[Scott Bush]

Dave, excellent points.

I am very meticulous when it comes to file and layer names. The issue is more about the complexity of the changes, and the fact that using auto duck my ENTIRE program was in AE. When changes need to be made to basic structure, especially if that change is ADDING audio/VO/soundbites it is very cumbersome to deal with in AE. I, too am more of a timeline worker than Comp window.

I think the key here is breaking down into more precomps – but still the audio remains the big problem.

My client IS one of “those” clients, no doubt. And they won’t change. I’ve sent out memos, advice on workflow, etc etc but it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day one man has “veto power” and he makes himself VERY unavailable during the process… only interested in seeing the finished product. What he fails to realize of course is that until he sees it, IT ISN’T FINAL!
As for billing, no dice – I’m a full-time employee… they’ve got me by the.. well you know!

[Scott Bush]

Thanks, Leo… I just might – it’s been a while since I used Premiere… but it’s like riding a bike, right?

[Scott Bush]

Ah right… I guess I’d tried to forget about Premiere… hehe

Anyway they just updated me to CS4 today, so I will do some testing. Thanks for the pointer- no idea how I forgot about that.

Scott

[Scott Bush]

OK so I tried PVP…

And unfortunately, the quality is not up to snuff, and it has some issues playing some of my MPEG-2 files. Particularly, de-interlacing does not appear to work very well with PAL sources, and other applications I tried (VLC, Multiscreener) have much better playback quality. But some of the files simply won’t play at all. Mutiscreener, however, does not have a playlist feature (from what I can tell) and VLC doesn’t really have support – although that may not be an issue. Honestly a lot of these apps look like overkill – I’m going to do some extensive testing with VLC to see if it is stable enough to handle this – any thoughts?

[Scott Bush]

Thomas thanks, that’s a wealth of info – I’m going to look into that.

Just some more points:

I will likely not be the “programmer” either – I’m really an editor and gfx person, I’ve just been roped into this because my knowledge overlaps a bit, and our head IT guy left a few months ago. Basically what that means is that the programmer, while not a novice, will likely be intermediate at best – a timeline may be more than what we need. The software we used in the past was called “easyplay” and it came with our hardware cards. Something simple (playlist based) like that would be ideal. Everything is already edited, it’s just a big list of MPEG files that need to be put in a specific order. This order, of course, will likely change over and over until the very last minute, so flexibility is key. Something where the order can simply be dragged up and down in a playlist is what I’d like to have.

Thanks for the Windows pointers as well – if we do go windows, we do exactly what you said (although it does have to be networked, if not on the internet).

Thanks again
Scott

[Scott Bush]

Thanks everyone for your patience 🙂

So the more I look into this the more it looks like going straight out from the computer (rather than an mpeg card) will be my best bet.

is there anything similar to what Thomas recommended (AvStumpfl Wings Platinum) on the mac side? we may end up just going with VLC, but something with some nicer options would be nice. Or perhaps other ooptins for windows? The person who will be running the show is “more comfortable with macs” but isn’t against using windows… so if there is something on the mac end that may fit the bill better.

Thanks,
scott

[Scott Bush]

Walter, thanks,

I will look into that, but I know they’d rather have something we can use in the future. Besides that, it looks like non-video-pros will be operating this stuff, so the more simple I can keep it the better (I will be busy editing and not able to help with the actual show – only prep).

Still worth looking at, though. Thanks.

Scott

[Scott Bush]

Many thanks, Thomas – I will look into that.

Scott

[Scott Bush]

I admit I didn’t do a ton of research but from what I see that Grass Valley box costs near $10,000. Is that accurate? If so, that is way over budget. We’re looking for something in the $2000 or less range. Honestly we’d go straight from a PC via VGA first.

I know this is quite a request – believe me I know first hand 🙂 Thanks for all the input!

Scott

[Scott Bush]

Thanks for the suggestions. Dale, problem with your solution is that we don’t want to convert. We need the quality to stay PERFECT (very picky client – with a very good eye!). When we’ve had the PAL stuff done in the past, we have had to order DigiBeta masters first, then make the NTSC MPEGs from that. So converting MPEG-2 to anything except uncompressed or lossless (not practical for obvious reasons) would be unacceptable.

I need to be able to play they without converting – is there such a card that can switch standards seamlessly? Or would a computer be my best bet? If I use a computer, though, I guess I’d need a second monitor to control it? They do NOT want to see someone operating windows – they want a clean screen with commercials only. Any distractions like glitches or someone working a mouse would not be ok.

I’m waiting for a call back from Stradis to see if they have something.

Thank again for all suggestions.

Scott