understand a difference in digital and analogue tone “0” levels, I’ve always read that -12db is roughly equivelent to analogue “0” and that going as high as 3db in analogue world is fine, when, of course, you cannot over shoot at all in digital land. What I cannot understand is why if my tone out of FCP is -12db and my persistence in FCP timeline is -12db why when connected to an analogue deck which is adjusted to match my -12db to his 0db (analogue), why then wouldn’t my audio peak out just perfectly – confounding! I can’t understand why my audio should peak at -6db digital in the timeline, set my fcp tone to -12db and I wouldn’t wind up with an adjusted analogue (peak) tone of +6db? Maybe things just aren’t that straighforward.

Max

[Max Kaiser]

First let me say, thank you very much for your post. It was very informative. I followed it to the letter but didn’t come out any the better. As for the stuff about DVDSP, I think that is further down the line so I’m not worried about that, first I gotta get it to look good in FCP.

Here’s what I did.

Took the 1080i60 HDV (upper field) footage dropped it into a 8 bit Uncompressed (lower field) timeline. Applied the the FC de-interlace filter. Tried choosing both Upper, and Lower and actually, all the other “minimalize flicker” settings as well.

I tried the same thing with stib’s filter which basically has only an upper or lower setting, and then derivations of that based on interpolation or duplication.

I also tried simply changing the field order in the UC timeline.

I also tried applying the de-interlacing filter in the HDV timeline, and then moving the clip.

In each case, sometimes things got better, but never was it as smooth looking as when I simply sent the HDV out to camera, did a camera downconvert, and pulled back in as DV. A very unwieldy solution when the client has a small change.

I notice that some people are using Natress filters, perhaps because FC and free de-interlacers don’t do a good job? I’d be happy to pay the $100 to solve this problem as it is important to our workflow. But I’m not sure that the filter could do the job. Graeme said he thought it was because my fields were out of order – I didn’t want to bore him.

Basically, I’m super confused about fields. Do I want to match them, or obliterate them? Is the de-interlacer changing an upper field to a lower field? Does my video played out through firewire have to be lower? Could there be another problem beneath the field issue? As I say, it does get better just not great.

Thanks again to everyone for their ideas!

Max