Steve Covello
Forum Replies Created
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Sorry I don’t have an answer for you but you should be posting in the Aja Kona forum for this. Try to get Mr. Zelin’s or Mr. Biscardi’s attention.
steve covello
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Export frames, arrange them in MS Word via drag/drop. Works with .png files and pdf and probably others. you can scale the images too.
also works in text Edit and Stickies, though you cannot scale the images. you would have to print down to scale.
If you don’t at least have Ms Word, you got hard times.
steve covello
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If you ever put the program on the web, widescreen content sure looks good versus letterboxed SD.
Purely from a production standpoint, SD would be less expensive than shooting HDCam, though about the same as shooting DVCPro HD, or even less if you shoot P2 and do not need to capture from tape [less cost for tape stock, and not having to rent a deck for ingest]. You could shoot P2 for SD as well, but why not if HD would be largely the same workflow.
It all depends on what you see for the longterm future of your program.
steve covelo
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The import process requires the .txt files in addition to the MFX files. Any import problems I have heard about has stemmed from some smarty thinking some piece of data was not necessary and deleting it. Are there any text files missing?
steve covello
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This might be a real pain in the arse, but it works. If you extract all of your DVD installer discs to a .cdr image for each via disk Utility onto a FW drive, I find the installation process goes much smoother and faster. You can mount all of the images all at once and just let it go.
Mount DVD, select and copy name of DVD, open Disk Utility, select the most indented volume, click on the new image icon [picture of disk image with a + sign], change the Image Format pop-up menu to from compressed to DVD/CD Master, make sure the Encryption in the menu below says None, target image to FW drive, paste orig name onto file, save.
it will take a while for each disk since they are dual layer, but worth it in the long run. I have much better install integrity this way.
steve covello
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Ah, the brilliance of forethought normalizing.
I was amazed, however, how the ‘speculative’ nature of the signal flows became largely obsolete within two years. Our 3/4″ deck kept getting lower and lower on the machine rack until it was discarded and its place taken by the RT DVD recorder, then replaced again by an even better DVD recorder that could take a direct FW connection. Outputs to Beta-SP became less frequent. VHS became non-existent as an output format.
We are using our FW patch bay now more than ever. Handy for firestore hookups.
There is your life before your machine room, and your life after. Like with owning a power planer.
steve covello
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Hope you have an air conditioner in there. Lots of heat.
Will you be training your minions not to pull patches EVER unless they are sure what they’re doing, and even then, not by the cord but by the terminal? Many heads have been whacked in this regard.
Surely, Bob gave you enough service loop with your power cords so that when the cleaning staff comes in and rolls your rack out of the way to clear out those dust bunnies, it won’t blink out your edit rooms.
Looks great, Walter. your scratch VO’s will never sound better, now that the hum and whirr has been eliminated.
steve covello
pro-machine room advocate -
I wouldn’t do the selects reel, then matchback process. Too many opportunities to lose the original edit, or to mess up the audio mix because selects output levels were different than the original capture. you’re asking for trouble.
Deal with the million tapes and keep a clean list.
Not only that, there isn’t a single film [nor director] I know that doesn’t come back for a re-edit after a few screenings, which means going back to the original tapes for other scenes, or trims, or who knows. In which case, your matchback reel ID’s will be useless without consulting some sort of source list.
I vote for the modifying of sequence settings to 10-bit or 8-bit [10-bit could end up having color correction/legalizing issues as discussed in other strings here].
Remember that FCP moves DV footage up 1 scan line when pasted into a 486 canvas. Leave it that way – it’s for correct field dominance. I agree with doing the final output 8-bit or 10-bit if there are significant graphics involved.
steve covello
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Did you format the drive as Mac OS Extended before digitizing to it? Sometimes the device comes out of the box formatted for PC. Also, depending on what format you are digitizing, you will have success using FW400 for DV, but for anything else, i.e. 8-bit UC, DVCProHD, etc., you should use FW 800. Turning journaling off will help too, though I have used FW drives with Journaling on for years without any major setbacks. Actually, I like the idea that it is on only because FW drives tend to get unpatched or unmounted accidentally more so than, say, a dedicated XServe RAID via fibre, so pick your poison.
[BTW, journaling is intended to act as a way for your HDD to maintain an up to date record of your read/write events so that it can recover from a bad disconnect or power failure faster.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journaling_file_system
No single connection will work with a standard FW drive for SD 10-bit UC or 1080 uncompressed. [10- bit UC SD will work briefly for a totally empty drive via FW800, but it will not perform properly soon after that.] You will need a RAID configuration of some sort and either a fancy schmancy SCSI, fibre or SATA connection to do sustain the data rate required.
steve covello
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Just out of curiosity, are you outputting via Print to Video, Edit to Tape or just playing down the sequence and hard recording?
First of all, recording while doing straight playback doesn’t always work [this is a common thing for former Avid editors to do], so if that’s the case, do it via the other methods.
I have always done Print to Video and Edit to Tape from the Viewer, not the canvas. It’s just different and more reliable. since I created a “universal” slate/countdown in animation compression [to be used in all the flavors of SD], I always get the “incompatible compression error” from outputting from the canvas. I read somewhere [probably here] that FCP simply manages the media differently from the Viewer when PTV or ETT. So give it a shot.
steve covello