Ron Shook
Forum Replies Created
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Mark & Steve,
Thanks ever so much for your definative responses. I’m not sure how I missed that spec note and sure, It’s not what I wanted to hear, but knowing I have to adapt is a whole lot better than continuing to waste my time trying to get something to happen that is impossible.
Both the Sony DV-HD100 deck and the JVC GY-HD100 camera were purchased used a year+ ago without documentation. Until I get it fixed the camera records just fine, but won’t play back, so that isn’t an immediate option for capture. I have to get this project out. Fortunately it’s just for DVD, so as I type I am capturing analog AV from the deck to a converter which spits out firewire to the computer.
There’s usually another way if you’ve been in this business long enough and have mostly obsolete stuff setting around. BTW, shortly after I recorded these tapes on the JVC Camera, I got a Sony NX30 camera which is the spiffiest little device I’ve ever had. It’s not impressive on the outside, but mostly it’s “good enough,” even for broadcast if necessary. The active stabilization and image processing are phenomenal. I’ve been enduring videotape for 45 years and am so happy to go to file and card based recording that I can’t express my joy adequately. (grin)
Thanks again,
Ron Shook
Shoulder-High Eye Productions -
Dave,
Well, we’ll see if anyone speaks up about hybrid drives made from separate devices. I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t already have the drive device of the pair.
The other thing that puzzles me with the unfamiliar is how a unified hybrid drive that you describe (which I’ve looked at) with only 8GB of the super fast stuff makes such a significant difference with anything as bloated as Windows. Do you just load on the operating system as normal or are there special load procedures that place significant sections of the Windows software on the 8 gigs of SSD.
Boy, am I behind the 8-ball, and must be asking questions that have been answered earlier.
[Fortunately, I looked around more before posting and can now mostly answer my own questions. It seems that the one device SSHD drives are smart enough to learn what you use most and adapt over time to your use and style coming very close to SSD only speed over time particularly for operating system and programs, better, but not so much for documents and heavy data like AV. I didn’t find a direct answer to the question of loading the operating system, but I’m guessing that there is no difference from just loading it to a hard drive. Could someone confirm this?]
I’m thinking very seriously of adding an SSHD drive to the system as the boot drive because as Dave said, they aren’t much more than just a hard drive. Thanks, Dave!
Thanks again for your attentions and particularly for real world reports.
Ron Shook
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Good Vegas folks,
A shout out to all who responded with detail I should have expected but didn’t. Since as near as I could search there hasn’t been a comprehensive DIY build thread on here for about 6 months, this was perhaps due, as fast as these things change. Unfortunately due to budget constraints I can’t take the best advice here, but I did discover how stupid one of my initial contentions was, “…this could be the last editing computer of my life.” Very bad thinking! I should be thinking to start with quality but modest and build up as the need arises or not if it doesn’t. That’s kind of like the libertarian, anarchist, prepper, survivalist Jack Spirko’s key raison d’etre, “Helping you live a better life, if times get tough, or even if they don’t.”
But dang, Dave, my geek Greek is pretty rusty. Your wonderful response took a little soldiering and googling, part of the reason I haven’t gotten back on the thread horse sooner. (grin)
So some clarification on my part and an additional question or 3. I start with a solid full tower and 600w power supply, with 2 500GB hard drives for system and audio, monitors/keyboard/mouse, and Vegas Pro 11. The rest must come out of $800, Total max $1k. I’ve pretty much decided after your advice and considering costs that the base will be the top AMD APU (4 cores, 3.8GHz,) with the top Asus motherboard for this APU. It won’t be as fast as Intel, I realize, but it’s so inexpensive that it leaves more room for everything else, and replacement and downgrade to personal productivity computer without too much regret, if the future warrants it. Stability is a key feature to me and no one here has indicated that there’s any significant difference for this in the AMD vs. Intel debate. If there is significant difference, let me know now.
The things I need to get with the budget:
AMD Trinity 3.8GHz (4.2GHz Turbo 100W Quad-Core Desktop APU $130
AMD A85X HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard $130
16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory $120
2, TOSHIBA 7200 RPM 64MB SATA 6.0Gb/s Internal AV Hard Drives $200
2, ASUS 24X DVD Burners $40
Pioneer Blu-ray Burner BDR-208DBK $70
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional $70
So…, this totals to $760, practically $800 with some S&H and a few cables I might not already have.
