Steve Covello
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Check your A/V Settings in the Device Control tab, click Edit. Check to see if the deck’s audio mapping is set to 4 tracks. If that doesn’t fix it, then, try dragging your master sequence to the Viewer, not the Canvas, and ETT from the Viewer.
steve covello
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Here’s a dumb probability: is there some sort of loop where your deck’s secondary output is being accidentally routed back to the same deck’s input? Are there any other signals being sent to the INPUT of your deck i.e. Composite/Component/SDI either through some odd patch connection or errantly normalized patchbay? If so, set the Input to an unconnected selection (it should blink if there is no signal). Is your deck in Ref or Input Video? It should be in Ref, and if it isn’t then there is some conflicting ref signal. You will get a revving sound from your DBeta if this is the case.
Try the ol’ Tiger Cache Cleaner [versiontracker], and Medium Clean all levels. Or Panther Cache Cleaner if you are on 10.3.9 or below.
steve covello
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If you don’t really need to export, don’t. Just take the original QT media on your media drive and use that. If you need to assemble or edit your captured media first before exporting, use the export dialog and choose Quicktime Movie, NOT Quicktime Conversion. By choosing Quicktime in export, you will be exporting in the native compression rate of your project as a clone. If you still get artifacts from this, then I dunno…
steve covello
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Good comments. I am right in the thick of NYC, having worked with so-called “high end” advertising clients for 15 years, except the decline in overall volume of TV production has relegated many non-A-list post houses to struggle without the spillover that used to be around from which you could build your reputation. Secondly, we have found a dramatic decline in demand for non-A-list directors if A-list directors happen to be available. Cripes, I think Tony Kaye was shooting package goods!
That said, the question for us, as a “middle class” company [in terms of reputation], is whether we should waste our time trying to compete with The Whitehouse, Consolate, Now Corporation, etc., or try to subordinate ourselves with rates so low we get low return on resources, or simply look elsewhere in markets that are emerging.
Thus, the ipod vs. HD. We have worked with “new” digital media companies that stand as a one-stop shop for mid-level clients that want to do TV, direct to consumer, b-to-b, web, PR, sales, alternative media and so forth emanating from ONE production. For us, we see this kind of client as having much better overall profitability on a per-task basis versus trying to seduce clients who want to master in HD — whose rates haven’t imprinted as being much more profitable than when everything was SD. and conventional commercial production rates keep getting lower and lower.
I see it as there being more outlets for compressed formats than there will be for HD. From a marketing standpoint, this is significant.
steve covello
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Interesting insight. The Lacie FW800 is configured the same way — two drives striped RAID 0. I can’t say whether they spin in opposite directions as you mentioned, but it is a good point of cistinction if true.
Here’a a good link showing the guts:
https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-lacie-big-external-disk.htm
Drives in general:
https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery.htm
steve covello
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I hate to contradict such a definitive-sounding post — which I agreed with up until recently.
I have been able to function using AJA IO on FW400 port [front or back] and a Lacie FW800 drive connected to the native FW800 port of my G5 2gh dual without any problems working in either DV or 8-bit UC. I use a Keyspan serial to USB converter for deck control instead of FW [default], so maybe that makes a difference, I don’t know.
The only issue I have had is when the FW drive gets more than 3/5 full, the performance declines and I will get dropped frames occasionally.
Another workaround to open up your throughput is to stripe 2 FW800 drives together, connect one 800 cable to one drive and the other end to the G5 FW800 native port, connect another FW800 cable between the two drives, and another from drive #2 to a PCI FW800 card. I might be mistaken on the connection between the two drives — it’s been about a year since I did the original test.
Nonetheless, I was able to bench some pretty fast numbers and had 10-bit UC working without a hitch, strictly as a test. Again, I cannot vouch for performance issue once the striped drives got full.
Also, in case you didn’t know, be sure to erase and reformat your G-Raid or any other FW drive into Apple HFS+ via Disk Utility the moment you take it out of the box. Drives are formatted for Mac/PC by the factory, and you should erase it exclusively to the HFS+ format. If you don’t, it will still work, but your performance will be compromised.
steve covello
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…What Bob said.
steve covello
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This was taken from the Algolith website knowledge base:
For NTSC footage the field dominance is “Lower or Odd Field First “, for all HD formats and PAL, the field dominance is “Upper or Even Field First “.
https://support.algolith.com/index.php?x=&mod_id=2&id=7
Algolith makes software based standards/format conversion products.
The exception to the above statement is the old ABVB Avids — the ones that were AVR77 versus the Meridien 1:1 — which were Upper Field dominant, but no one has those much anymore.
Check out this link and goto the HD/ECinema link. Many good documents on workflow and tech.
https://www.cinematography.net/
steve covello
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Here’s the skinny: I just sold my used HDW-F500 for $41,750 after having it for only 2 years and barely using it. I originally paid $69,000 for it used from The Broadcast Store, and it had the PD and DC boards, and about half of its brush/head life left, which would’ve been at least another 1500 hours [about a $3000-4000 repair]. Why did it depreciate so much? According to one broker I spoke to, Sony is coming out with a new line of HDCam decks that, I suppose, each have various capabilities so that someone who only does 1080i doesn’t have to buy the whole package of features if they are not needed. So what does Sony do? They sell all of their B-stock new HDW-F500 decks for around $45,000 thus making the used market fall through the floor.
So my guess is that you can get a new F500 if you want, but it it will likely be a demo model, and, like the PVM20L5/1, you will have a tough time getting parts for it [like processor boards, not rollers, etc.] in the future. Luckily, it seems like it is a very robust deck and a sound investment.
steve covello
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No problems with Xserve RAID via copper fibre. But check to see what slot requirements you will need for the K2, copper fibre or SCSI or SATA, graphix card, etc. based on the G5 you have. Recent hardware in both G5 and in K2 may require priviledge to the 133 port.
There was a string earlier this month I believe that measured the pros and cons of SATA, copper fibre and SCSI. Some of the major points I remember were that SATA arrays are great, inexpensive, but tough to troubleshoot if one of the drives doesn’t mount. SCSI seems to be a proven, solid connection, though its top-end performance is limited for future needs for 4:4:4, 2k, etc [I can recall being asked to cough up $60,000 for a Rorke Data SCSI RAID, which is about 5 times Xserve RAID]. Copper fibre can only be 3 meters from the CPU, so it would be an added expense to go fibre optic if the RAID and the G5 had to be far apart.
This is just a sample, so look in the index to find this string.
Or just page Bob Zelin, who I’m sure will fill in the finer points. I hope I got my facts straight as I recall, so don’t go by my gospel except to investigate a little more.
steve covello
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