[Rory Keenan]

For you I’ll rename the Subject 🙂
“What’s a good quality way to ingest then Export BETA SP footage for archiving as Quicktimes??”

As for the the recomendations on codec… Thank You.
ProRes is the codec I like to use most, and I think I can convince the director to go with ProRes 422

BTW What is the difference between ProRes422 & ProRes422 (HQ)

[Rory Keenan]

Actually these are being archived for Computer monitor playback

An ethnic studies institute wants the footage.
They want two main things:

1) They want to be able to upload low-res versions of the clips on to the internet (so scholars can reference for research)….they will convert the Quicktimes to whatever low res format they need.

2) They want to be able to sell high quality clips to people who want to use the footage in other documentaries.
(anyone buying this footage will likely be editing on a Computer monitor in FCP or Avid)

Either way I think the clips need to look good in Quicktime playback on a computer monitor?
The aspect ratio can’t be distorted on the Quicktime computer monitor playback.

(Shane) “Yeah, QT doesn’t always play back the proper TV aspect ratio. It will change it. TV aspects and QT aspects are different. “

So what formats (for ingest & Output) would you recomend for archiving these as High Quality Quicktimes for playback on a computer monitor???

(Shane) “That is INTERLACING. Looks fine on tape as the format is interlaced, but computer monitors have a tough time playing back interlaced and having it look good. It simply can’t. Progressive is what computer monitors need. But you aren’t archiving for computer monitor playback, you are archiving for…TV playback. Right?”
Yes, these need to look good on computer monitor playback.
Is there a way to capture these as progressive??

So basically I need these to look good in Quicktime playback on a computer monitor.
Is there a way to capture in a format that will do that?…. then I can just use the Quicktimes from the Capture-Scratch folder??
OR do I need to capture… THEN EXPORT or use Compressor to out put Quicktimes in a different format???

[Rory Keenan]

The image difference between Quicktime-player & FCP is not a color issue.
The problem is the Aspect ratio is stretched… it doesn’t look 4:3 in QT…. It’s stretched horizontally.
The image also breaks up a little (in the form of horizontal lines) if a subject does any quick movements (like hand gestures when he speaks)

Thanks for the Pro Res suggestion.
I often use that codec…. but will there be any quality loss if i use ProRes instead of Uncompressed (that’s an important issue to the director)???

Also would you recomend ProRes for ingest & output… OR Ingest uncompressed then export ProRes… OR could I ingest in ProRes then simply use those QT files that FCP creates in the Capture scratch folder???

[Rory Keenan]

David
Thanks for your reply.
The director decided to close the the shop for what was left of Sunday so we’re leaving the problem untill tomorrow (Monday) morning.

As it turns out the entire system crashed today (I couldn’t even force quit FCP) . . . . . and now the CalDigit drive won’t even mount.
The IT guy is coming in at 9am Monday morning and will probably be on the phone with the people at CalDigit.
However that’s just to get the drives back on-line (we’ll still have the crashing issue during edit)

I don’t know if the IT guy used the drivers that came with the hardware or if he downloaded the latest version (I’ll ask him tomorrow).

The reason we got a new drive array was not to prevent crashes.
We were going to get new drives anyway because we were out of space for this project.
But since we started using the new drives (5 days ago) we are crashing more than before.

The big system wide crash that took our drives offline today was different than the crashes we’d had previously.
I’ll describe the previous crashes:
They were Final Cut software crashes. . . . . . these have been happening for over a month. We began editing with the new CalDigit drives 5 days ago and these “software crashes” increased in frequency (now up to about 8-10 per day).

I’m calling them “software crashes” because they only freeze the Final Cut program (I usually get the beach-ball-of-doom). If I click in the desktop the Finder system seems to work fine. I’ve tried waiting for 15minutes a few times to see if Final Cut recovers but it does not. I usually force quit and restore the project from the auto-save vault

We’ve considered up-grading to FinalCut 7 to see if that would help with our crashing issue (I mentioned that in a post yesterday)

Any ideas would be welcome
Thanks
Rory

[Rory Keenan]

We are running Mac OS 10.5.8
The project is DVC Pro HD 720p 23.98fps

Could our OS be conflicting with FCP 6 (even though we are not running Snow Lepord)????
We’d been crashing a lot and were thinking of upgrading to FCP 7.

However in the last 2 days things have gotten worse.
We just got a new RAID drive array.
I copied all the media over on to the new drive . . . . and after I relinked, FCP recognized the media.

It’s a CalDigit 3TB RAID array . . . . CalDigit makes their own SAS card to go with the drives and we had a local IT guy install the card (he consulted phone support from CalDigit)

[Rory Keenan]

The stills are jpegs
I’m not sure of the sequence setting I’ll check this afternoon. . . . (someone else did the original sequence, I was just asked to change a few stills on a last minute basis)

[Rory Keenan]

Thanks….. I was editing another segment and now client wants to call it a day.

I’ll check that tomorrow and post back

[Rory Keenan]

I may try running the DV deck straight to the CPU via Firewire
The deck is a Sony DSR-60.
I’m going to go around the back of the deck and see if there is a Firewire port.

The thing is I’d like to get the switcher system running (as the client is getting annoyed that he spent money on this configuration and it’s not working . . . and annoyed that I’m not getting it to work, even though I’m not the engineer who set it up.)

He says it worked just fine when the engineer set it up.

Does anyone have any ideas on why I’m not getting video signal to the AJA control panel??

[Rory Keenan]

We mostly shoot on P2 . . . . import thtough “Log and Transfer”

[Rory Keenan]

I can re-capture if necessary (no problem)

But unless I figure out the right settings the re-capture will have the same problem.

My question is:
What is causing this problem so I can fix it for the re-capture????

I think it may be something in the “System Settings” like “frame offset”, but I’m not sure.

Does anyone have any idea on what to try

(the AJA IO?HD box is a piece of hardware . . .there’s not many settings on it . . . . however there is an “AJA control panel” application . . . . . does anyone have any suggestions for settings in the AJA control panel???? . . . . .would the AJA control panel even make any difference with synch??)