[Tim Kolb]

any time you preview render, the H.264 will have to be transcoded to whatever render format you’ve specified…that might take some time.

If you principally edit DV and the H264 stuff is infrequent, I’d continue to edit in DV.

If the sequence is interlace, whatever comes in is forced into the sequence’s settings.

If you’re a purist (I tend to waffle between an advocate of the technical arts and “get it done and out of here”…), you might consider setting up an uncompressed timeline in the pixel size you need. You can do 720×480 .9 PAR uncompressed if you want to, then all the video is simply read for what it is without the sequence attempting to convert it. On a strong enough machine, you may not have to render before previewing.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

Since you can make sequences of any settings you want within any given PPro project, sequence settings aren’t changeable once you’ve created them.

Just make a new sequence and set it the way you want it, and copy-paste the material from the edited timeline you have into the new sequence.

You should be set to go.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

[dano motley] “Nano works great but, is way overpriced.”

It’s a matter of what you value I suppose.

HDSDI connections and scalable data rates that go far above anything that HDV, or even standard XDcam can record adds value…and also adds cost.

I’ve used FireStore products and I have to say that they’ve all performed as advertised. I have never lost any data or had a remarkable issue. However, FireStore products are designed for doing straight data transfer…HDV is received in the FW pipe and written to the harddrive (and it works just like they say it does…I’m not bashing Focus Enhancements here)

The challenge is that moving up the acquisition format ladder requires something that has higher cost connectivity and also higher quality video codecs…Convergent Design has taken these Flash recorders and created a unit that takes in “digital baseband” (HDSDI-uncompressed as far as the system is concerned) and encodes on the fly…in the box. It’s simply a more complex process and the unit itself has to contain the processing power to do it.

So…keep in mind that there is a difference between “overpriced” and “out of my price range”. Nothing wrong with either one, but mixing them up can send the wrong message.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

You’ve got your specifications mixing together….

1280×720 is progressive HD, square pixels…and is 720 pixels vertically

DV…which is 720 pixels horizontally…720×480. DV is never square pixel. 4:3 picture aspect has a pixel aspect of .9 and 16:9 picture aspect has a pixel aspect of 1.2 (widescreen simply takes the pixels and makes them wider)

If you would like to use a 1280×720 framesize in PPro 2.0, you’d want to make a custom project and set the framesize to 1280×720 progressive uncompressed and set the edit mode to “desktop”.

Otherwise, Maya must be able to output non-square pixels right? Much lesser 3D programs can render in non-square pixels…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

Are you logged on to the machine as the administrator?

I’ve seen instances of software requiring a user to be the administrator to modify the settings necessary to store the serial number permanently…when this happens, the behavior is usually exactly what you’re describing.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

[Neil Sadwelkar] “10 sec exports work fine you say. I think this is because of the 2 GB or 4 GB limit to file size on Windows FAT32 drives.”

If that were true, the file wouldn’t transfer onto the PC drive at all. If you’re using MacDrive on the PC side, you can use a Mac-formtted drive without issue.

I’ve played 720p30 ProRes files that were 90 minutes long and 80+ GBs in size on a PC without issue, so I’d have trouble believing that it’s some sort of QT limitation/problem.

Can you describe what you’re doing in a very detailed way? (file exported from what, format, framerate, harddrive used for transfer, format of harddrive-Mac/PC…are you using MacDrive?, etc, etc.)

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

Well…yes, I get that, but what is the difference between me “riding” on the back, facing the rear and shooting and the guy who is steering, shifting, braking etc…?

We’re both “riding” no? …or am I “passengering”?

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

[Todd Terry] “I’ve seen footage taken from a motorcycle where a rear-passenger was shooting, but sitting backwards on the bike. I’ve always been intrigued by that, but afraid to try it. Looks a bit dangerous.”

I’m scheduled to reunite with my favorite bike driver for just such a shoot later this month. I’ve shot multiple marathons for ESPN this way…and that was with massive betacams. My EX1 should make the whole thing much easier.

If you’re not afraid of bikes and have a driver you can trust, it doesn’t feel all that dangerous.

We did have an incident where a car pulled out in front of us (illegally) onto the marathon course and we had to make an emergency stop…which wouldn’t have been a big deal, but I had gone to semi standing in the passenger pegs to absorb some of the rough road. Bob knew what was behind him, kept it steady and upright and when we stopped we looked like some sort of acrobat act with me arched backwards over his back, holding onto the lense on the betacam hanging down in front of him. We re-organized and continued on.

I’ll be on the California speedway this time out…that should make it interesting. Anybody know of someone with a well-maintained bike on the order of an 84 GoldWing (the side bags need to come off) or smething with a short sissy bar (videographer retainment bracket) on the back who wants to rent it for a couple days?

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

Flash is being expanded all the time of course…but you can go to any number of sites on the internet and interact with Flash files.

Flash can have a video essence (like a television show) and it can have a layer that enables “hotsposts”. Advertisers buy placement in a show and allow a button to float over their product so viewers can take a pointing device and click on it…or they do it very starightforwardly on their dedicated ad…as television becomes more interactive (which it will have to to compete with the internet…hulu anyone?), it will need something more compelling that a phone number super on QVC.

Flash is already being implemented by playout server manufacturers…when the consumer device end of the market catches up and supplies the means to input from the viewer end, we’ll be bombarded with opportunities to interact with potential vendors, even during the content portion of our favorite TV show.

It’ll be…um…great…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

OK…well first off, the problem with proper playback of three cameras simultaneously on your laptop had more to do with your USB harddrive than anything else. USB doesn’t have the bandwidth to feed that much data. It’s fairly likely that your Targa system simply had faster, likely RAID-configured harddrives. Targa vs. Laptop has nothing to do with it. Workstation fast harddrives vs Laptop with external portable slow harddrive is your situation.

CineForm (which works with AJA hardware, not Matrox, which has their own codecs) will transcode your video to a very good format for editing, but if the harddrive can’t move the bits, you’ll still experience speed issues… neither Decklink or Xena speed this process up. You’ll need large, fast harddrives to feed multiple video streams simultaneously.

HDMI is not a data display format…it’s consumer video. The frame size is television…1920×1080.

Do keep in mind that CS4 is a heavy load…it will take some power to run it. I’ve been using it on a Dell M90 (which was fast 2 years ago…) and it works, but it takes more to run CS4 than it did CS3, just as it took more to run CS3 than CS2…

As far as advice…it’s tough to be decisive as all these solutiona have their place. I can say that I use AJA hardware and have found it to be solid and tight…my for-broadcast work is spot-on for diagnostics…

CineForm definitely helps MPEG footage (XDcam, EXcam, HDV, AVCHD) footage run better on lesser processors. I used to use it on a laptop back when Premiere 6.5 was current with a single FW drive and I could get two streams with effects and I think most modern netbooks are more powerful than that machine was…

I’m sure there are more on this forum who could fill you in on the other solutions available as well…at least considering all your options would be a good idea.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,