Rhewitt
Forum Replies Created
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[normco] “What do I need to buy to be able to digitize compnenet in from the Beta deck”
Is this an SDI Mojo or component mojo? If its a component model, you’ll need an Avid supplied component to S-Video cable. You should be able to order one for Avid or a reseller. If your mojo is SDI, you’ll need an RGB to SDI converter. Aja makes a good one, as does Miranda.
Component video is standard on both the analogue and SDI Mojos using the cables supplied with the Mojo.
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Have you seen DNxHD-36 in action? Stunning image quality with massive compression. It was used during the shooting and editing of Lord of the Rings.
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Adrenaline, Nitris.
These aren’t I/O controllers. The Adrenaline box does supply the interface to broadcast grade audio, timing, reference and video ports but in addition is a hardware accelerator for the Avid line of editing applications – NewsCutter and Media Composer.
Symphony Nitris is designed as a ‘Finishing’ system to work on edited programmes from the other editing products with an emphasis on clean-up, colour correction etc. This is achieved in realtime with true High Definition media rather than the high-quality proxy versions used by Media Composer and Xpress Pro. Custom high-end hardware is required to achieve this and is reflected in the cost of the product.
DS Nitris is a system for working on productions from Standard Definition through true High Definition and through to 2K RGB film resolution in realtime and upto 4K resolution.
Mojo (analogue) and Mojo SDI are also I/O devices to connect to broadcast grade audio and video systems. The SDI version has the benefit of optical and wired interfaces in digital form. The Mojo also provides audio and video monitoring facilities and some hardware acceleration.
These cards allow realtime, render-free preview when the editor uses their settings and effects.
Sure, when using their effects. If you watch feature films, docos and animated features, you’ll very, very rarely see this ‘gimmicky’ effects being used. I’m not knocking products such as the Axio, which is an excellent system but I wouldn’t pay that sort of money to use on an editor such as PPro, which doesn’t work in the way true professional work and has rudimentary media management capabilities. As a hobbyist/serious amateur/in-house production system it’s fine but it fails in far too many areas.
Most Avid editing applications are able to work natively with multiple streams of video and audio in realtime, depending on the formats used. This is unlike many of the other editing systems out there that require render after render or pre-render in the case of FCP and audio pre-render of Premier Pro.
Again, unlike nearly all the editing applications out there, Avid editing systems are designed to work with the keyoard and some mouse import. Some see this as a non-intuitive way of editing and believe the mouse driven applications such as FCP and PPro are more intuative and quicker to use. As an ex-PPro editor, I foolishly believed this was the case until I converted to Media Composer. As virtually all film, broadcast and production house editors will tell you from experience, a keyboard driven interface is much, much faster to edit with and takes just a couple of hours to get to grips with.
Am I biased? No. I’ve used both products and I’m far more productive with the Avid systems than either FCP or PPro. Time for me is money and I can make more with Media Composer than I could with PPro. It is also way more stable and works flawlessly on my laptop in SD uncompressed in realtime.
If you still have Express, give it another go or try the FreeDV version available from http://www.avid.com If you like it and would like to move to Media Composer, I believe the upgrade special offer is on until the end of June.
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It is worth spending the little extra on a faster processor as this helps rendering. If you’re looking at HD editing in the future beware that even the highly compressed HDV is massively processor intensive and most editing applications will pre-render all your clips on the timeline to a native format such as AVI or QuickTime.
True HD video is the realm of very high-powered Workstations and even then most editing applications have to use a lower resolution ‘proxy’ version of the clips to edit with and finally re-linking to the HD media for the final rendered output.
1.) I am uncertain why the dual processor is specified as “non-HT”. Doesn’t PPro utilize HT?
Yes, the processor is a none hyper-threaded version. The next generation chip is likely to add hyper-threading back again. PPro is hyper-threading aware and required for HDV editing to be smoother.
2.) Should I stick with Windows XP or is the provided VISTA home OK?Stick with XP.
3.) I can upgrade to nVidia GeForece 7600GT 256MB DDR2DualDVITV for $79. Should I/or should I go for an even higher end video card?
If the machine is used for just video editing – you shouldn’t really use it for much else and definitely keep it away from the Internet, the video card isn’t that important. Check with the PPRo requirements to be sure.
4.) Should I add a sound card or just rely on the sound from the motherboard?
You should never rely on the onboard sound chip for any editing application. Use something like a Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live.
5.) Is it worth $220 to go to 4GB memory?
No. The application can only ever use 2GB. There is an option to start XP with the /3GB switch, which will help prevent the OS from grabbing as much of your RAM but this only applies if you have 4GB installed.
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“Avid 4.8.4”
I’m assuming you mean Express Pro 4.84.
What hardware are you running it on?
What OS?
What is crashing? Error messages or just the app disappearing?
How are you driving the client monitor? -
From the experience I’ve had with Premier 6.0 through to PPro 1.5, it isn’t really suitable for long form programmes.
You need more than 1GB of RAM for a starter, Premier Pro caches alot of data in your project along with the project file itself.
I made the switch to Avid Media Composer, currently running on an HP nw8000 laptop. I’m almost complete editing a feature 75-mins long at 1:1 resolution (source material DVCAM but titles, effects and graphics at 1:1) and I can scroll through the video end to end and play with no interruptions in playback. And that’s on a laptop with internal drives! It speaks volumes on the poor performance of PPro. It wasn’t a cheap move but I can now concentrate on editing rather than having to find yet another workaround for PPro.
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Firstly, you cannot compress the file without losing quality if you want to reduce the file size.
For web use your only real options are Quicktime, Flash or Windows Media.
The web as it stands is not capable of supporting a HD stream unless everyone has fibre to the home and infinite bandwidth. The only real option is to allow folks to download the file and playback when loaded.
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That’s completely normal Will in DV/DVCam.
At 720 x 480 your image size is slightly reduced in height compared to the standard 486-lines. This will leave a small black band at top of frame. It is, however, well into the cut-off area on a normal TV so it won’t be visible. If it really bothers you, you could scale the image size to fit the frame but then you’ll lose a bit of the picture width.
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Ray,
You don’t say if the problems of settings are at work or home.
Most of the settings you refer to aren’t project settings, they’re site settings and are saved in Program Files\Avid\Avid Application\Settings OR Avid Users.
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It’s very highly unlikely to work.
Avid applications use OpenGL and hardware video overlay – that is something that nearly all ATI graphics cards don’t do – they use a software-based overlay.