[Paul Blinn]

Thanks for your feedback, friends. I’m terribly sorry for the long delay with my response–I go thrown right into another behind schedule job.

I ended up with two Sonnet Technology FUS-D4QR5-8TBs. I got some good feedback from resellers about that device. The over-riding factor for me was that Sonnet also makes the E4P PCI-e host adaptor–so there’s some accountability there with communication between CPU and storage device. The E4P card is also very common on rental CPUs with the vendors I use.

The iT4 did not have good recommendations. The device is well liked, but the card is not.

I’ve learned that E-sata on Mac can generally be considered a flawed system. When it works, its great. But I only buy Quad interface devices because a) the e-sata is problematic when moving the devices to CPU’s with different host adaptor cards and b)snow leopard has ignored many necessary considerations for e-sata to work, and c)in general e-sata is so problematic–I need FW as a backup. My PC friends say that e-sata is plug n play without the slightest issue on the PC. But my experience on Mac has been that the Silicon Image and Marvell chipsets on the various host adaptor cards are a recipe for conflicts and confusion.

I only bought two Sonnett enclosures. I’m looking forward to a Thunderbolt solution. However its unlikely that there will be a quad interface Thunderbolt device and that’s going to make it harder to move my drives around from place to place (which I require in my workflow). Once Thunderbolt is available on Mac Pro, it will be necessary for all our machines in the food chain to have that interface. Sounds expensive and impractical–too many unknowns about Thunderbolt right now in terms of adapting to PCs, Firewire or e-sata machines.

[Paul Blinn]

Thanks Bob, I say that MiniSAS is not an option for our workflow, because these devices need to be portable. My assistant often works off site– he preps the files and the projects at another location. I know that MiniSAS is far more reliable and better performance than e-sata, which is a flawed system (especially on the mac). So the link you sent is a good example of what i’m unfortunately going to have to try to to deal with.

Does anyone here have any experience using that OWC device on the Mac?

As I mentioned I have had two such enclosures. The first was made my Raidon and the performance was excellent, except for the intermittent heat issue. That system benched around 200mb routinely and that was enough performance for me. The second was the Promise DS4300–those seem to hang repeatedly.

I’m looking at the Sonnett D4QR5 4 bay enclosure. Not sure Sonnett will sell me the enclosures only–I have 4 Promise 8TB units I need to migrate. I definitely don’t want to consolidate all these eggs (data) into one basket.

I’m open for suggestions and feedback, if anyone has been using a successful combo of a 4 bay external sata raid 5 along with a specific host adaptor card.

[Paul Blinn]

Hi Dave, fantastic! I just wanted to be clear. Thanks so much.

Yes the files are for the web. They are important spots I did in Asia and the Digi Beta masters were lost. All we have are DVDs from the production company. We carefully extracted the data from those DVDs and several of those files were mastered to the DVDs in Progressive format (verified by Inspector). This is probably due to the fact that I originally shot these spots in PAL 25FPS on 35mm.

I need to punch up the color and lose the blanking on a few of these progressive QTs. I understand difference between progressive and interlaced. I know the file has to be interlaced to even be seen on a program monitor. I was just making sure the Sequence wasn’t re-interlacing them (in the render) and then de-interlacing them on the export. Because that’s similar to how Avid handles imported progressives at 30P.

We are looking for “transparent” in and out of progressive files and according to you, we’ve found it. Thank you for your expertise.

Best Regards,
Paul

[Paul Blinn]

Thanks, but the question is whether FC is re-interlacing the image or not. I understand that both field would be the same so that it would “look” progressive. But does it stay a true progressive file in and out?

Thanks for your input.
Paul B.

[Paul Blinn]

In and exported with out interlacing?
At what stage does it get interlaced so it can be seen on the NTSC program monitor?
Thanks a bunch.

[Paul Blinn]

Thanks for your interest–I’ll check out that link.

I’m capturing from Digi Beta. I can set the field dominance in the AJA card, but I get conflicting opinions about whether to select upper and lower.

I also have some uncompressed QT files and those are my masters. don’t know the field dominance of those files and don’t know how to find it out.

[Paul Blinn]

Maybe the particular creative endeavor requires a giant sensor, shallow depth of field, low light, high level optics ie Canon L-series lenses, and extreme portability. Try sneaking into a dark restaurant in Tokyo with a Red camera. The 5D is not going away–its a breakthrough.

The world is full of flat, grainy, user generated video images on You Tube. The 5D offers the opportunity to rise above the muck, and drudgery. Its a discussion about potential, not a technocratic limitation.

The camera may be acceptable for film work if the artist is willing to struggle a functionality other than what the camera was designed for. This can often be the formula for something exceptional, as opposed to more of the same old same old.

[Paul Blinn]

Great article (about the Panasonic). I’ve been interested in the 5D Mark II. I’m discouraged by its main shortcomings: no control over FPS, no viewfinder in Live Mode, no autofocus in Live Mode, and no manual controls in Live Mode. However what’s not mentioned in the article is Canon’s astounding huge and noiseless (grainless) sensor with low light capability rivaling some $200,000 digital motion picture cameras.

In the Vincent LaForet demo:

https://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/controller?act=GetArticleAct&articleID=2326

its worth noting that the shallow depth of field is only achieved in very dark scenes–basically “tricking” the auto lens to shoot wide open. But check out the grain/noise . . . or lack of it. Amazing.

I understand (based on conversation with Gary Adcock a few months ago) that the 30 FPS issue will not be easily solved–based on thermodynamic issues. Way over my head–but he was able to explain it simple terms that I could understand.

Does anyone have any more info or news on firmware upgrades or ongoing development of the the Canon 5D Mark II ?

[Paul Blinn]

Fantastic! Thanks Andy!

[Paul Blinn]

Thanks Andy! Now I feel better for not being able to figure it out!

But I haven’t messed around with a preference since the OS9 days. Could you please tell me how to find that specific file? — I see a whole bunch of them.

I don’t mind starting over with Easy Setup–I wanted to ditch all the ‘practice’ set-ups first. I actually don’t have anything usable in there yet.

Thanks again.