Three more questions:
1) Dave wrote, “And of course, you want SSD for a boot drive… that’s kind of a no-brainer these days.” Well…, old brain here, but perhaps it can be updated. After looking at prices I’m afraid that a fully SSD boot drive isn’t in the cards. However, I’ve noticed that there are hybrid drives, and I remember seeing a discussion after a search here that seemed to say that you could configure your own hybrid boot drive with a small SSD and regular hard drive. If that’s correct, how small of an SSD drive would get you most of the benefits on a computer relegated primarily to editing and not packed with other stuff? I hope someone get’s my drift. If a no more than a 128 GB SSD would do the trick I might be able to swing it, smaller even more likely.
2) With the above system am I liable to get largely steady, smooth real time editing preview and external monitor on editing codecs like HDV, H264, QT stuff, and the like. I’m assuming not a problem with the MPEG2 (35 & 50mbps) Sony Codecs.
3) Production and post here in Chicago has a heavy Panasonic flavor. Are those codecs in VP11 (I’ve purchased, but not downloaded and installed), or must I go to VP12 or 3rd party to get them? If 3rd party, what? How do these codecs work in terms of question 2 above?
Opps…, 4) Have I forgotten anything significant?
I hope everything is clear here, because decently detailed questions elicit good and priceless answers.
I’m most appreciative of you experts who have stuck with it and continue to give of your expertise.
Ron Shook
One & Only Full Time Bottle Washer (O&OFTBW)
Shoulder-High Eye Productions -
Grillo,
I don’t know if you’ll see this or not, but posting on this over 3 year old thread is not such a good idea. Copy your post and start a new thread. Good Luck!
Ron Shook
Ron Shook
Shoulder-High Eye Productions
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Marc,
[Marc Chapuis] “I just got a Sennheiser 416 shotgun mic. I’ve discovered that is too skinny to be held in the microphone mount on my ex- 3. Have any of you come up with solutions for this? I don’t want to use one of the shoes to mount the mic. Ideally I’d like to use the secondary mic mount with some sort of shock mount. Any suggestions?”
Necessity is the mother of invention. Some idiot lost the rubber isolator from my Sony mic mount. I found that 4 or 5 rubber garden hose washers work very well to replace it. They fit tightly around the mic and isolate it probably better than the original.
Ron Shook
Ron Shook
Shoulder-High Eye Productions
CreativeCOW Forum Host for Discreet edit* -
Folks,
I wrote all that and forgot to leave a link. Senior Moment:
https://www.thedoorpost.com/2008/FinalFilms/
Ron Shook
Shoulder-High Eye Productions
CreativeCOW Forum Host for Discreet edit* -
Rafael,
[Rafael Amador] “the Rolling shooter”
You were inebriated? (g)
Ron Shook
Shoulder-High Eye Productions
CreativeCOW Forum Host for Discreet edit* -
Rob,
[Rob Grauert] “I’ve never used the EX1, let alone on a helicopter, but I do have some useful information.
I read an article about CMOS vs CCD. Both sensors have their own kids of artifacting, and the reason is because of the “shutter.” Video cameras don’t really have a shutter, it’s just how often the sensor activates to become sensitive to light. When the CCD actives, the whole sensor becomes sensitive to light, whereas a CMOS sensor becomes sensitive starting at the top and then working it’s way to the bottom. I think the big issue is when you use a CCD camera and you shake the camera, you see the shaky footage we’re all used to seeing. But when you use a CMOS sensor the image looks like it’s wobbling. I think it looks worse. The reason I bring this us is because I’ve seen footage from a CMOS camera on a tripod from a helicopter and I couldn’t watch for more than a few seconds. The remedy isn’t boosting shutter speed like you do with a CCD sensor, instead you boost the frame rate.
Now, if you are shooting handheld from the helicopter you may not experience the horrific image wobble i viewed.”
Nor will anyone else with an EX camcorder as far as I know. I wasn’t going to bring this up until I had more time to research it more, but this is an obvious opportuniy. There is no doubt but what there can be significant artifacts from CMOS sensors just as there can be significant artifacts of a different sort from CCD sensors, but I’m pretty certain that these horrendous wobble and slant examples that we’ve seen on the Web of CMOS sensors going into the grotesque zone to dis CMOS are probably a specific artifact that only very slightly applies to the EX.
