[Richard Eary]

Avid Liquid Chrome Xe only cost about $600 to upgrade from Liquid Pro and would allow the use of a AJA LHe card. I am not sure if Avid Liquid Pro supports uncompressed HD video. I will have to check.

[Richard Eary]

In the past, I thought about purchasing a notebook as a second machine. Al though, I figured I would have to spend at least $1800 to get a decent notebook. Add a little more money and one could put together a dual Xeon machine.

Thank you again for your advice.

[Richard Eary]

I will check that out.. thanks.

[Richard Eary]

I decided to purchase the AJA card because of the HD-SDI connections. My second priority is to setup a second machine to help workflow. This is something I plan to do after the new year. Maybe the hardware prices will be less.

Do you have any recommendations for a HS-SDI to HDMI convertor? I am interested in the two below.

Blackmagic-Design HDLINK Pro
AJA Hi5

[Richard Eary]

I downloaded and installed the demo version. Sapphire provides many effects and filters that can be useful. Based on my findings, it looks like a product that I could use.

Al though, the applications I already have include many of the effects in Sapphire.

[Richard Eary]

Sorry about the delay in my response. Here is a quick overview of what I am doing.

What kind of work are you doing?
Promotional, documentaries, and event

And in what format?
Standard and high-definition (1920×1080)

What is your deliverable?
Broadcast, Internet, and digital media (DVD/Blu-Ray)

The majority of my work is standard definition with a few jobs in high-definition. Al thuogh, any work done in high-definition seems to take a while to process. Prospect 2K seems to improve my workflow. Al though, it makes my Blackmagic-Design equipment useless.

I believe it is best to go with the AJA LHe for the below reasons:

– Color Correction (using broadcast reference monitor)
– Compatibliity with Prospect 2K
– Ease of Preview and Editing
– HD-SDI / SDI input and output connections

The second machine can wait because it is more important for my primary machine to be properly configured. Plus, the hardware I need for a second machine will be cheaper in the future.

Additional notes:

Second computer – $2600 (dual Xeon 5300, motherboard, 4 gig memory, case, and Win XP Professional) I should mention that I already have the remaining hardware needed and planned to use and old copy of Avid Liquid 7.2.

AJA Upgrade – $2300 (LHe and Hi5 (analog to broadcast monitor and HD-SDI -> Hi5 -> LCD wirescreen)

So in your opinion, does it look like I am thinking straight? or a second workstation makes more sense so that one job does not delay other work because of rendering issues? I would probably only install Liquid and Lightwave onto the second workstation in a dual boot configuration (32/64-bit).

[Richard Eary]

It sounds like HD is pushing the limits of technology. Not long ago a terabyte wasn’t a common word.

Is it possible that the videos are not being captured correctly? For example, video with out of sync audio plays exactly the same in Liquid. So this isn’t an issue where it plays incorrectly. Looks more like an issue where it captures incorrectly.

[Richard Eary]

Adobe Support said that the Blackmagic drivers may be causing the problem even if I am not using a Blackmagic preset. I am going to un-install the drivers and see if the problem still exist. Al though, Blackmagic has not heard of any issues.

How much drive space is enough when working with uncompressed footage? I estimated I would need 10 terabytes. 500 gigs per tape.

[Richard Eary]

I believe there is more to the picture. Yes, capturing HDV through firewire using CS3 caused synch issues, but I still had sync issues capturing analog through Intensity Pro.

I am currently recapturing my tapes in CS2. That version of Premiere seems to work much better than CS3.

[Richard Eary]

The Intensity Pro does now support CS3. Al though, the install process can be a pain because the presets had to be copied to the proper directories manually. The only issue I have with the Intensity Pro is that the sources for multicam editing are blank. It is a bug that has not been resolved.

I don’t believe this has anything do with the Intensity Pro card because I still have the same audio delay (out of sync by a few seconds) when using presets that came with Premiere (non-Blackmagic presets).