[Thad_h]

Hi Harlan,

Regarding your question number 1: Are you capturing from either a 486 wide deck or planning to deliver a 486 wide deliverable? If so, can you explain your workflow so I can make a recommendation for you? Mainly, what are the devices you’ll capture from and output to?

Question 2: AE 7 wont use the ASIO driver which the XENA card uses. However, you may be pleased with the release of AE CS3. Note: This is not a function of the XENA card, but of After Effects

Question 3: The XENA card cannot be set as the default windows audio device. It uses a different kind of Audio driver that is better suited for the post applications which we plug into.

Regarding Adobe Audition and the impending Release of ‘Soundbooth’: The XENA ASIO driver already works in Audition. Simply select the XENA ASIO in the Audio hardware setup to use the XENA as your output device instead of your sound card. Its worth noting that the XENA LH will output 2 channels of audio over the AES or analog outputs, but will output more channels over SDI. The XENA 2K however will output 8 channels over AES. This being the case, the soundcard might be a better monitoring device if you are doing a 5.1 mix.

AJA XENA Support

[Thad_h]

Andrew,

Can you post more details about your gear setup? We cant seem to see the problem you’re describing, so we’ll need more details about the setup you have there

Deck?
XENA Model?
Other connected gear? Monitors, reference, etc?
Also, details about the computer you’re using would be good as I assume youre no longer using the system you have listed in your profile with a Canopus card…..

AJA XENA Support

[Thad_h]

JP,

You can capture Quicktime with the audio muxed up to 8 channels in the file. All other supported file types will capture audio in a separate file.

AJA XENA Support

[Thad_h]

Shawn Michael,

Are the quicktime clips you rendered in After Effects, ones that were rendered using the AJA uncompressed quicktime codecs? Or were these rendered using something else?

AJA XENA Support

[Thad_h]

Jeff, the answer is yes.

You can capture to any of the following file sequence formats in HD formats.

BMP, TGA, TIFF, YUV, DPX, CIN

Uncompressed AVI and Quicktime are also supported in addition to the sequence types.

Of course the support of all of this is contingent on having a good disk system that can support the capture.

AJA XENA Support

[Thad_h]

David,

The reason i stated ‘should in most cases’ is because we clearly dont control the source of creation of all BMP’s and TGA’s. While there is a standard for these formats, not all software appli9cations create them in the exact same way.

For sequences that were either captured or rendered using AJA software/codecs, they will play fine. However there are actually many ways that the data can be stored inside the BMP or TGA file. This is why I suggest that if you have files created by some other rendering application, you send a few frames zipped to xenasupport@aja.com. This way you can make sure that the files you are using will work, before you buy. If you’d rather not do this, it is also important to note that AJA has an excellent return policy, so you can buy one, and if it isnt living up to your expectations, return it. I’ll spare you the details of the policy, but your dealer can explain it in full.

AJA XENA Support

[Thad_h]

David,

The image sequence support that we have is the exact reason that Todd has voiced his frustration above. Our Premiere plugins have been specifically designed to handle images as video sequences, for users like you.

This being the case, we dont handle image files in the same way that Todd(who started this thread) is used to in Premiere Pro, and have since had to add some workarounds for the use of images as long duration stills, rather than as individual frames in a sequence.

So that is the long answer. The short answer is that BMP and TGA sequences should in most cases play in RT off the premiere pro timeline. If you want to be sure, you can send like 3 frames zipped to xenasupport@aja.com and we’ll be happy to double check that those frames will work correctly.

AJA XENA Support

[Thad_h]

Hi Todd,

Actually in the 2.6 release there are TWO new ways to work around the situation you’ve described.

The first of course is the automatic handling of individual files based on their name, which doesnt seem to meet your needs, as you’ve clearly stated in your post above.

The second is a new feature allowing the Premiere Pro importer to do the file importing for some still image types, rather than using the AJA importer. You’ll see this described in the release notes stating:

“Users can enable or disable certain functions of the XENA importer in Premiere Pro. By default, the XENA importer will import bitmaps, targas and tiffs. These importer features can be disabled, allowing the Premiere Pro importer to import these files instead. This function can be useful for importing still images rather than file sequences.”

To use this new feature, go into the Playback Settings in your Premiere Project. You’ll find the importer controls on the bottom right hand side of the playback options screen. Choose the file type which you would like to have imported by the Adobe Importer, and then select ‘Enable Adobe Importer’. This will cause all files of that type to be treated as still images rather than individual frames in a sequence.

AJA XENA Support

[Thad_h]

James,

Try just running an uninstall of the 2.5.1 installer from Add/Remove Programs. Then run the 2.6 installer. This might solve that problem for you.

AJA XENA Support

[Thad_h]

James,

That is a good question. There actually will be some minor changes you’ll need to make when you upgrade. When the versions upgrade, some of the project settings will reset to their Hardware defaults, and you’ll need to be sure to reset them by hand, and then resave the project.

1) First of all, make a renamed version of your project file, so that you can have two copies of it. This will protect you against any kind of project corruption. We certaintly dont expect this to happen, but its always better to be safe.

The project you’ll need to reset by hand that may be reset when you upgrade will be the following:
a) Playback settings, especially the “primary format”.
b) AJA Device Control Settings will be reset to their defaults. Double check them and make sure that they are still set where you need them
c) Premere Pro Audio Device: This will be reset to its Premiere Pro default of “Windows Audio Device”. Reset it to the XENA ASIO.

3)I highly recommend that if you have multiple XENA seats in the same facility that you run the same XENA software version on all systems any given time. So if you upgrade one, just spend the extra 5 minutes on each system and upgrade them all.

AJA XENA Support