Stephen Mann
Forum Replies Created
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At this time, I am probably more interested in providing a facility with my productions a sideline. Good thoughts, though.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
I’ll probably do an exploratory email to the local filmmaker’s (Boston area). I am not planning another Plymouth Rock Studios project, a $100-million debacle, but rather something that an indie filmmaker can afford for a few days or a week of shooting, or a videographer can drive a car onto the set to shoot a commercial against a greenscreen.
Any suggestions of what kind of questions I should be asking? How would I tactfully let people know that this could be an investment opportunity?
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Pros use pro monitors. And they pay pro prices, usually $5000 and up.
No consumer LCD monitor is capable of accurately representing colors. white depends on the color of the backlight, black is an illusion because an “off” pixel is not really opaque. (Ever see your “black” screen in the dark?) Contrast and brightness controls on an LCD monitor are also an illusion. In a CRT you can vary the intensity of each pixel, providing contrast and brightness control. In the LCD each pixel is either on or off.
I use a calorimeter (ColorMunki) to calibrate my monitors. They do an acceptable job, but I still like to use a reference monitor (CRT) on critical checks. You can find used reference monitors on eBay for around $100. Mine are Sony PVM14 units that were retired from a studio making the switch to the $6000 HP Pro monitors. As log as all three colors in the CRT work and can be calibrated, the reference monitor will be a true representation of color, brightness and contrast.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Your question makes no sense to me. What is it that you are trying to do?
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Ummm. No.
FAT hasn’t been used for a long time. NTFS has a much more robust indexing mechanism that is a lot less at-risk of losing a piece of the chain as FAT was. (When did you last have to run chkdsk /f to try to recover a lost chain?)
The drive hardware does have error correction built in. No magnetic recording medium is error free and error correction is used to hide those from normal operation. Further, the act of reading and writing (copying) adds another level of error detection. If there are bad sectors on the hard disk, your copy will fail.
I’ve been archiving on hard disks for ten years, and I haven’t had one failure yet. (I do have a bunch of 10Gb drives to recycle.)
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Always save the highest-resolution that you can – basically, whatever file the camera makes. For dollars per Gb you simply can’t beat hard-disk archives. If replacement is not an option, then make two (or even three). You can get 1Tb disks for less than $100 today.
Tape may have a higher density, but you are forever linked to a specific tape drive and format. Tough luck if your hardware fails and the supplier is either out of business or they don’t support your format any longer. I have data diskettes from the 1980’s that are still readable by any PC with a diskette drive.
Here’s what I do. Once a year I buy enough new HDD to contain all of my archives. This last time, a few 1Tb drives did it. I then copy all of my media to the new drives. This does two things. First, I now have another copy on the old disks. (The old disks will eventually be retired as they become third-gen copies.) Second, by copying the files, data errors that a disk on the shelf can acumulate over time get error-corrected. (A DVD or BD DVD do not have the robust error-correcting that hard-disk does). Also, if a media file is so corrupted that it can’t be recovered, then I should have another copy on an older archive drive.
Next year, I’ll do it again.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
How can it make a difference from AJA or Matrok?
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
And when you let DVDA do it for you, you are recompressing already compressed video. Do it all in Vegas and just use DVDA to prepare and burn the DVD’s.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Too bad you didn’t find M46. There’s a $100K prize for that.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
You mean:
“Automatically insert crossfades of a length you specify between all the media clips on your timeline.”Get the Sony Production Assistant from https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegasproassist/tools
BTW, any media on the Vegas timeline is an event – not a clip. (Vasst and SCS should know better, but there it is in their advertising).
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com