Ron Shook
Forum Replies Created
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Aanarav,
[Aanarav Sareen] “It was nice meeting you at NAB!”
Likewise and youbetcha! Wanta trade some youth for wrinkles? (g)
Ron
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Brett,
[Brett Nelson] “Where media management is such a central part of your editing, wouldn’t it make sense to go over to the dark Avid side? I like a lot of things about PPro, but it sounds like you spend a lot of time butting up against what might be PPro’s greatest limitation.”
Marisu has no ultimate control over what she uses, but the person who does is looking hard at the “dark Avid side.” (g) It sure would be nice to know if this media management thingy is in the cross hairs of Adobe development or if they are committed to looking to 3rd parties or just letting users suffer to deal with it. Does anyone on the leadership board here have a good enough relationship with the development team to speculate?
Ron Shook
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Allen,
[Allen Zagel] “You can do it with a $3 computer mic plugged into your sound card.”
Yeah, but I sure wouldn’t want to for anything but a scratch track.
[Allen Zagel] “Alternatively you can get the mic that was made for VO work, an AT2020 for $100 or less on the internet.”
An excellent suggestion and certainly better than mine, RE, strictly VO work as it won’t do double duty for production except in very controlled environments.
Another thing to bear in mind as it relates to large diaphram condenser mics for VO is that in a poor environment they can be “too good,” because they pick up everything, something that a dynamic mic is less prone to. You’re better off using a VO condenser mic in a booth, however makeshift.
Ron Shook
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Harm, Steve, et al,
[Harm Millaard] “Supermicro has a nice case with 8 hot swappable bays that would meet these suggestions.”
I’m thinking of doing the same sort of thing that Mark is. I think I’d go for a 600 watt or better Power supply. One of the SuperMicro cases would be great because it could be rack mounted in the future, if I need. But, I’d also be interested in the Coolermaster Stacker which can’t be rack mounted but has more drive capacity, particularly with a couple of the SuperMicro 5 in 3 hot swap internal cages. Any further thoughts on Cases.
Also, doesn’t Mark need another large scratch drive in his system for audio and the like?
Ron Shook
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Steve,
[Steve Spaw] “dump the ATI 1800
Go for the 1900 with 512MB”Do you know something Matrox doesn’t? On their website of certified components for AxioLE they rate the 512MB 1800 higher than the 1900.
Ron Shook
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Dave,
[dpetto] “I would like to stay under $100 for the mic. Anything you can reccomend in that range would be helpfull.”
For just a touch more than that you can get an Electrovoice 635A, perhaps the best known and most used microphone in the A/V universe. It’s a dynamic (no batteries or phantom power), black or gray, omnidirection hand held interview mic that is virtually indestructable. It’s nicknamed “the hammer” because you could literally drive nails with it or drive over it and count on it’s continuing to work. I’ve never heard of one not performing and it’ll do good VOs as well. B&H seems to have the best price of anyone at $110:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=76669&is=REG
Contrary to the other suggestion I’d suggest that you avoid RatShack and stick to B&H for Mics designed for rugged ENG/EFP use. RatShack’s mics are more for musicians. There are Shure and Electrovoice dymamic, omni, ENG models at B&H for a few $ over 75.
Ron Shook
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Dave,
[dpetto] “I don’t want to spend big $$$”
It would be very helpful to know what you consider “big $$$,” and whether you might have a need for a mic that could do double duty for VO and production. There are perfectly acceptable $50-100 mics that can do this reasonably well. Is that “big $$$?”
Ron Shook
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Raymond,
[Raymond Motion Pictures] “The idea of being on the road and emailing proxy files and having a rough edit done before you get back is just way too cool.”
You betcha!
[Raymond Motion Pictures] “One would think, that of all NLEs, Vegas will have the tightest integration with the camera.”
Perhaps it will, but you have to understand that this is a very complex undertaking, and that the idea behind MXF as an industry standard is that any NLE that is compliant to this standard can potentially have the same integration as long as Sony opens the codecs to the industry or uses reasonable licensing policies.
