[Steve Coulson]

Dear Shane: Thanks very much for the quick reply. I was thinking the same thing of the Black Magic solution-it didn’t appear to have a firewire connection-and my Mac does not have USB 3.0. My next stop is ebay baby!

Thanks again
Steve

[Steve Coulson]

Our AJA i/o HD device has died and is too expensive to replace.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a different company’s product that can facilitate external video monitoring and vtr control? Specifically, we need a device to connect to our Apple computer via firewire. That device controls a vtr via RS -232 and it provides an HDMI output for our external monitor. The device also has SDI embedded audio input/output.

I had a look a Blackmagic’s website but got lost in the myriad of products they have.

A cost-effecting solution would be appreciated.

cheers
Steve

[Steve Coulson]

Yes, I’m pretty sure I did that but it’s worth checking again. Thanks

steve

[Steve Coulson]

Hi Kim: No, I haven’t found a solution. I have mapped the audio outputs in final cut pro so that audio source 1 goes to channel 1, etc….and I have done the same thing on my DVCAM VTR-you can map the audio inputs. The only other piece of gear in this chain is the AJA I/O HD device which is the interface between fcp and the vtr. There aren’t any options for channel mapping in that interface. I’ve contacted AJA and they say it has nothing to do with them.

But of course, you can record 4 discrete channels of audio from FCP to a 4 channel-capable VTR. I’ve done it before many times. Some settings changes have happened since then and I can’t figure out the problem. On the recorded tape, all channels are discrete except for channel 1 which is always a mix of audio source 1 and 2.

Sorry I can’t help.

Steve

[Steve Coulson]

I’d recommend exporting to Quicktime uncompressed and then using the freely available MPEGStreamclip to compress it to H.264, in the .mp4 format. Exporting to H.264/.mp4 in FCP takes too long and the quality is poor and you can’t edit while making this exported version.

[Steve Coulson]

Thanks Rob, that also sounds like a good approach.

cheers
Steve

[Steve Coulson]

Hi Mark: Oh yeah? Prores even for SD material? That might just work. Thanks for the tip.

cheers
Steve

[Steve Coulson]

Hi Aryun: Those files are not duplicates. Files are recorded in a series and each new recording (anything over the limit to the data storage, which in HD is around 13 minutes of video)has a new but consecutive number added to the end. This is how your NLE knows the order of a bunch of clips you import.
So “613_0318_01.MP4” is the first file in the 613_0318 series and the next one is “613_0318_02.MP4”. This structure can also help you locate or identify files.

In terms of Log and Transfer, I don’t use it because I use XDCAM EX 50i files in Quicktime rather than .mp4. I import the clips into a folder on the hard drive then import those clips to my FCP 7 project without using Log and Transfer. You have to use Log and Transfer to ‘decode’ the codec in the .mp4 clips because FCP 7 cannot natively edit .mp4 files.

As I remember the process, in FCP 7, open log and transfer, navigate to your memory card, select the folder immediately after the first and second folder. In my case, that is: Card 1/Private/the one with the akronym which contains the video files. On my JVC camera which records in HD and SD, there are two folders; one for HD and one for SD. So I select the correct folder and the clips import and convert to quicktime right away.

Sorry that was a bit muddled.

Steve

[Steve Coulson]

Hi everyone: I’ve tried the apple maverick support page and forum but have not found a solution so I’m turning to my go-to forum for all things mac, editing, etc…

Sometime ago, after what I think was an automatic update to 10.92, a number of my mac apps stopped working. Mail opens but I can respond to an email. Facetime bounces like it’s going to open, then it quits. Same for Quicktime, software update and imessge and facetime.

I thought I’d take the plunge an update to the latest OS. Trouble is, I can’t even connect to the app store. On the apple website, on the page for the new os, I click the link for app store and nothing happens.

So I can’t seem to update. After a couple more autoupdates, I’m on os x 10.95. Same problems, no solution in sight.

I’m running os 10.95 with a 2.5 Ghz Interl Core i5 iMac, with 8gb 1333 MHz DDR3 ram.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks everyone,
Steve

[Steve Coulson]

Hi Jeff: Thanks very much for responding. Here’s the deal. We are a criminal tribunal that records all court sessions in multiple languages (live language spoken, different language interpretations according to what language the accused speaks). Our archive department digitizes the DVCAM tapes. I am a documentary producer and I produce in three different languages. I edit in FCP 7. When I am requesting clips from the trial sessions from our archives deparment-that is using Premiere Pro 4-I need at least two languages per clip of the trial session. So, for example, for the scene I am editing in English, I take the English language channel and mute the other language channel. vice versa for the other languages.

The trouble is, the archives guys can only give me just one mono track of the language of my choice. That means they have to duplicate their work and give me 2 x each clip I request, each with only one channel of audio. That doubles the size of the media on my external hdd and in my editing system and is generally a foolish waste of time.

I can of course, simply capture the DVCAM tapes myself in FCP and carry on quite easily. However, for my current documentary, I have a request for something like 100 different trial sessions and each session is 90 minutes long and it would be wildly unproductive to have to do all the capturing myself, especially considering most of the material is already archived by the other department. I simply don’t have the time to do that. Imagine how long it can take to find one sentence spoken by one of 40 individuals in one session. Multiply that by hundreds of sessions and you can see how time consuming that is. Which is why we have a an archive department with a big staff. I did not recommend that department use Premiere Pro.

Both Avid and FCP can of course capture/ingest 4 (discrete mono) channel audio and export 4 (discrete mono) channels back to tape or as a file.

But what the hell! Can Premiere Pro 4 do this or not? I’ve been trying to find out the answer from the Premiere Pro support site, the manual, user groups, etc…to no avail.

Sorry for the long reply, but I wanted you to have the full picture. My current option is to have the archive deparment export all my clips as with a single audio channel. They then re-export on the audio for the second audio channel. That does reduce the export time and overall size of the media, but it is still very inconvenient.

Any ideas?

Thanks Jeff.
Steve