Robb Harriss
Forum Replies Created
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you want to put a sample up on a public folder (Dropbox?) and I’ll take a look at it? Got an iPhone there?
Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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Perian can give you some really odd results. Sometimes it replaces a codec for playback and it masks the fact that you don’t have the “right” thing on the machine. I had to take it off the one MacPro I had it on.
I have a brand new iPad in my hand (well, on the desk, actually) and we’re doing some testing with our streaming services, mostly relating to security. We’ve been using h.264 MP4s for a couple of years and they’re fine on the iPads and iPhones. As a matter of fact it’s all I use now for web stuff. We use the JW player and it deals with all the calls to the different media for us.
Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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huh,
I’m just guessing but what happens if you pick the MPEG-4 video selection instead of the h.264? And we tend to fixate on the video. What about going to uncompressed audio instead of aac?Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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try h.264 as the codec. Looks like it’s using AVC
Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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I mostly use the photo jpeg as well.
And Yes! for the Bryson videos. They made a huge difference for me.Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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h.254, h.264, whatever it takes. . .
Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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No, don’t have much storage at all, which is why I do all the initial cutting with proxies, now. I stuck eSata extension cards in the Mac Pros (late 2007). So now I have two external eSata Connections on each of the two Pros. I use Voyager drive docks and plug those into eSata (sometime firewire 800 when I need to do a lot of swapping. These docks won’t let you swap a drive unless you reboot). I use raw drive to store field footage. I can either copy footage onto the internal raid or work right off the drive in the dock, usually the former because I’m going to mix shots from different shoots.
I bought a 3T G-drive external that also has an eSata connection. That sits on my CatDV server. That’s where the proxies live and it’s accessible by everyone in the shop who needs to look at anything. CatDV so sweetly switches between the full rez originals and proxies. Though I do tend to keep the people on the older iMacs on the proxies across the network.
I don’t know about the worker node. You can always setup compressor or squeeze or something like MPEG Streamclip to make proxies. My issues have been with making window burns. I really like the convenience of doing it all in CatDV. That said, sometimes the machine I use to bring in and catalog footage is busy with a couple of tasks and I can save a bunch of time by getting another machine to make the proxies.
Note, too, that we do a tremendous amount of interviews and have lots of transcripts and logs linked to the footage. We use Verbatim Logger a lot. It’s weird, that print-oriented people simply don’t understand why I keep asking them to go and look at the shot. The read something in a transcript and assume it’s a perfect fit. Go and look at it and 60% of the time it’s not as advertised. Therein is some of the enormous power of logging in general and CatDV in particular: you can find something in a transcript and instantly go right to the shot and review it.Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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Ah well, I get it. You’re using 720 to reduce the file size? I tend to do everything 1920×1080 just to keep my EDLs intact. All my finish work is full HD even when the final output is something less. Lately I did figure out a way to work in one frame size initially and then finish in another. That means I might adjust the proxies. But still I’m bringing everything in full size full rez. I’m making us quasi-file based by hanging onto the ProRes 422 files. I can mount the drive(s) and then use the media manager to consolidate all the shots I need without blowing up the system. Having the proxies available all the time is fantastic. When I’m done loading all our older footage I’ll have 100% of our material available 100% of the time for all projects. We work in a seriously documentary style and our field footage gets mixed into new work for years.
On the output side everything is h.264 mp4. I haven’t made a Flash file in ages. We’re generally setup in html5 so our stuff can be viewed on mobile devices. Our sale versions are behind a Flash template so they cannot be saved easily locally, nor can someone sniff and save the path to the file. So h.264 is a big plus. But the 8 core mac pros haven’t been all that speedy making them. Squeeze has been much faster and it’s my goto over Compressor. But I also have one of the Turbo h.264 dongles that makes the process obscenely fast on machine where it isn’t supposed to be. Unfortunately for me, one thing I like to do on proxies is burn in the reel name as well as the timecode. I’m working with people who don’t handle CatDV’s complexities all that well. They’re more likely to give me indecipherable scribbled notes than notes in CatDV. But for “beauty” reference copies, why not?
Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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Myself, I’m using CatDV in conjunction with FCP 7. We make extensive use of the proxies for preliminary cuts, retaining the proxies right up to the point where we “make offline” the footage and go to the full rez bits. We use the sequences created in CatDV and sent over to FC and I do a lot of drag and drop from CatDV to FC as I poke around for missing bits and cover. I want to use a codec that I can edit with in FC without issue. A few times I’ve used ProRes proxy—but then I’d run into issues with handing off footage for someone to review on a non-FCP computer. I tend to go with one of the Jpeg proxy versions which is relatively problem free and I can hand off to others. I make it nice and small so I can carry around a few hundred hours of footage on a portable drive. If I had unlimited storage space (mostly relating to portable drives) I’d capture and save my originals in one of the upper ProRes and do all the proxies in ProRes Proxy full frame. We shoot HDCam using a Sony 750, so we’re still using tape.
Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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Workgroup server version, four clients running 9,06, everything path (now. After a few weeks of changing it) everything QuickTime. It’s been weird. Maybe it is self healing.
Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.