Tom Brooks
Forum Replies Created
-
This is all good info, argument and humor.
The problem with my FCP system was a “hit or miss” on renders. Sometimes they’d render, sometimes I’d get “A file of that name already exists,” or “Unknown File.” The disk was my RAID-5 which is connected to a Highpoint 2322 controller card. I ran Apple Disk Utility on it and it errored something about “broken keys.” Highpoint was no direct help, but they said many of their customers report that Disk Warrior can be used with success. One pass with DW eliminated the problem.At this same time I was building a second system disk in the G5 with a whole new install of Leopard and all my apps. Before DW, the system could not mount the RAID except in Read-Only mode. That problem was also fixed by the DiskWarrior pass.
Here’s what I’ve learned so far:
1. It’s OK to verify the RAID in Disk Utility to point out problems.
2. It’s OK to use DiskWarrior on this type of Highpoint RAID Mac OS Extended volume.
3. It might take more than one pass of DW to fix all problems.There’s more to do as soon as I get time. I’ll read the DW manual more carefully, I’ll verify again in Disk Utility and run DW again (I can always cancel out if no problems are found). I can also go over the DiskWarrior report to try to understand what went wrong with the disk in the first place.
I built the RAID myself and this shows exactly why you’re twisting in the wind with a DIY system when troubles hit. It’d be safer to go with a complete system from one vendor, or at least a RAID controller from a company that knows video and really supports the product. On the other hand, it’s always a learning experience.
Final Cut Pro 6.0.4, Mac OS-X 10.4.11, Quicktime 7.5, After Effects 6.5 Pro, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V5.1, 4.5GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT 256MB, G-RAID 2x1TB FW800, 6TB RAID-5 (Enhance E8-ML, Highpoint 2322), Panasonic HVX-200P P2.
-
Base hit! Thank you David. DiskWarrior is good. By the way, I’m one of those people who answers mostly basic questions on this site and happy to do it.
-
Well, I’m glad nobody had any bogus answers for my problem. Because it’s fixed with little trouble. I purchased DiskWarrior and ran it on my RAID. The intermittent failure to render is gone. Also, the RAID now appears on my Leopard-booted system as it should. Previously, the Leopard system could not mount the disk except in read-only mode. This means I can proceed with conversion to Leopard.
Apparently, something was wrong with the Mac OS Extended volume’s directory structure and permissions on the Highpoint RAID. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, but it looks all good at this point. Thank you Alsoft for your excellent product, DiskWarrior4. Also to Rafael for consistently recommending the product.
-Tom
-
Could be a lot of factors relating to settings that the two encoder systems place in the files. Check the movie inspector for both movies and see what else you can find that differs. VBR encoding could allow certain sections to have a very high data rate, causing the laptops to skip frames. The movie inspector in QT Pro will give you the encoded pixel dimension as well as the size it will scale to in order to play the movie on a square pixel display. The final movie should be encoded 1280×720 with square pixels.
-
Try searching QT Player Help on “encoded pixels.” Your answer is in properly setting the viewing aperture of the player so that you can see the movie in the form that you need.
-
Yeah, the two DVs will play in each others’ timelines. Hmm, the Animation should look better, but there should be at least a noticeable difference between DV25 and either DV50 or UC 8-bit. I’d expect some banding in all, including Animation, since it’s 8-bit. Perhaps you should render your AE out as DV50 so that it does not require render in the timeline. Is that a possibility?
-
Sure. Just make a copy of your sequence, open the copy (or work on the original sequence if you like) and change the sequence settings. Change the compressor from DV/DVCPRO to DV50 or uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2. Render to view in RT. Should help your AE a lot. DV50 seems to be a good codec for this. David Roth Weiss has written very succinctly on this method on the Cow.
-
[David Rowan] “When I play these files I cant tell them apart. So why is the one file so much smaller? And, if its so much smaller why does it look just as good?”
The H.264 encoder has controls for quality and data rate. The two export methods you used influence those controls differently. Often, the goal in encoding is to get the smallest data rate that still achieves adequate visual quality. The smaller of your exports is going toward that ideal. The larger of the two files is obviously wasting bandwidth for no gain in visual quality. Perhaps you can go smaller still with good results.
I like to compress to delivery codecs in Compressor or Squeeze because I can get better control over all the idividual settings of the encoder.
-
My suspicion is that the FireWire jack on the camera is toast. When you plug a camera with a small firewire jack into a computer with a large fw jack, there can be a big pulse of current which can fry one or both interfaces. You should always have the camera turned off when you plug it in.
Final Cut Pro 6.0.4, Mac OS-X 10.4.11, Quicktime 7.5, After Effects 6.5 Pro, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V5.1, 4.5GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT 256MB, G-RAID 2x1TB FW800, 6TB RAID-5 (Enhance E8-ML, Highpoint 2322), Panasonic HVX-200P P2.
-
You should be able to capture using the correct easy setup as Kevin suggests. After your NTSC footage is captured you will need to convert it to PAL in order for it to work properly in the PAL timeline. Or convert the PAL to NTSC if you’re working in an NTSC timeline. You’ll need something like Nattress Standards Converter.