Mike Most -- account bouncing, bad address
Forum Replies Created
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And what happens when you need to do dirt cleanup, where you need a paint system?
As I said before, there are multiple systems because different markets, different client bases, and different users need different capabilities. With Final Cut, you cannot do everything you can do with Smoke, no matter how much you might want to believe you can. But that’s not to say that those capabilities are necessary for you. If, however, you were an L.A. based visual effects and editing company catering to music video and commercial clients in that market, you would likely feel differently. That’s why they use what they use, and you use what you use. Neither choice is right or wrong, they are both appropriate for the markets they’re serving.
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>>Smoke has 4:4:4 not nitris
This is no longer true. Avid has already shipped a 4:4:4 hardware upgrade for the Nitris. It works with both DS and Symphony Nitris.
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Yes, what you say would be a good solution. Bring in the film based SD footage as 1080i, and take out the pulldown in software. And for the 60i video originated footage, do the conversion and eye match the result.
Regarding the DaVinci: I was referring to the integrated editing system on the DaVinci, properly called the Time Logic Controller. This is a system that was specifically designed for the needs of telecine. What it does is control the telecine and the videtape machine(s), forcing the 3:2 pulldown to be on specific time code frames on SD transfers. Because of the unique need for simultaneous dual standard (HD and SD) transfers for dailies work, a special mode was created whereby the TLC can simultaneously sync videotape machines running in two different standards. It does this by using a special 6Hz pulse (supplied by a sync generator) to correlate the 24 frame material and the 30 frame material every 4 film frames, which is when “A” frames (the only film frame that exactly matches a video frame in the 5 field video sequence) are created. The spinoff of this ability is that you can use a TLC to sync HD and SD videotape machines, even when you’re not running film. It is the only device I know of that can do this, and for that reason, it is often used for audio laybacks from standard def to HD videotapes. Of course, because it lives as part of a $450,000 DaVinci system, it is often an expensive solution for facilities to provide, particularly because clients are reluctant to pay a full telecine room rate for a layback. But it’s sometimes the only one.
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User interface interaction often depends on what video standard you’re working in, how full the disks are, and how much you have open on your desktop. Avid systems do a lot of checking and double checking of many things as you work, all in the name of making the system a bit more bullet proof. For instance, when you import a folder full of Targa files and make them into a clip, DS Nitris reads and verifies every one of the files before it starts importing them, imports them, makes the clip, and then verifies the integrity of the clip it created. That’s a lot of extra work that some might consider extraneous, but finishing artists thank their lucky stars for, and it’s the type of thing that systems like Final Cut don’t bother with.
Symphony Nitris has been updated since its original release, in part for better user interface interaction. It is also a very new product, grafting the Symphony interface onto what is essentially the DS Nitris hardware base. Do I find it as responsive as Media Composer? No. But it’s doing a lot more than Media Composer had to do, at least when dealing with HD material. Those of us who have used Avids rely on its much more comprehensive media management to minimize a lot of issues that we constantly struggle with in Final Cut. On an Avid, we can take in a timeline of a early picture lock of a program, ingest everything based on that timeline, then take in the final locked version and relink without any file name problems or manual interaction. The reliability of that gives us a lot more flexibility in meeting tight turnaround schedules. So if there is a slight slowdown in user interface response in exchange for that, it’s a price many are willing to pay.
Smoke is another world entirely. Some functions are considerably slower, but in general, the interface is very responsive. It is also a lot more of a “free form” interface than either Avid or Apple, and so it relies on proxies for the desktop that are created immediately following ingest. All proxies on the desktop can be freely moved and played, so you basically create your own desktop interface as you go. Some operators love this, some hate it. But there is no argument regarding its visual effects capabilities – it blows even the DS Nitris out of the water on that score. So if you happen to do a lot of finishing that involves extensive visual effects touches – such as music videos and commercials, where Autodesk products are strongest – it’s a great system to use, as are their other systems, Fire, Flame, and Inferno.
The last time I checked, the basic Linux Smoke package was around $65,000. But don’t quote me on that.
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Well, if you can actually get that to work, I’d like to know about it, because I think you’re still missing the point.
When you bring in 60i footage with 3:2 pulldown, Final Cut is still seeing 60 fields per second coming in, regardless of how you ingest it. It then drops some fields in terms of the Quicktime file it creates, but there is still a proper correlation between the controlling time code (at 29.97) and the number of video fields per second that it sees. When you try to bring in something that’s already 24 fps (23.98, in this case), there is no correlation between the controlling time code and the number of fields it’s now seeing – with in that case would be 48, if the material is coming in as 23.98 psF, as it likely would be. It won’t be able to figure out what fields to drop, and likely won’t be able to lock up the machine at all based on the fact that you’re giving it one time code standard, and a different video standard.
I’m perfectly willing to be proven wrong. But I don’t think I am.
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Smoke was not ported to Windows. It runs either on SGI hardware (under Irix) or high end PC hardware (on Linux). The Linux version has generally been acknowledged to be noticeably faster – particularly in terms of user interface interaction – than the Irix version.
