Michael Gissing
Forum Replies Created
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Babs, I solved the problem of having both 4.5 and 5 operational by purchasing a new internal hard drive, installing Tiger and FCP5 on it and just selecting which drive to boot with during start up. So I can just let 4.5 boot or by holding the ALT key during startup, I can choose to boot from Drive 2 which is Tiger and FCP5. Beware that opening and saving a 4.5 project in 5 makes it unreadable in 4.5. So if you do change horses mid stream, do a “save as”.
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I have the Decklink HD extreme card
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On a recent job, I was waiting to borrow the Miranda interface that converted from MPEG to HD SDI. Alas it was not available, so I opted to recapture with FCP5 in HDV and then software convert up to HD 10bit 4.2.2 for colourgrade, titles etc. The original had been edited in Standard def DV codec so it was an offline/ online workpath.
Apart from the render upres time on top of the recapture time, I was impressed with the quality of the result and NHK Japan techs were also impressed. I have to say though that a realtime converter from HDV to HD SDI (either the Miranda or Convergent) is my prefered workpath as it is a time saver and I expect to be transparent at least and possibly a better picture. I am not surprised an analog recapture was softer than the firewire capture.
As for sync, the recapture was perfect and yes, media manager worked.
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Debe,
As an audio post specialist, I have to say that after often correcting bad sync and moving bits of dialog and narration around in the mix, I would never expect a mix of mine to sync back perfectly with the original. I always put a 2 pip on the aif or tell the editor the exact frame to place the audio. Preferably we stripe the mix to the digi beta master after the playout to tape.
In audio land we move files around sub frame all the time to make dialog edits work.Also after EQ and dynamics processing, you won’t get phase cancelling with the original.
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HDV is MPEG 1 layer II. Minidisk is also data compressed. Dat is PCM. As a post sound studio we get rubbish on PCM and good recordings on MPEG.
Mic preamps, A/D conversion and above all a good quality microphone IN THE RIGHT PLACE (which is not on the camera!), are the issues to address. I have heard perfectly acceptable audio off the Sony Z1. The Sony PD150 sounds noisy with bad analog cirucuits going to PCM. So in my experience the Z1 is better, in spite of the MPEG compression. So if you stick a lousy lapel mic on a cheap radio transmitter into anything it will sound cheap.
And when it gets to broadcast, some think Dolby AC3 is OK. If only MPEG 1 layer II was the standard!
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If you use the new Miranda HDV bridge, you can convert from mpeg to HD SDI. This can be used in FCP4.5 if you have a suitable HD card like Blackmagic and fast enough RAID to run HD uncompressed.
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After upgrading to 10.3.9 my raid went offline as well. I was using an ATTO fibre card. I contacted the ATTO people about this and they sent me a beta software driver that fixed the problem. I suspect the release version of this software has been on their download site for months now.
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The 5.1 audio needs to be converted into a data stream like Dolby Digital or DTS. If you have APak on your Mac use it to load your 5.1 aif files and convert to an AC3 stream (Dolby Digital). Import the AC3 file into DVDSP and marry it with the picture file, exported from FCP and converted to m2v file (mpeg2). Don’t import the 5.1 into FCP and then try to export it back out again.
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Graeme, the Sharp Aquos has component input. The monitor auto switches to the resolution so I run compnent 580 or 1080 into it from the Decklink HD pro card. It looks amazing on 1080 but not very flattering on SD PAL. DV Pal in particular looks soft and compression artifacts are visible. Looking at a DVD on this screen is a bit of a surprise as mpeg artifacts are very obvious. The monitor doesn’t flatter anything, rather the reverse. SD is real ie soggy and HD is eye hurting sharp.
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After looking at various monitors I chose the Sharp Aquos 45″ LCD 1080 screen. All the comments about not being able to grade on an LCD and it making everything look good are just not true on this monitor. If anything it is painful watch SD DV on this screen after HD. As for colour accuracy and resolution, take a look for yourself. I too shared the same misguided attitude to LCDs before this monitor came to my attention.
That said, I haven’ got any other LCDs that I would reccomend, but technology is going to favour LCDs over CRT and Plasma, so get used to it.