[Tom Carlson]

I believe I may have figured it out. By making the color “transparent” in the export dialogue, I seemed to have eliminated the extra pixels. Don’t really know enough about the program to know why it would extend beyond the artboard with the color set to white or black, but at least I have it working now.

Tom

[Tom Carlson]

Yes, of course, and I usually have 24 bit 96K 5.1 source material to work with. However, in this case, my source material is 44.1K 24 bit on about 72 tracks, so my mix downs will be six 5.1 44.1K wave files. Rather than SRC-ing them to 48K, I think what I will do is author these to DVD-A, so that I can have a lossless compression scheme (MLP) and still keep the multitrack format and not have to upsample. Luckily, I don’t have too many like this, so I won’t have to revert to a moribund or dead format too often.

Tom

[Tom Carlson]

Thanks, Eric, that’s the information I was looking for. The Wikipedia chart confirms that 44.1K is not part of the Blu-ray spec. I had already contacted both DTS and NetBlender, but was hoping to get a faster answer here (which I did!)

These are “vanity pressings” that I do for composers I work with. They all have DVD-A’s at this point on their players, because most of them have UDP’s. So that’s the way I’ll go for the few 44.1K projects that I have.

Tom

[Tom Carlson]

Thanks Will and Ramona for the responses,

I am very familiar with pulling down picture and track by .1%. We do this all of the time on the dubbing stage.

The problem is, we are running the scoring stage at 100% 24 fps and everything is running at that speed. The composer is bringing in a lot of material using Logic, which does not function at pulldown sampling frequencies. So the only way to deal with this in standard definition is to run Virtual VTR and output through the DVI port to a computer-type or HD monitor, or run a Canopus box (poor quality). The third alternative, and one that we ended up using on our last scoring session, was to get our hands on HD material. We played that out of a Pixus at HD. Simultaneously, we used an Aja convertor box to down-rez to standard definition for the NTSC monitors on the stage. With a multisync monitor NTSC, everything played beautifully and in sync at 100%.

We can play the 24 fps SD files at 23.98 and uprez to HD, but that doesn’t take care of the NTSC monitors and also does not run at the correct speed. What would be ideal for situations where we just have SD monitors, would be to have a setting in the Kona that would allow us to output from a 24 fps SD QT file to NTSC. Period. I know it’s very non-standard, but that would be simplest.

Thanks to all that have “given this a think.”

Tom Carlson

[Tom Carlson]

Output QT Ref files and conform them in CT to be 23.98- it will take but a few seconds – then they will playback with pulldown added for NTSC.

Hi Gary,

So, if I conform them to 23.98 in Cinema Tools, won’t that make them play too slowly if everything else on the stage is referenced to 24 fps? To get simultaneous output of HD and SD, I’ll need to set the Kona 3 to 23.98, which was causing both the HD and SD to play too slowly when we tried that before. Does Cinema Tools actually do something to the files so that they will play in sync, once conformed to 23.98 and played with the 23.98 Kona 3 setting? All of the pre-records are still playing at 24 fps. I realize I may be asking for the impossible here.

Tom

[Tom Carlson]

Thanks Gary. I am using this on a scoring stage, and our composer is working at 24 fps throughout his process to match the speed of the Avid files we get from editorial. At 24 fps, it’s easy to pass material back and forth without having to resort to OMF’s or do speed conversions. That way, everyone is running at 100% speed. The feeling is that it would be pretty disruptive to change to a pulldown rate on the stage, so we will be working at 24 fps for now. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to do this for a while now. On the last couple of pictures, we’ve only had Avid SD 24 fps picture and used the output from the computer DVI and a little $20 box from apple that converts DVI to NTSC. Doesn’t look great, but at least it got us through in sync. The Mojo SDI is supposed to be able to take 24 fps files and play them back to an NTSC monitor in sync, but I haven’t seen what the quality is like yet. They must be dropping frames to do this.

Hmmm. I wonder if I used a program like Combustion or AE and did a speed bump up to 24.024, then played the SD files back with a downconversion to 29.97 fps on a separate system…Of course, the easiest solution would be to get rid of the SD monitors on the stage and just play everything at HD 24 fps. And the search continues…

Tom Carlson

[Tom Carlson]

Thanks, Michael. Actually, the Kona 3 creates a 29.97 SD output if you set the main engine to HD 23.98 and downconvert. It’s very slick and allows you to view on both an HD monitor and an SD NTSC monitor simultaneously. The problem is that we can’t set the engine to HD 24 fps and downconvert in the same way to get a NTSC output. The Kona won’t allow it. So, since I’ve set the Kona 3 main engine to 1080 psf 23.98 and the stage is running at 24 fps, there is a slight speed differential. We lock in the right spot and chase, but over time there is a .1% drift (about 2 frames a minute). That’s the usual pulldown differential. For now, I think I’ll need to run a second system for SD, and leave the Kona to play the HD at 24 fps, unless I can figure out how to fix this. Maybe a Canopus Box or a Mojo SDI.

Any other thoughts?

Tom