Steve Oakley
Forum Replies Created
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to be more specific
if your sources is 1080i thats upper field
DVD NTSC is lower field OR progressive
you can output native 24P from your 1080 TL if you edited in 24P to begin with, export to 24P NTSC clip and then into DVD SP. FWIW, you could also just import your HD export into DVD SP as well.
Steve Oakley
DP • Editor • VFX Artist
http://www.practicali.com -
the sound devices website as a util for messing with audio files and changing the files sample rate. are you sure they didn’t record 48,048khz ?
the util doesn’t modify the sample data, just the rate stamped in the file to play it back at
Steve Oakley
DP • Editor • VFX Artist
http://www.practicali.com -
well ProRes can be either 8bit or 10bit. if you hand it a 8bit image from your digitizer, AE, whatever, it’ll happily compress it as 8bit. so no, prores does not mean its absolutely 10bit. it should ( might ) take 8bit internal material and hand off to the requesting app 10bit data via internal conversion, but this is murky water. reading the prores whitepaper is worth your time, at least the early one where all this came from.
as for the ACD being a 6bit device… 7bit I could easily picture, but 6bit would produce some pretty nasty banding. what do you get when you feed it a 8 bit ramp ? is it smooth ? if it were 6bit there would be some really obvious banding.
that said, who cares about a ACD device. there are plenty of real & cheap 8bit panels out there… and a few 10bit ones that aren’t too expensive
Steve Oakley
DP • Editor • VFX Artist
http://www.practicali.com -
Qmaster does work on the local machine and will use all the local CPU’s, however you do have to follow the docs. Jan Ozer and the apple tech person are simply wrong.
In order for it to work, you must FIRST configure the cluster via the System Prefs Control Panel and enable it. then when you send the job from compressor, be sure to select the cluster.
that said, I’ve got a compressHD around and its wildly faster then CPU encoding. if you like to go home at the end of the day on time instead of waiting around to get a preview out of the days work, it’ll pay for itself quick enough.
Steve Oakley
DP • Editor • VFX Artist
http://www.practicali.com -
well for me, the lack of alpha channel support in the standard and HQ modes, means…. I don’t care too much. if the proxy mode does something for you, great. however, not having alpha channel in anything except the 4444 codec stinks. they left in hints of alpha support because they left it as an option, but to not have it now…
I’d also like to know if they fixed the premult with black render errors that are all over the place. that would be worth the upgrade alone… I pay for a bug fix.
Steve Oakley
DP • Editor • VFX Artist
http://www.practicali.com -
I think the reality is are you going to be able to hold onto all that media for any recapture ? you could be looking at 1000+ media items between tapes, discs, cards. you’d have to label and store it all. there would be no getting it back.
then look at ProRes Storage rates and the fact that $129 buys a 1.5TB drive. for under $2k you can have 15TB of storage including cases. I’d capture at a suitable ProRes setting with something like a MXO2 and be done with it. to try to reload material like that would be nuts if you start to find TC breaks, DVD’s are ripeed w/o TC, reel names are wrong, ect.
and why “online” on a avid. this will be more then a world of hurt to try to redo. can’t picture any reason to do it… especially considering some avid’s use the same hardware as FCP ( AJA)….
Steve Oakley
DP • Editor • VFX Artist
http://www.practicali.com -
an MXO2 would work nicely with the laptop….
Steve Oakley
DP • Editor • VFX Artist
http://www.practicali.com -
may I suggest saving yourself a world of grief ?
get the transfered HD footage and edit that directly. there is NO good reason to edit the SD ProRes clips. the very first thing is, do the SD clips have TC that matches the HD ones ? if you can’t say yes for sure, and don’t assume they do without actually checking, anything you do will be a huge headache to reconform by hand. it will take MANY hours, and the other guys will rack up a huge bill doing this.
going back to my first comment, if you do the HD edit, you can either
1. do the color correction yourself in FCP / Color / Whatever
2. export the HD edit to a selfcontained QT HD clip for CC somewhere else
3. do a media managae and export the project to a hard drive, and also save out a XML and EDL of the timeline.smoke can read a FCP XML file, will relink to the media, and they can mess around with it from there for final output.
by adding the SD down conversion into the mix, you’ve added an entire layer of mess, and I’ll add some more.
is your 24P footage really 24P – 24.000, 23.976 or 29.97 with 3:2 pull down ?
and does its TC match back to the HD material ?as for mixing frame rates, I do it every day without worry. its not a big deal **IF** your TL is the final output, or directly used ( QT export ) for final export. if you have some sort of reconform back on another system, I’d try to get into a common TC format. thats probably 30FPS NDF as the safest one.
as for mixing Super8, again, what FPS ?
and are all the reel names straight ?
you need to do a very good tech inspection of TC and reel names before you do anything else.
and what about sound ? has that been synced yet ? and at 24.000 or 23.976 ? has pull up / down been handled ?
Steve Oakley
DP • Editor • VFX Artist
http://www.practicali.com -
outside of getting a new machine, not much. that said what AVI codec is being used ? I’ve edited DV AVI’s in FCP without doing anything. QT can read several AVI’s directly, and despite warnings of “non-optimized media” will work and play in RT just fine. QT just sees AVI as another codec. if its a very compressed format, or has large keyframes, you will be better off exporting it to something like ProRes. FWIW, QuickTime Player will handle the task fine. if the mov isn’t a standard video size, FCP will want to render it, even if it has enough HP to do the job and play it. Also, when FCP starts rendering, it often is off quite a bit on the first few frames, but then settles down into a more accurate estimate.
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fcp *DOES* use the GPU very much to render RT effects. changing the card can and will have an effect on how much RT you get, especially with filters. I’ve changed cards in machines and seen red areas go to yellow, yellow go to green.
out of the bunch, the 6800GT is the best card by far BUT its a full length card, overlaps the next slot so you can’t use it, and sucks power ( makes heat )
if you can find an ATi X800 card, its 5-10% faster, and 1/2 length. it also doesn’t cover the next PCI slot – if that means anything to you.
I’d really not spend money on the machine unless you are getting the card for really really cheap. the 9800’s are pretty much worthless, the 6800GT has some value, the X800 will get top dollar because of its smaller size and better performance… or save your cash for a new machine !