The price has been lowered on the Linux Smoke product. It is sold only as a turnkey system, complete with very bullet proof storage. It has a good deal of the Flame toolset in terms of compositing capabilities, as well as the ability to take in Avid OMF’s and Final Cut XML’s directly. It can also deal with film files (DPX and Cineon) directly, making it capable of conforming film scans for use in digital intermediate environments. In short, it is a much more comprehensive toolset than Final Cut, and is positioned as a high end finishing system, a task for which it is very, very well suited. Its real competition is other high end finishing systems, such as Avid DS Nitris, Quantel EQ and IQ, and, yes, Autodesk’s own Fire system. It is well worth its price if your business model requires high end work under client supervision, and particularly if you also use other Autodesk/Discreet products, such as Flame.
It is not built for or intended for use by individual editing entrepreneurs.
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In thinking about this some more, I believe what you’re really trying to do is convert 60i material, with its 60i time code, to 24 frame material, with 23.98 time code that “matches” the original 60i code (at least at even seconds, with the “0” and “5” conventions applied for 3:2 cadence) in one pass. This is not going to happen through a Teranex or any other converter because they don’t convert time code. The only way I can see to do what you’re talking about is to make a “pre-conversion” using an editing controller that can simultaneously sync up a 23.98 based HD VTR and a 60i based NTSC VTR. The only editing controller that I know of that can do this is the Time Logic Controller (TLC) that is built into most DaVinci installations. The TLC can control both machines and also account for the delay through a converter such as the Teranex. I was faced with having to develop a post path for a mixed format project just recently, and offered this as a possible solution to make a 24p master, but in the end, it was much more sensible to go 60i for the master for many of the same reasons I’ve mentioned here. Not only did it solve the workflow issues, it also allowed for the 60i material to be integrated without degredation – and no matter how you do it, there’s going to be degredation when you’re converting 60i material to 24p, simply because none of the resulting frames are directly photographed – they’re all interpolated. You get a softer image and unpredictable motion anomalies based on the material content. That’s one of the reasons they, and I, chose to go 60i.
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>>How is what I want to do any different? Isn’t it essentially the same exact concept?
No, it isn’t. What you described only works in 720p, because the source is “24 in 60,” that is, it isn’t a 24 frame video format. 720p/24 doesn’t exist as a video format, only 720p/60 does. So when you pull in from a 1200 deck, you can remove the pulldown on ingest, and create new time code that is a 23.98 base rate – but that doesn’t get you anywhere when the material doesn’t have 3:2 pulldown in the first place. Nor does you method exist when you play out 720 as 1080 using the 1200 with an HD-SDI board, because what you have to do in that case is feed the deck 23.98 trilevel sync – thus putting it into what essentially is a 24 frame mode. Your output in this mode is true 1080/24p, with the timecode also being converted to 23.98 time code.
The original question seems to me to be referring to material in two completely different origination formats – one being 24p, and the other being 60i. There is no way to masquerade 60i material as 24p if it didn’t originate that way, either by being 24 frame material padded with 3:2 pulldown to make 60, or by being 24 frame original (such as a film transfer). The simplest way to mix such formats is to make a 60 field based master, which accommodates both.
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The time code comes in via the 9 pin cable. The time code must be in the format you’re capturing in, so if you’re capturing as 23.98, the time code must be 23.98. There is no way to control a capture using the wrong frame rate.
What the facility told you is basically true, assuming that the material on your Digital Betacam is standard, interlaced video footage – in which case, I really don’t know how you got it into a 23.98 project to begin with, unless your project is actually 29.97 and now you’re trying to create a 23.98 master as an online process. If this is the case, you really should do a “pre-conversion” of all the video based sources, because the time codes on the original will be irrelevant once the conversion is done. Unless you really must deliver a 23.98 HD master, I would suggest that a better way to handle this type of project is to create a 1080i HD master. In that case, the “live” upconversion can be captured directly, as the base time code rate will be the same. If you need to project this in a progressive format, I would then suggest you take the 1080i master and convert it to 720p/60 for projection.
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>>As I have said 99% of all films DO NOT go through a DI process.
Among pictures actually getting released, the figure is more like 50%. Perhaps less.
Like it or not, DI has become a very valued tool in the eyes of most cameramen, just as sophisticated telecine color correctors became for commercial and television work over the last 20+ years. It is not “super expensive” when all of the alternatives it offers are considered. If you’re shooting on 35mm and contact printing your IP, yes, that is quite economical. But going the DI route offers many more production alternatives – 3 perf, S16, S35 for anamorphic release, even mixed formats – that are just not practical in the purely photochemical, contact printing world. You also get your video deliverables directly from the digital files, saving the $20000 or so that it would cost you to master from an IP. That mitigates the cost somewhat, but the primary attraction for cameramen is the control, and you can’t really put a price tag on that.
One needs to sometimes let go of their comfort zone in order to experience what is currently being offered. It’s not all bad.