[Sean Oneil]

[gary adcock] “the Kona Control panel can control 24fps – 30fps output using any of the 3 conventional pulldown patterns as the standard 3:2, as pA 3:2:2:3, or Sony’s 2:2:2:4 from the “codec” pane of the control panel”

You’re right. My bad.

Blackmagic cards can only do 3:2.

[Sean Oneil]

Yeah, the Kona adds it on output. You’re fine.

I misread your post about “advanced”.

Just to be clear, the Kona adds regular 3:2:3:2 pulldown. It does not convert it back to 24pA (which is 3:2:2:3 I think). If you’re going back to DVCam, you’ll need to use Firewire in order to record 24pA.

[Sean Oneil]

It’s very simple. Set your Kona’s video output to NTSC 29.97 8-bit or 10-bit. That’s it. 3:2 pulldown is automatically added to 23.98 video during playback.

FYI, you’re imporperly using the term “Advanced Pulldown”. Advanced Pulldown (24pA) is not the same thing as regular 3:2 pulldown.

[Sean Oneil]

I don’t think that’s it. Originally it was just bundled with their SanMP software, which was $1000 a seat. Literally a week after the Leopard build 377A screenshots came out showing the Apple initiator, they made the initiator available for free. I think that’s really cool of them. Microsoft gives their initator away for free, and the initiators for Linux and BSD are free. So I don’t think it’s unusual.

ATTO still charges like $500 for their Mac initiator, and I’ve had just as many problems with that one. From what I understand, iSCSI is extremely complicated and there are very loose standards involved. Most target software is designed to work with the Microsoft Initiator, hence why the choices aren’t very good for a Mac.

From what I understand, Openfiler actually does work with the SNS Initiator (Openfiler is a free NAS/iSCSI solution).

Anyway, back to the topic, every single Leopard build since 377A has not had the initiator. So I have a feeling we’re not getting it. Or it may be exclusive to OSX Leopard Server.

[Sean Oneil]

From what I read the actual retail version of Leopard will only support read-only for ZFS volumes. ZFS is pretty powerful so I don’t think current machines can use it without taking a noticeable performance hit. I think ZFS is in Apple’s plans for way down the road (meaning years from now). Their next OS (Cougar?) might fully implement it. So by including the read-only ability in Leopard now, it ensures ZFS will have some degree of backward compatibility on older Macs still running Leopard.

As far as ZFS advantages, I’m not an expert but from what I’ve read it could be great editors. Data will be much safer, and there is even the possibility of running a SAN without SAN software (multiple machines accessing the same disk without XSan having to coordinate everything). It also sounds like it could make RAID completely obsolete.

[Sean Oneil]

Find an online facility that has Final Cut. Or do it yourself (you might as well since you’re going to capture from the HDCam tapes). Otherwise you’re just wasting time and money having someone else manually re-create your effects.

Furthermore, if you are going to rent a deck, then it really is a no-brainer. Online it yourself. It’s easy. That’s it. Since someone else is color correcting it, it’s easy. You just need a Blackmagic HD and some cheap hard drives.

Honestly, you probably could get away with onlining 8-bit Uncompressed with your current drives (if you stripe them in RAID-0 and don’t fill them up). But if you don’t want to get a new card or set up an external RAID, you can buy four new SATA drives that use this new technology (perpendicular something or other). This makes them almost twice as fast as previous 7200rpm drives (70-80MBs per disk). Any SATA drive 750GB or larger has this technology. Four of these will surely be all you’ll need.

[Sean Oneil]

Thanks, I actually already use the SNS initiator. It’s exceptionally uncompatible with almost everything other than their own hardware.

[Sean Oneil]

Anyone know if they’re including the iSCSI initiator? It can be seen here in an older developer build:

https://thinksecret.com/archives/leopard9a377a/source/25.html

[Sean Oneil]

I’m unclear about something. One of the camera’s audio starts drifting? What about the picture? Does the video for both cameras stay in sync?

One thing I’d try right away, if you haven’t already, is playing them back on a completely different system. Maybe even a PC. Take the Apple DV decoder out of the picture completely just to test it.

[Sean Oneil]

Forgive me if this sounds stupid, but have you considered using iTunes?