I have never seen a single EX example of awful wobble and slant, in handheld, chopper, plane or boat shooting. Perhaps others have. I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure that all of these horrible examples on the Web were shot with Canon HV20’s or similar and edited with FCP. The reason for this statement comes from an experience I had trying to help a friend’s son with terrible wobble and slant/bend shot handheld with an HV20. This was on the worst handheld shooting I’ve ever seen, where he gave his friend his camera, so that he would be in some of the shots out on a mountain hiking outing.
What he showed me on his Apple lappy was really grotesque wobble, extremely evident even on the organic scenery, as bad or worse than anything I’ve seen on the Web. This was captured firewire into FCP and then had the FCP steadying/smoothing filter applied. I don’t use FCP so I don’t know the exact nomenclature for this famous filter. I asked to see the same original captured clip without filtering. It was obvious that the filter added to the problems, but they were still quite evident in he captured clip.
Now, here’s the funny thing, and I have no way to explain it. I ask for the original tape and played it directly from the HV20, component, into my HDTV. The footage looked OK and as I expected it would look, with a hint of CMOS artifacting if I looked for it, but nothing at all real obvious as I’d seen in FCP. There shouldn’t have been a difference between the original and the unfiltered FCP in terms of wobble, but there was. There seemed to be some unexplained artifacting going from the HV20 to FCP or some playback anomaly in FCP, something that it seems obvious doesn’t happen with EX footage. I’m at a lose to explain this. But that’s why I say that this problem with the EX is somewhat bogus.
Ron Shook
Shoulder-High Eye Productions
CreativeCOW Forum Host for Discreet edit* -
Chris,
[Chris Babbitt] “However, when I connected the camera to my HD monitor (both a 32″ LCD and a 56″ DLP) using the component cable, the pans look so bad, it’s as though something is really wrong. I noticed that the YPbPr output on the camera is limited to 60p even though the footage was shot in 24 or 30p (page 117 of the manual).”
Just speculating from what you’ve said, but I suspect a technical issue revolving around pull-up or pull-down (I can never keep them straight.) Whether it’s correctable by some camera (or monitor) setting, I don’t know, but as others have said, if you take your footage properly through your NLE and output to a standard viewable file, I think that you’ll find the problem will disappear because the proper image cadance processing will be applied.
Ron Shook
Ron Shook
Shoulder-High Eye Productions
CreativeCOW Forum Host for Discreet edit* -
Ralph,
[Ralph Hajik] “What’s everyone out there using now a days and what to look for when buying a hard drive? One last question, do I really need raid ?”
This is just a suggestion for something that seems to me should be very valuable to we video cutting types and I don’t know why it hasn’t taken us by storm, but instead of purchasing external hard drives and ending up with a rat’s nest of of odd shapes and sizes and wall warts, get removeable devices that take bare 3.5 inch SATA drives, no sleds to attach or fool with, like this:
https://cooldrives.stores.yahoo.net/quswsamorafo.html
The link is for a 5″ slot carrier for your computer case but they can be added to any external carrier with an open front that’ll take SATA devices or purchased from CoolDrives in 1-5 slot external JBOD or Raid cases that attach by one or more of eSata, USB, Firewire 400 or 800. That way you’ve got one device, one power supply and if you need additional space you just slide out one bare drive that’s full and pop in another. Do a search on the site for “Quick Swap” and you’ll see all the possibilities listed.With these devices you simply purchase the bare 3.5″ SATA drive of your choice, make sure the jumpers are correct and slide them in. Like Allen I’m partial to Seagate. In 20 years going back to monster double height 9GB SCSI drives, the original Barracuda, I’ve only had one die on me, well 2, if I count a 4.5GB used one I got cheap that had probably been ridden hard in a server. I am very careful about proper cooling, so my experience is a bit of luck and good construction.
About the raid thing. To physically edit DV or HDV, it’s not really necessary. To stay sane if your one drive goes down and you’re under the gun, yes. And it will happen sometime and it’s never the right time. OK, if you’re editing for fun, but not if you’re editing for a living. The simplest raid is raid 1 where what is written to one drive is mirrored to another, so that if one goes down the other can continue to carry the load without problem. It takes twice as much drive space but drives are cheap now. This is good practice for your system drive as well, particularly if you don’t clone your system drive periodically, although few do it. BTW, if you happen to go a file based camcorder that records to solid state memory that you reuse all the time, and don’t backup or raid during post, you are God’s own fool. Never leave your only source on one hard drive. Two hard drives are pretty safe, and any other form of back up is either quite slow or quite expensive.
Good luck,
Ron Shook
Ron Shook
Shoulder-High Eye Productions
CreativeCOW Forum Host for Discreet edit*