Sean Oneil
Forum Replies Created
-
I agree with the weak capture tool. But can somebody explain exactly what is wrong with Media Manager, why so many people hate it, and what you would prefer instead?
I have never understood what is supposedly wrong with it. It’s had some nasty bugs over the versions, but when it works like its supposed to I don’t see what’s wrong with it.
Sean
-
There are Quicktime video demos of the new FCS products!
Sean
-
[John Davidson (fomerly JNeo25)] “I’d rather wait until October to get a new mac pro to run this stuff. Odds are there will be a new MacPro hardware release between now and then that is a little more optimized to run with Leopard.”
Not really. The 8-core just came out. Faster and more powerful hardware will always be coming out, but there won’t be any new magic device optimized for Leopard.
Sean
-
This is exciting. So many questions.
Is there a software-only version of FCS? Can I upgrade to it for <$1000? Will I still have multiple formats in the same timeline w/o the IO? What the hell is this Pro Res format? Is it lossless, or just Apple's version of Avid DNX? Do you need the IO to use it, or maybe just to encode to it? I'm driving up to Vegas tonight. Sean
-
[walter biscardi] ”
I’m thinking FCP 6 is not necessarily tied to Leopard. It will probably work on Tiger, just better on Leopard. I have no idea for sure, but that’s what I’m thinking.”I totally agree with that. No way is Apple going to release a new FCP that only works on Leopard. But like you said, it probably won’t perform as well and may even have features missing if its not running on Leopard.
Sean
-
I use MetaSAN for our iSCSI SAN. I’ll get to that in a second.
First and foremost. XtendSAN won’t work with targets over 2TB. Any target over 2TB will show up as being only 2TB to Mac OSX. The SNS initiator doesn’t have this limitation.
As far as speed goes without MetaSAN installed, the ATTO works fine. But, the SNS tests a little faster with my target for some reason (Open-E iSCSI Enterprise). I get a 105MB/s up and down with it, which is pretty much wire speed. Was getting about 95MB/s with ATTO. Not a big difference, but the fact is that the ATTO tests are less than wire-speed means there’s some kind of bottleneck there that shouldn’t be.
Now with MetaSAN installed. I’m having a strange compatibility problem with iSCSI since I updated to the latest version. Write speed is severely crippled on all members except the metadata master. Tiger has great support and they’re working on it. The point is though, that the problem is MUCH less severe when I switched from ATTO to SNS. Not sure why. And it could be a unique issue with my target.
One thing I hate about XtendSAN is that its very user-unfriendly. After a year, the other editors still couldn’t understand how to connect to the target on the rare occasion they had to and I wasn’t around. The layout is extremely confusing and weird, as I’m sure you noticed. The SNS GUI makes much more sense and is easier to use. It’s also looks a lot nicer :).
With SNS the persistent target drives mount quickly and 100% of the time after a system restart. This was not the case with XtendSAN. Occasionally it wouldn’t connect to the target automatically after a restart. I guess it would timeout too quickly. It’s very rare, but it happened nonetheless. And the fact that it mounts slower actually amplifies one of the known issues with MetaSAN. We usually had to refresh the Finder after every restart because it took too long to connect. Since switching to SNS initiator I haven’t had to do this once.
I also like the fact that SNS has all kinds of documentation online and even a user forum. The Atto website is absolutely terrible in and of itself. And the resources for XtendSAN are even worse. There’s no documentation, no release notes, no message board, no version updates – nothing. You go there and you feel like XtendSAN was made by some hobbyist programmer who forgot about it a long time ago.
All these problems could be unique to me because I’m using Open-E and MetaSAN. So who knows. But for my SAN, the SNS is much better.
And to be fair, the actual people at ATTO are great. Every time I’ve had to call they’ve been really nice and helpful. And their product does work, and I used it successfully for a long time. But it’s time to move on to something that’s not only better, but free.
Sean
-
That’s funny. I do the same exact thing. But I use FCP’s scopes. We have a digitize box/server/dumping ground Mac with a Blackmagic card in it. I just patch in the SDI and I’ve got external scopes.
You’d be surprised what kind of nifty things you can do with a spare computer and a Blackmagic card. I know a guy who spent $8k on some product that inputs SDI, encodes it to Windows Media, and streams it on the Internet in real-time for client viewing. With a Decklink SD ($299), a spare PC ($500), and WireCast software ($500), you end up with the same exact thing for $1300. And you can choose Quicktime, MP4, Windows Media – whatever you want.
And if you’re geeky enough, you can skip buying WireCast and just create a DirectShow graph.
Sean
-
1. I’m not sure what’s going on there. If the audio and video are synced up, nothing should change with subclips. I myself don’t use subclips, so I can’t speak for it. And I don’t use “Merge Clips”. I just throw the video and audio down on a timeline and sync it up. Then I use the “Link Clip” function and then drag it back into the browser.
2. Soundtrack Pro should have something that does that.
Sean
-
[lasvideo] “They have been transferring a huge library of IMAX films to HD, which explains why they had stuff before the current HD cameras.”
Yeah, but most of their shows were shot on HDCam, when that was the only HD camcorder around. You could see the cameras in a lot of the shows. What is this “new technology that’s never been done before” BS?
-
[gary adcock] “Too bad the D5 carries the painfully old D5 User Interface however. Finding something on a D5 menu is about as easy as setting an SR deck to record 720p. (those of you that actually know what I am referring to can try stop laughing now)”
The few times I’ve rented an SR deck, I had to call the place each time and get a walkthrough on how to change the framerate. Its not even in the manual.
Sean