[Tim Ward]

I kinda feel stupid or something. I’m not a newbie to television/video production, and even though I know the rules of the game, I am not yet an experienced player in HD, and I’m not ashamed to admit my ignorance. Maybe it’s something simple – maybe not. Thanks for any suggestions you guys offer.

I’m going to backup/wipe/rebuild the array and update the Atto firmware, and see where that takes me.

tim

[Tim Ward]

[Shane Ross] “Well geeze…look at the graph! It really dips down to WELL BELOW 150…in a huge group. Somethings up with your Raid.”

Yeah I thought about that too. That happened on a couple of the tests I did. I’ve thought about wiping it and re-building it from scratch, because I’ve lost about 100MB/s on it, and it’s only 20% full. I know I’m gonna lose some as it fills, but that seems a little much.

tim

[Tim Ward]

[Jerry Hofmann] “Post the exact versions of FCP, OS, and QuickTime you’re running. Might be something there for sure. Certain combos of software might give you problems especially if the install isn’t totally clean.”

It’s in the top post.

[Jerry Hofmann] “I’d suspect that it’s video isn’t locked or all that proper as it were… but the MXF’s you’ve imported should work fine.”

That’s one of my suspicions.

Thanks Jerry.

tim

[Tim Ward]

[Jerry Hofmann] “You have to import the MXF’s as QT’s with FCP’s Log and Transfer window to get them to play OK…”

I used the File > Import > Panasonic P2… way. Is that not correct?

[Jerry Hofmann] “I’m unfamiliar with a DTV tuner, so not sure what’s happening there…?”

Perhaps the tuner may be the problem there. I’m using analog HD, with a non-genlocked source? But I’ve read where guys are using Xboxes with no problems.

Another thing I just tried was pulling up some clips I had upconverted for a previous project at 1080i29.97 10-bit, and with 158 MB/s (higher than the 720p59.94) data rates, they play fine. Is frame rate the issue? Would the 142.5 MB/s rate of the 720p59.94 be 285 MB/s (double) in comparison to 29.97? And if so, I still should have the headroom to play that data rate.

tim

[Tim Ward]

[Tom Matthies] “The kids we are seeing these days might know how to edit on Final Cut or author a DVD in Studio Pro, but they cant read a waveform monitor, don’t know what a gamut error is, know nothing about blanking or even the difference between 0db audio in the analog world and 0dbfs in the digital world.”
[Tom Matthies]“Learn the basics and you will make your job much easier on yourselves in the long run. And you will make everyone elses live much easier as well.”

This is SO true, and is evidenced by the heaps of commercials and programming (primarily local) that are technically horrible! Safe areas, audio levels/balance, stereo/split mono, bad black levels, nice bleeding-red graphics, “you mean there’s a rule of thirds?”, etc…those are some of the negative effects of the “DV revolution”. Not that the DV revolution is bad; it’s “revolutionized” the industry for the better. It just irks me to no end how the ignorance grows!

I’m calm now.

tim

[Tim Ward]

Kind of. I’m still learning the ins and outs of Squeeze and FLVs myself, but I do know that you should set it to your source resolution, select the proper aspect ratio, and use a 1:1 frame rate, using the On2 VP6 codec.

Beyond that, I don’t feel comfortable telling any more than that, but maybe some of the pros here will jump in.

tim

[Tim Ward]

No. Every time you go from one format to another, you’re re-compressing. Sometimes you won’t lose any perceptible quality (like going DV25 to ProRes422), but you’re still re-arranging pixels.

You CAN go from .mp4 to .m4v without losing quality, because you don’t re-compress, you just change the file extension, but it’s still MPEG-4 video.

tim

[Tim Ward]

As far as I know, H.264 is not used for delivery.

I’m using h.264 to send material from the field because of the file size

Are you in a situation like a mobile/remote newsroom, or are you a content/commercial producer?

Check with the station for their delivery specifications. In recent years though, they have (in my experience) become very flexible with how content is delivered (that is, they have lowered their standards for money). I’d better stop there before I start to rant. Usually, they’ll ask for a “broadcast-quality” tape-based format. If you’re an independent producer, you should rent or buy a deck (borrow is best, of course), or use a production house/TV station to master out. I’d recommend against a file-based delivery, unless you can give them one that is compatible with their playback servers without recompression (if they have the ability to import it). Otherwise, a video in H.264 will be recompressed/transcoded for their server (or compressed/rendered for tape output), then recompressed again when it is encoded and multiplexed for their digital transmission. It won’t look so hot then.

If you’re in an ENG situation, you should really check with your news director, chief photog, and engineering about how best to send videos.

tim

[Tim Ward]

I found your post in the Broadcast Video forum, but figured I’d reply here since there aren’t any responses there.

I’d go with your gut instinct. You’re right about the broadcast recompression. It could go through as many as 2 additional compressions: ingest into playback server, digital transmission (over-the-air, digital satellite/cable). Not to mention that it’s an inter-frame codec. The questions are: Does it meet the broadcaster’s standards? Does it meet client approval?

If the project had my name on it somewhere, I’d be asking for those Uncompressed videos, because I believe in putting out as good of a product as I can that meets or exceeds broadcast practices. I say ‘practices,’ referring to what most of the networks (not local stations) call for/expect, because ‘broadcast standards’ doesn’t really mean much anymore. But that’s just me.

tim

[Tim Ward]

And how do you lay that off to tape appropriately?

You don’t. Eli works in motion graphics design. They work with digital files. The 720×540 is for the design portion. You can take anything designed at 720×540 and it will look like its SD Best, how ever you get it into the final medium.

And if you have something that comes off of tape to something like a PInnacle Thunder

You don’t put graphics to tape, you import.

I’m sure it simply stretches out the image to square just to compress it back to non square for a non square display (ie CRT TV).

CRTs don’t have pixel aspect ratios because they don’t have pixels. The PAR refers to the video, not the device. Example: HDTVs (CRT/plasma/LCD/DLP/etc) display both square and non-square video.

As far as DVDSP, I’ll have to look at that again. It evidently wasn’t a good choice as a software example. From what I’d seen and read, 720×540 was called for. I’ve been using the same graphics template, and haven’t had time to re-try the 720×486 0.9 PAR approach.

tim