[Neil Sadwelkar]

I would agree with Jason. At our post facility in we have 3 BM HD Pro cards working about 12-16 hours a day in FCP systems since Jan 2005. We had HDPlus cards which BM swapped out for free when we had some issues with genlock.

We also have BM Extreme and HD Extreme cards, MBridge Pros, BM HDLinks, about 15 BM products in operation here.

Check in your area who’s support is better. That might be a deal-breaker.

There have been opinions expressed about why AJA is better quality than BM – AJA are more expensive – but ask to see a comparison that proves this in a quantitative and repeatable way.

BM cards and converters are not cheap, but they cost less than AJA. But they deliver what they are supposed to. Their up/down conversions aren’t too good, though, and maybe AJA’s are better in this respect. If this feature matters to you, check for a side by side to take a fair decision.

And yes, I haven’t come across the ‘4 frame lag’. I have however, come across bad 24-25 conversion when playing 24@25 timelines as PAL.

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Can’t you just…
select the (rotated) clip in the timeline,
do Cmd-C (to copy),
select the other (un-rotated) clips
Right click and select ‘Paste attributes’
select ‘Basic motion’ as the attribute to paste.

That should rotate the 300 or so clips.

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

An EDL exported from FCP as CMX 3600 will do just fine on any of these systems. Northlight, Imagica, Spirit4k scanners. Lustre, Nucoda, Resolve, Baselight, iQ grading/conform systems.

I’ve used it for over 30 films

One thing you may encounter is that the FCP EDL will refer to the tape and not labroll as the scanner/conform system expects.

Unless there’s an automatic way of achieving this I don’t know about, you’ll have to change the sources in your FCP project to refer to lab roll name/mumbers.

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I trashed the compressor prefs .plist file from /home/library/preferences. Then ran Compressor and it worked.

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

You also might want to watch that Firewire port.

I have a 1200 with a blown out Firewire which Panasonic here (India) says is caused if you don’t SHUT DOWN the deck and Mac before connecting the two together.

Panasonic in India do NOT replace the Firewire port under warranty.

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Before using Sheer, I’d make sure you can capture to this codec in real time. And the captured video Quicktimes have embedded Time code which is readable in Premiere Pro as well.

Also, on FCP the Sheer codec may not support real-time for effects. Don’t know the status for Premiere Pro.

Sure there may be documentation that clarifies both these, but 107 hours is 107 hours.

Neil Sadwelkar

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I’ve ben successfully running Avid Mojo+MC and FCP with a Decklink HD Pro on the same machine. I have two accounts for the two softwares.

In your case, have you tried checking your serial port settings inside MC? The serial port on the decklink is available to the system, so its likely that avid is trying to use it? Check your serial port settings and make sure they are set to Keyspan.

If you don’t use a Keyspan for deck control inside Avid, then you need to start using one.

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

We plan on getting one or more of these.

When we set up a post facility, we went and got 4 Sony HVR M-25. Definityely stay away from these. They have no RS-422 or SDI/HD-SDI. But we planned on using them with Firewire in FCP or with the Miranda HDV bridge for other systems.

They don’t work with the Miranda or at least reliably.

And more distressingly, all 4 VTRs had their Firewire ports blown inside 2 months. We had the FW ports replaced by Sony, but thereafter they blew again. Now Sony refuses to replace the ports any more.

Further, Sony insists that before connecting the HVR M-25, the Mac has to be shut down, else the ports will blow.

So Sony HVR M-25, beware. Also with the HVR-1500 please check with Sony if this recorder also requires that the host computer be powered off before connecting. Else you may also have fries FW ports.

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

The ETT inaccuracy with BM continues. In a multi-FCP, multi deck facility wired with rooms far away from the decks, I’ve managed to tweak specific decks and specific FCPs to come out quite accurate. But never really repeatably accurate.

As an aside, the exact same machine with the BM card installed, also has Avid Media Composer Mojo (Mac version). And using Digital Cut, Avid can layoff to tape accurately, each and every time. So the Mac, the OS, the deck and the genlock have no part in this.

It is the BM serial port and the BM card itself – maybe even FCP.

From my earier post in this thread…
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/124/866188

This isn’t a workaround, just a precaution.

I often have to lay-off 9 entire film reels (22 mins or so) to tape starting at specific timecodes.
Its very vexing to lay-off a whole reel and then find one is 1 frame late and you find that out only after the entire dump of 22 mins.

So what I do is this.

Connected the output of the deck (with TC burn-in on) to a broadcast monitor so I could see the deck TC burn-in.
Do an ETT.
While the ETT happens, shoot the broadcast monitor screen with a handycam.

Then while the lay-off continues, I rewind the DV tape in the handycam and play it back frame by frame to check if the insert was ‘on time’.
If it is, I let it continue.
If not, cancel ETT and repeat.

This way I know within a minute or so if it is off. Instead of a Handycam you can even use a MacBook Pro with its iSight.

Again, this ain’t a workaround, just means to lessen frustration.

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I have limited exposure to AJA devices except the iO which I used a lot some years ago. In 3 years I have used BM HDPlus (later exchaged with HDPro), BM SD, and for about a year BM MBridge Extreme.

Our FCP systems (and cards in them) are used for about 14-20 hrs each day (350 dys/yr) in Mumbai, India. High temp, tonnes of work in post. Down-time not tolerated. And they’ve stood up.

Support-wise, AJA and BM are equaly far for us so both don’t count. Not like in the US. No local rep., replacements in 2-6 weeks. So we pretty much support ourselves.

We also have 8 smokes, 2 eQ, 1 iQ, Lustres, telecines. So quality-wise, on seeing the same pictures on different systems, I would say BM uncompressed holds its own against the big boys. And we have many many shows mastered on our FCP-BM systems that have passed QC even in EU and Far East.

So conclusion. BM is recommended. The new Eclipse will do all you want. I’ve only seen it in trade shows, and can eval it if someone gave me a unit. But if its as reliable as the present MBridge then it will rock.

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.