[Naveen Mallikarjuna]

Thanks for the help guys. I’m gonna start testing with DG. I really do wish I could see what the spot will look like on my external monitor, though, if only to show our director, who is very skeptical of what our spots will look like if we send them out via DG.

[Naveen Mallikarjuna]

Well, the Matrox codec is a proprietary codec made by Matrox Systems. The Windows codec is 8-bit Uncompressed.

I’ll output to DV and DVCPro50 and give it another try.

I downloaded VLC and gave it a quick test — the mpg files certainly looked better through VLC than with my NLE or Window Media Player.

Do you know if VLC can output to an external monitor? If I can see it on an actual TV then I’ll feel confident about it.

[Naveen Mallikarjuna]

The codec on the first try would be the Matrox Axio codec. On the second try it was whatever the codec is for a generic Windows AVI. Unless I’m getting something wrong.

As for the player/decoder, all I did was import the encoded mpg file into my NLE and view it on an external monitor.

Is there a good decoder for the PC that can play an MPEG-2 stream well?

[Naveen Mallikarjuna]

I’m on a PC with a Matrox LE card. I tried to output to both a Matrox AVI and the generic Windows AVI w/o compression. Got the same results.

I wonder if I should try a different file type (such as MOV)?

What I don’t get is why MainConcept or Sorenson would produce such compressed-looking results at 25 MBps. I imagine there are plenty of people on PCs making spots for DG. I can’t believe they would be sending out spots that looked like what I’m seeing.

[Naveen Mallikarjuna]

Then I guess the next question would be do the other keyboard presets (those for FCP4 and Avid DV Exp. 3.5) which are included in PPro 2.0 contain a shortcut for this?

I can’t believe Adobe left this out, particularly out of an app they are billing as “pro”.

[Naveen Mallikarjuna]

We’re working with two 8gb P2 cards, plus the CitiDISK HD. We haven’t yet been able to record directly to the CitiDISK, but we can copy files from the P2 to the CitiDISK. This alone is a big help, since we can just fill up the P2 cards then tranfer the data to the CitiDisk, wipe the cards, and continue shooting in the field. Considering the price diff. from the Firestore, and the fact that it is lighter, the CitiDisk is worth it at this point.

Of course, we would still like full functionality, and are working towards it. The Shining people have been help full, answering our e-mails to tech support relatively quickly. The major problem is the lack of phone support. For this reason alone, I’d recommend going with the Firestore if you can afford it.

[Naveen Mallikarjuna]

I see. Makes a lot of sense. Thanks much for the response. I’m on an Axio LE. Can’t wait for 2.5 so I won’t have to buy Raylight…

[Naveen Mallikarjuna]

Their HD product is available.

https://www.shining.com/products/totalsolution/citidisk_hd/

Supports DVCProHD.

[Naveen Mallikarjuna]

Thanks Peter! Really appreciate all the info. It was more than I expected!

[Naveen Mallikarjuna]

Thanks Patson. Hopefully someone gets back to us.

But just my novice 2 cents, from almost everything I’ve read, CRTs are still the way to go in terms of true color viewing. We use CRTs at the production company I freelance for, and I can say that there is a considerable difference in what you see on a CRT vs. an LCD computer monitor. Now, I don’t know what that means for an LCD BROADCAST monitor, but all the literature I’ve read seems to back this up (unless you want to spend $thousands).