Michael Hancock
Forum Replies Created
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Sounds like your SDM is messed up somehow. You might want to try to reinstall the software. Just copy your projects to a safe location (in case the worst happens), unplug your external drive, uninstall then reinstall Avid Xpress. Reboot, fire it up with the external drive plugged in and see what happens.
The entire uninstall/reinstall only takes about 20 minutes, so it’s worth a shot. And if you back up your projects and unplug your media drive you won’t have to worry about losing anything.
Otherwise, your drive may be going dead. You can open Avid Storage Manager and run a system check on it. If that’s the case, get your media off of it immediately and replace it.
Michael.
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[SRoughan] “Now comes the funny part. When I render a comp with DV footage in lossless meridien codec LOWER field first, and import into Avid with lower feild first, its wrong. Doesnt matter what my import settings in the avid are, it wont play properly. So, I render this DV comp out with UPPER feild first, and import upper feild first, it plays correctly.
Can anyone explain?It’s a known bug in the Avid software . What version are you on? Unfortunately, the PAL field issues pops up from time to time and this time it hasn’t been fixed. Render Upper Field First for PAL DV (even though that’s wrong) and import Upper Field First (even though that’s wrong) and you’ll have proper playback (as you’ve found).
When Avid releases another point update or the next version of Media Composer check the release notes to see if they’ve fixed this. If they have, upgrade to it and you can render like normal. If not, keep rendering and importing in Upper Field first.
Michael.
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If you don’t have After Effects (and Grinner is spot on, it’s probably best for this) or Boris RED (and Joe is spot on, it will fix this very easily) you could try this:
V1–original shot. Same shot on V3 and add a luma key to remove the house. Crop and keyframe to follow it if too much of the rest of the shot keys with it. Layer this same shot on V2 and adjust it so a portion of the trees will fill in where you’ve keyed the house. This will keep (or help keep) the zoom and camera movement consistent without having to motion track anything. It’s a long shot, but it could work.
Just make sure you get as much feather as you can on V3 to smooth things out. Nothing says bad compositing like a hard line in the middle of your frame.
If all else seems hopeless, find an After Effects guy/gal and pay them to do it. Sounds like a simple enough fix that shouldn’t cost you too much.
Michael.
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Are you in PAL Land? I think there has been a bug in Avid in the last few versions where PAL quicktimes that were imported with the proper field order would actually have the field orders reversed upon import and cause shaking.
If you’re working with DV PAL it should be lower field first and I think that’s supposed to work. However, everything else is Upper Field first. To get around the bug you need to render in Lower Field First then set your import settings to Lower Field first. When Avid imports it will correct the field order and play back fine.
Also, always make sure you’re setting your fields on import. Rerendering in a different field order won’t help if you won’t change your Avid import settings to reflect that change.
Otherwise, if you’re seeing very thin lines flickering up and down and not the entire picture then it’s because of interlacing issues with thin lines. Make then fatter or add a subtle .5 Gaussian blur to them and it can smooth them out.
Michael.
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Can you post a picture of the shot you’re working on, or a low rez video of it? It might help to see just how much movement you’re dealing with in the shot.
Michael.
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It’s probably your graphics card and/or your AMD processors. Neither are approved to work with Avid.
Seeing that you’re having issues with playback within Avid I’m almost certain it’s your graphics card. Replace it with an nVidia Quadro Card–FX1500 or FX3500–and install the nVidia driver that comes with your Avid install and it will likely clear everything up for you. The AMD processors may still cause some problems but not likely.
Otherwise, there’s a trick you may want to try. Hold O and L down when you start Avid. It will run in legacy overlay mode or something. You’ll lose some functionality (probably Full Screen Playback, maybe some other stuff that relies on OpenGL), but you may get the system to work otherwise. Maybe you’ll at least be able to play video back.
Good luck!
Michael.
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Do you have a Mojo hooked to this system? If so, unplug it or hit the DNA button on your timeline to switch to firewire out when you’re cutting. You may see some increase in response.
Also, USB drives aren’t ideal for editing, so the delay may be because of this. What resolution are you editing at?
Michael.
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If the files don’t have an alpha just choose Ignore Existing for your import settings.
If there is no alpha but you choose an alpha option it will bring it in with an alpha (full screen, typically, since there’s no other alpha there), and that’s what is making them precomputes.
Michael.
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We can do it. Look under the Oswald Promotions section of our website for more details:
http://www.oswaldcommunications.com
Or you can contact me directly at
mhancock at oswaldcommunications.com (replace “at” with @, naturally). We do both embroidery and screen printing in house and can put your logo on just about anything you want–jackets, hats, tshirts, mugs, bobblehead dolls, etc…All we need if your logo in .eps format or we can rebuild it if you don’t have it vectorized. Because we do everything in-house we can do orders of a few items to 1,000+. Whatever you need.
Michael.
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Well, the processor is a Dual Core 2GHz and Avid recommends at least 2 x Dual Core 2.66GHz for Media Composer (although 1 dual core 2.66GHz will probably work until you try to edit HD or get graphics intensive). So the processor isn’t fast enough. It might work, but it might not.
The graphics card probably won’t work. You really need to go with an nVidia Quadro card–the 1500 or the 3500.
Do you plan on using a Mojo or Adrenaline box? If so, and you have external storage, you’ll need seperate bus segments for the I/O box (Mojo or Adrenaline) and your storage or you’ll get video overrun/underrun errors and you won’t be able to capture. I have no idea if this system has seperate bus segments so it’s kind of a risk to try it, unless you can get really detailed motherboard specs.
I understand there’s a big price difference between an Avid approved system and a build it yourself, but have you checked out HP or Dell’s refurbished workstations? If they ship to your country you can always check there. You can get a system up to Avid spec for about $2,400 US, which would be even less in Euros. I have no idea if they ship internationally, but it’s worth looking into.
Just go to http://www.hp.com or http://www.dell.com and type Outlet in to the search box of both homepages and you can find their refurb inventory pretty easily.
Michael.