[Scott Brown]

Thanks Peter

Look forward to that pint…or two!

Scott

[Scott Brown]

A pint sounds good! We have a few good watering holes in Aberdeen – drop me an e-mail and let me know when you’re in town.

Re. FCP I’m aware that 2K is now posible, however we’re seriously looking at going for one of the new Red cameras (www.red.com). The footage at IBC was stunning, however the workflow looks worryingly slow and clumsy at present. The camera doesn’t ship until next May, so Moores law should assist on the technology front and by then the workflow will hopefully be a little faster…

My real query here is to find out from the BMD R & D team, what he challenges are from their point of view in terms of realtime capture of 4K data streams. I have yet to see 4K footage encoded at 28 MB/s, however I hear on the grapevine thatpicture quality holds up well.

Thoughts from the cows?

Scott

[Scott Brown]

Interesting…looks like BBC Scotland are going for the Panasonic HDX900. This is a BIG move for the BBC as they have been Sony users for as long as I can remember.

I think the decision was driven by economics – Panasonic are offering some amazing camera + HD lens (Fujinon)combo deals and this is working out around

[Scott Brown]

Hi Golf Guy

I agree that Matrox are charging a premium price for their Axio system and it is perhaps too early to judge if this is worth the price.

We used a Matrox Digisuite / Speed Razor combo for several years back in the days when the only other option for us was to go the AVID route and fork out BIG bucks! After the downfall of In Sync, we made our decision to move to MAC, based on the quality of the Final Cut Pro software – at that time Adobe Premiere was still considered a semi-pro application. The other reason we switched to Apple was the availability of the Decklink card (MAC only at that time).

Like you I had never been a fan of MAC’s, however now I love them and find moving back over to PC’s a real pain.

Moving a little off -topic, I note that you work in golf production. Golf makes up around 75% of our output, so perhaps we should have a chat at some point. We’ve just completed a 7 x 30 Scottish golf series on Digibeta and we’re currently working on a ten part international golf travel series that we’re shooting in HD.

Best wishes

Scott

[Scott Brown]

Hi Folks

I really feel for all those who are having stability problems with various Decklink/PC combinations.

After years of similar stability problems with numerous PC/video card combos, I moved to a MAC/Decklink sytem a year and half ago and I have to say that this is a rock solid platform.

It must be MUCH easier for developers to produce stable products for MAC systems where the hardware is locked down. The opposite must be true for PC’s where there are simply thousands of possible hardware combinations that could cause driver issues etc.

Perhaps the answer is for Blackmagic Design to specify only certain PC’s for use with Decklink (Dell/HP), similar to the way Matrox worked with the Digisuite range and now with Axio.

Just my 2 cents worth – at the end of the day, I simply cannot afford to work with an unreliable, unstable system. The MAC/Decklink combo works and is rock solid for us.

Best wishes

Scott

[Scott Brown]

Hi Kristian

It’s strange…sometimes when I go to log and capture everything is fine, however on most occasions as mentioned, I get picture roll/breakup.

It does tend to settle down after a while and the good thing is that it does NOT appear to affect what is actually being captured.

My previous Decklink Extreme exhibited none of these problems.

Scott

Midas Multimedia
11 Ashley Park South
Aberdeen
AB10 6RP

http://www.midas-multimedia.com

[Scott Brown]

Hi Jim

Your music must be in AIFF format at 48Khz for FCP…I suspect i tunes is bringing in your music as AAC or perhaps even MP3 format.

Check your preferences option for import in i tunes.

Hope this helps.

Best wishes

Scott

[Scott Brown]

I fully agree, the Z1 is an amazing camera and I have used it already quite extensively.

However, having used it, I’m also fully aware of its limitations i.e. it uses heavy compression and perhaps more importantly it has a fixed lens. In many ways, it is a much more difficult camera to use than a higher end HDCAM – the Z1 can produce very nice pictures, however you need to know what you’re doing and the HDCAM camera is more forgiving.

Given a choice, I would always choose HDCAM over HDV, however there are occasions where for cost or practicality, the Z1 or similar is a better choice.

Best wishes

Scott

[Scott Brown]

Re. the JCV 19″ – don’t use the HD SDI input card (CRT’s are analogue devices, often negating the digital benefits of SDI). The component card costs around $400 and works beautifully esp. if you use a card like the Decklink HD Pro with 14 bit component output.

Sorry if I was a wee bit opinionated re. the costs of HD (no offence intended), however I think we have to differentiate between HDV and the higher end HD market i.e. HDCAM / Varicam.

I personally don’t look at HDV as being a broadcast format (most broadcasters won’t accept this format), this may come, however at the moment I look at this as a HD format that is really exciting for the corporate market or for environments where a full size HD camera is not practical.

My point was that if you are working in HD for the broadcast market, then you’re going to be shooting with $100,000+ of camera equipment – in this context $5K is not a vast amount to spend on a monitor and again I cannot speak highly enough about the JVC monitor, it’s not as good as Sony’s grade one HD range, however it’s close and offers great value for money!

Best wishes

Scott

[Scott Brown]

I can highly recommend JVC’s 19″ HD CRT – this cost us around