[Tod Hopkins]

Oops. 88Mbps is HQ. Regular is lower at 59Mbps.

Tod Hopkins
Hillmann & Carr Inc.
todhopkins-at-hillmanncarr.com

[Tod Hopkins]

ProRes does have a lower “target” rate (88mbps) than DVCProHD at 100Mbps. Whether that’s enough to justify conversion…

If you truly want off-line, go DV25. Reconform later.

Cheers,
tod

Tod Hopkins
Hillmann & Carr Inc.
todhopkins-at-hillmanncarr.com

[Tod Hopkins]

Yes, it will if the monitor has been told to display the signal as 16:9. Remember that a monitor can’t actually tell if the signal is meant to by displayed 4:3 or 16:9. You have to tell it (assuming the monitor can do both). There is no “flag” or marker in the video itself. The change from 4:3 to 16:9 happens only at the display. The question is whether the image in the signal is meant to be displayed as is, or to be stretched out to 16:9.

This gets a bit trickier with file-based playback, dvd, or dtv broadcast because these formats do have a variety of flags and parameters that control playback, but a simple NTSC analog video signal only comes in one form.

Cheers,
tod

P.S. One warning. I’m not as familiar with PAL as I am NTSC. I believe the two are the same in this particular regard, but I might be wrong.

Tod Hopkins
Hillmann & Carr Inc.
todhopkins-at-hillmanncarr.com

[Tod Hopkins]

It sooo depends on what you want to do, but…

Digital Juice SFX are a nice deal.
The new Thermaltake BlacX for hard drive backups is great. Make sure you get the right connections for you. Even cheaper the SYBA Creative I/O at Newegg is fabulous. And if you’re gonna go that way, buy the drives while you have the money unless you can budget them like tape.
Max your RAM. Seriously. Just Max it out. Don’t upgrade the rest.
Connect systems directly via Gigabit switches if they are not already.
Lynda.com subscription.
Upgrade your speakers. Again, they are rarely ever good enough.
Decent, comfortable headphones.
Decent mic for scratch tracks.
Mackie mixer to connect it all. Don’t forget the cables.
Blu-ray burner with Toast. Buffalo just intro’d a much cheaper external.
DVD set top recorder for quick outputs if you don’t have one.
Custom FCP keyboard if you don’t have one.
Better mouse. Wireless, optical, good mousepad.
Diskwarrior.

Cheers,
tod

[Tod Hopkins]

[Rajarshi Basu] “Can somebody please help me put with this ? Whats a 16:9 letterbox ?”

A mistake? 😉

Possibly. Ask. It’s either a mistake or the spec does not presume that the original is 16:9.

For instance, a feature film. Feature films are generally closer to 2:1 and may be letterboxed even in a 16:9 raster. So a feature film might be delivered in those three croppings. Since you are cutting a full 16×9 raster, the third deliverable would simply be not applicable.

In either case, don’t be shy about asking. Whether it’s your ignorance or their mistake, it’s always better to ask the question than to do it wrong.

Tod

Tod Hopkins
Hillmann & Carr Inc.
todhopkins-at-hillmanncarr.com

[Tod Hopkins]

This last case is 1080i (actually psf) ProRes422 HQ. The other cases may have been ProRes SD or DV but probably not from avi. Possible though.

Odd that out of about 4 hours of identically digitized material, only one 30sec clip is prompting the warning.