Steve Covello
Forum Replies Created
-
I stand corrected. I looked up your info and it had more truthiness than the links I found.
Thanks Gary. I will now stop lying to my clients. 🙂
Steve
-
Hmm. Take a lookie [HDCam]: https://www.maxellcanada.com/pdfs/pi/hdcam_wp.htm Looks like 422 to me. Here’s HDCam SR — looks 444 here: https://www.videocraft.com.au/page/hdcam_sr.html Where are you getting your info? steve
-
Are you working in regular HDcam or HDCam SR? If you working in regular HDCam, then working in 444 RGB is way overkill. HDCam is not a 444 format. It’s still 422 Uncompressed 10-bit, like D-1, though the frame size and number of scan lines is different. Outside of this knowledge, I can’t say that what you are trying to do is necessarily wrong. It’s just that your monitor is probably not a 444 RGB monitor, and your footage is being ‘converted’ to 444 in the capture process. So maybe it’s the monitor??? Just guessing here. Try doing it with the 10-bit UC 1080 23.98 Easy Setup [or whatever the native acquisition frame is]. steve covello double wide post
-
Bob is right. Look as far down as the next year and think how the increased capability will either make you more money for its greater breadth of services you can provide to your clients, or look at it for how much LESS work you need to do to accomplish the same final product [meaning, how will this product allow me to go home at 2 a.m. versus 4 a.m.]. If that analysis amounts to a break-even point or better over one year or less [or whatever terms you want gauge it by according to upgrade cycles mentioned by Bob], then go for the upgrade. If not, don’t. I made the mistake of buying a used HDCam deck for cash — $69,000 — thinking that was where my clients would be going. Wrong. Over 1 1/2 years, we used it maybe 4 times. We sold it for a $20,000+ loss, and were lucky we got what we got! As for the old equipment, I too have an old Avid Meridien on a 933 PPC G4 and it’s as solid as a rock. I used it 3 times last year, but only for offline. Still makes me money though and the clients don’t care. The picture still appears on their monitor! steve covello double wide post
-
I’ve been using CD Finder for the same purpose. Hugely happy:
https://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/9950
steve
double wide post -
Thanks for the suggestions. What’s curious to me is that HDDs have been around and have been improving year after year, yet some of you prefer to backup to optical disk, which has not proven itself AT ALL as an archival medium. If an optical disk goes bad, forget it. No recovery service will salvage a warped or stained reflective layer [as far as I know]. Whereas, there is an an entire industry dedicated to resurrecting HDDs no matter what happens to them short of evaporation. Seems like with proper care and consciousness of static electricity damage, archiving to HDD could be as reliable [or unreliable] as anything else. We’re not talking about swapping drives in and out like cassette tapes on a cross-country road trip. Any evidence to the contrary? steve covello double wide post
-
Excellent review.
Thought it is worth mentioning that neither Sonnet nor CalDigit’s RAIDs are intended to have the RAID 5 capability that an XServe RAID has built-in as a hardware controller. [Technically, XServe RAID is RAID 50 — each of 7 drives in an array combined to RAID 5, then each array RAID’d together at RAID 0].
This means that a drive failure on either Sonnet or CalDigit’s boxes would be catastrophic, while the XSeerve RAID could continue to function. This doesn’t diminish the value of each product, expecially since Avid’s media drives have been essentially RAID 0 since day one anyway. It’s just that mentioning the cost comparison to an XServe RAID is somewhat incongruous when what you are paying for with XServe RAID is the continuation of service.
Although Apple definitely prices things on the high side, if you were to add up the hours of repair and recapture from having lost several TB of captured media versus the extra cost of XServe RAID, you could reach a comparable point of comparison between the two, without a compromise in performance.
Believe me, I’m a big fan of inexpensive alternatives, so don’t get me wrong here. I ‘discovered’ the CalDigit stuff a while ago and already presented it to my partner. I only think Bob’s review should have mentioned the XServe’ RAID’s technical advantage over software RAIDs.
If I am incorrect here, please help set the record straight.
Steve Covello
double wide post -
Somewhat related, but I have found that almost without exception, every time I switch the room setup from HD to SD, I have to trash everything, do Tiger Cache Cleaner and restart. sometimes even my SDI monitor playback shows nothing but snow, but the YRB playback is OK. the only way to shake the K2 back into SDI output again is to output something to tape. This seems to clear up the booger in there.
Of all the things I love about Avid and hate about FCP, it is this BS I have to go through on a project to project basis. Phooey!
steve covello
double wide post -
Try CMX3600. Should work fine. Be sure to Decompose the sequence first or else it will digitize the entire source clip no matter how much you used in the edit. If this is not a problem, screw it — capture the whole clip.
Also, unlike Avid, FCP does not tolerate multiple clips with the same name. Check all the new FCP clip attributes before you digitize so that if there are 4 trks of audio associated with a clip, you can modify it in the bin before you capture if it is incorrect. [select clip/modify pulldown menu/clip settings]
if you run into a situation where batch captureing your new FCP clips causes you to get the ‘duplicate filename’ error, stop and media manage the sequence in FCP [I know, this sux], and base the new clips on CLIP NAME not SOURCE NAME. It’s stupid but that’s why I hate FCP media system!
I’ve had a lot of problems with doing this perfectly so don’t get frustrated as if you’re the only one…
Steve
double wide post -
You’re working in 10-bit or 8-bit? 10-bit definitely does not work for me. 8-bit did. I’ll check my BS separately, but the 3-way worked fine in 8-bit.
Steve