[Tom Matthies]

Are you sure that your main audio isn’t somehow tied into your SAP audio at the transmitter?

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[Tom Matthies]

If the customer is required to do something specific to get the pillows, make sure and mention that in the disclaimer. Is there a time limit or a numerical limit to the giveaways? Is there a certain $$$ value that needs to be met? A certain model number? Be specific. You can always add the universal “See dealer for details” at the end of the disclaimer. When in doubt, consult an attorney

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[Tom Matthies]

Most of the time the distributors simply take the HD feed from the station or cable provider and downconvert and centercut it for the SD world. There are usually not two different versions of the transmission. Most if not all broadcast stations transmit only HD signals. It’s what happens after that signal is received that the mess begins. Our station has a direct fiber connection to the local cable provider and the two satellite distributors. We send them a 1080i signal all of the time. It’s at that point that they will convert the signals to a centercut version for their SD tiers. Directv, Dish, and most cable headends will do this for SD. In addition, there are many different receivers in people’s homes. Those with converter boxes will have a choice between letter box and center cut formats. It all depends on their preferences. Many viewers will take a 4×3 feed and stretch it out to 16×9 and not even notice the resulting distortion.
At least for the foreseeable future, we will all still need to protect the 4×3 aspect ratio by keeping all the important stuff inside of 4×3 safe. Eventually, this may die out as SD sets die out and are replaced by wide screen TVs. Protecting 4×3 is still a necessary evil for now.

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[Tom Matthies]

We have single mode fiber camera cables that will carry 4 channels of audio, HD video, and tally/CCU data down a single fiber. Not sure if more than one fiber is necessary. Maybe it depends on your installation and encoder/decoder combination.

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[Tom Matthies]

Ran Disk Warrior but it didn’t fix the problem. Interestingly, if I boot from my backup drive that I updated just before running Disk Warrior, the icons look/work fine. This is an incremental backup made with CCC so I’m assuming that something is possibly corrupt with the OS and not the Droplets themselves. Short of reinstalling the OS, is there any way to isolate and fix the problems? If I create a new Droplet, it shows on the desktop just fine.

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[Tom Matthies]

I do the same thing and clone my system drive regularly using CCC and store it on a shelf. That way, if I need to, I can just pop the backup drive into the computer, reboot and I’m up and running in minutes. I’ve only lost a system drive once, but it saved the day. I shoot on P2 so I archive all of my contents folders on a separate drive and use that drive to Log and Transfer files for the actual project. I’ll end up with ProRes Quicktime movies for the edit on my RAID and the original contents info stored safely away on the shelf as well. If I need to reopen a project and I don’t have the Quicktime movies available, all I need to do is drop the archive drive into the reader, Log & Transfer the files and then just relink from the original project. Very quick and easy.
I have a low tech method for cataloging the files on the P2 backups. Once the drive is full, I open the drive up on the desktop to see all the files on it and then simply do a screen capture of the desktop. I keep that .tiff file in a folder on my desktop referencing the contents on all my archive drives for quick search if I need to find a file. I also print out the screen grabs and keep those folded up with the individual hard drives on the shelf.
I usually try to simply build the purchase of an archive hard drive into each larger project as part of the expense. Most clients are OK with that. If it’s a smaller project, I just have a drive that I add the files to in a mix ‘n match fashion. Once it’s reasonable full, it goes onto the shelf with the other drives. Those drives are simply looked at as a cost of doing business. Archive drives are very cheap insurance.

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[Tom Matthies]

AJA Gen-10. Normal and Tri-sync and fairly cheap to boot.

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[Tom Matthies]

You can also make a sequence using just Quicktime Pro if the frames are numbered on order. Just point it to the first frame in the sequence, tell it what format to make and go. Very simple and easy.

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[Tom Matthies]

What is the audio sample rate and bit-depth of the Red clips?

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[Tom Matthies]

I used to have this problem with a few Boris effects before upgrading my video card.One thing to try as a work around is to render your timeline as 8-bit rather than 10-bit. It usually worked for me.

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