At this point in time, Sony isn’t going to cut its own throat and thumb its nose at the broadcasters who will generate the bulk of XDCamHD sales by not helping first and foremost the NLEs that most broadcasters use, which would be first Avid and Then FCP, with Edius and Axio starting to make some headway. As a broadcast product, Vegas is way down in the list, even if it is Sony’s product. At least it will be one of the first in MXF compliance and can start making it’s way up the list if it meets other broadcast needs as well. It certainly should begin to in the mobile computing category that you are looking to use.
Ron Shook
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Raymond,
[Raymond Motion Pictures] “Does anyone have a clue as to why we have to wait until September for Vegas 7 for full support of XDCAM HD footage for a SONY camera that is out NOW? Why wouldn’t this be an upgrade given for support of the camera? September???”
Full Native MXF support in any format flavor is a tough job that delves down into the guts of the NLE database structure. It’s not a simple upgrade to do it right. No NLE that the very great majority of us might use currently has it, including Avid, Apple and Adobe, except Edius, and even though Edius can do Native XDCam MXF, they can’t do native XDCamHD MXF yet, so Vegas is far from alone.
Avid will probably be the first to be able to edit XDCamHD directly from the optical disks, if they haven’t already, but their version is not MXF native, but a workaround that takes advantage of their more capable database and media management. Edius, Adobe via Matrox, and yes, Vegas will all deliver MXF native XDCamHD capability in the same time frame, mid to late Summer, early Fall. Be encouraged by the fact that it is happening, and that once an NLE manufacturer has mastered MXF native in one format they are far better prepared to deliver MXF native in other formats in short order if they haven’t already.
For those who don’t know, MXF is an SMPTE standardized wrapper that contains metadata far beyond the conventional video and audio essences and time-code that travels with video tape. It can contain in the file itself any number of standard and user definable fields of metadata, such as a time stamp, the shooters name, place, which could even be automatically entered with GPS data, the copywrite holder, the production company, whatever. This metadata always travel with the file when the file is handled natively through the production/post-production/distribution process and as it travels through that process the fields are incremented and the user has a history of file back to the beginning, when it was first created.
If the NLE can handle MXF natively, each clip that you use in the edit master file will have a history of metadata, so you’ll never have to wonder where a clip came from and where, when and how it was modified, years later. Obviously broadcasters with their huge media asset management and digital rights management tasks, need and embrace this whole heartedly, but I think that it’s obvious that it can be an advantage to even the one man band type folks. I think that it’s also obvious that it ain’t no simple upgrade journey.
Ron Shook
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Bazino,
[BazinoZ] “”Oh, Oh..!” the network just rejected my master because it didn’t meet their spec!!!! Doesn’t happen to me because I paid the money and chose Decklink uncompressed. It would have been OK with the Matrox but for those damn Tektronix analysers that ring alarm bells when they detect overly compressed (+2.5:1) masters.
See.. it all depends on final placement of your product.”
That it does. And If I were editing for the network I wouldn’t presume to do it with an RTX of any stripe, but I still want those Axio enhancements. A friend of mine just got AxioLE which’ll do uncompressed. He’s in a shop with several seats of the latest tricked out FCPs with, you quessed it, Decklink hardware. He had just spent nearly a weak pulling green screen keys on a big project using every trick in the book to get good keys with the best keying software that would work with FCP and lots of rendering. He got the job done satisfactorily, but he wasn’t entirely satisfied. The LE setup arrived, so on a lark he decided to try one of the same keys in Axio, set one up, tried the one button auto keyer and couldn’t believe his eyes. There was the key, playing full quality in real-time, that with a slight adjustment for green fringing, was just as good if not better, than he’d been able to achieve very painstakingly on the other system. He questimates that a job that took him 4 and a half days, could have been done in considerably less than a day because of the added value he found in the Axio.
This story is nothing against Decklink. They make fine hardware. I tell it to illustrate again that hardware enhanced by software can make the system much more valuable than the hardware alone.
Ron Shook