[Tom Matthies]

Sorry Bob
I already tried that. I noticed that I could not monitor audio while capturing HDSDI from the deck. Even with Final Cut not running and my HD source going into the Kona, I still can’t hear audio. The Kona 3 control panel was running and avtive. I then fired up Final Cut and pulled up an old HD project and it’s the same story. No analog audio.
All other inputs and outputs seem to be working so I don’t think it’s the connector to the card on the back of the G5. And, yes, the card is connected to the K3 breakout box.
Weird…and it always seems to happen just before quiting time on a Friday night after a 56 hour week.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Two things. Actually three. Make sure that under the Sequence>Render All pull-down menu that you have check marks next to all the items that you want to render. When in doubt, check them all and see if it allows you to render your time line. Item two; Option R will render everything in your timeline without having to select the clips first. And three; unless you are layering a lot of effects you shouldn’t be getting the blue render screen at all. Check what you have your RT effects set to. Try Dynamic & Unlimited just for grins and see what happens. Also, make sure that your Sequence settings match those of your source material. Final Cut works differently than Avid. Avid generally converts all it’s incoming media to a single codec, depending on which Avid model you use. Final Cut does not. If you sequence settings match those of your source video, you shouldn’t have to render at all…unless you are layering several layers together.
I too w am an old Avid guy going back to the early 90’s in Chicago. Final Cut is not Avid and will take some “unlearning” to master but I prefer it over Avids these days. We are still running a pair of Symphonys that I still edit on from time to time, but for shear speed of getting things done, you can’t beat FCP in my opinion. Stick with it. It will be worth it.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

As for the take up reel. Find a place that had a Sony BVH-3000 or BVH-3100 vtr. They came with take up reels that will hold at least two hours of tape. Maybe you can borrow it? I doubt that they are in heavy use these days.

For the tape itself contact these guys.

https://dcvideo.com/

I doubt that they will have a SECAM deck, but they might know of somewhere that does.
Say “Hi” to David for me.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Yea, I remember when I got into this field back in the 70’s. I was working at a local TV station while going to college. Great on the job training. I was all of 18 years old at the time and didn’t know much about anything. Well, I’m on the job there, learning everything I can get into and I’m taken aback by the engineering staff at the station. I think that the average age there for engineers was about 120 years. Or, at least it seemed that way. Keep in mind that this was in the days where there were ash trays next to every Quad machine and in master control. I think that most of the engineers were chain smokers. As I was trying to learn stuff, I was constantly bombarded with the “Well, back in the old days…” stories. I was told about how they used to only have two black & white studio cameras and how they did live commercials during the news cast and had live booth announcers and on and on. Well, 30+ years later I find myself doing the same thing. We have a couple of editors on staff here that have never cut on any system other than non linear. They have never edited tape before. I relate what it was like back in the days of sync rolling A-roll and B-roll tapes and doing live dissolves through a switcher to a third machine. Stories of having to make a B-roll layoff reel back in the CMX days to do a dissolve since both of the source scenes were on the same tape. The day we got out first Ampex D2 deck that could do pre-read edits. It was magic! The youngsters look at me like I’m relating a story about how we went out and hunted dinosaurs for food while living in caves and grunti9ng for communication.
While I think that I actually do a pretty good job at staying current on today’s technology, I do miss the “good old days” as well. Production today is just too easy to do. I’m constantly amused at the posts on the COW that seek out that magical Plug-In that does some effect that they sat on a cable show over the weekend. “Does anyone know what Plug-In was used for this effect?” they will ask, not realizing that “that effect” was probably the result of many hours of shooting, editing and compositing in a variety of programs. Many hours of very complex and painstaking work is boiled down, in their minds, ro some plug0in that will do all of this automatically. I think that all the current technology is great. I use a variety of hardware/software everyday and it’s great. But I think that there is still getting to be a decided lack of basic knowledge in this business. 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. Last week I got in a spot from a national car manufacturer, on BetaSP, that we needed to add a local tag onto. The audio levels on the Beta were so hot that it pinned the meters on the high end. Obviously, the audio was produced at digital levels for production but it wasn’t accounted for when making an analog copy of the spot. This not only made it through the production house (or boutique) that edited the original spot but also through the dub house that made the copies. Hello!! This is basic stuff here, folks. The basics still count and are necessary. Grrr…
Time to get off my soapbox and back to work.
Us old timers don’t just have funny stories to relate about the business. There ate times when we do actually know some important stuff about what were doing.
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.
OK, calm down and get back to work now…
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

I’m sorry…
You’re right. I need help. It drives me up the wall to see that damn indicator going up into the (formally) forbidden zone. It’s a disease all right. It’s called “Old Timers Disease” and I have it.It comes from breathing too much head cleaner in my younger days I guess.
You’re right. I have the UVW-1800 in the home edit room. I guess it’s all relative. I have to remember that these spots are going to TV stations in my local market where the operators loading my spots onto their servers have most likely never even heard of SC/H phase let alone understanding it. I am amazed today at the apparent lack of even the most basic training in the art of measuring a signal correctly. Everything is either automated or it’s simply ignored.
Actually Bob, I’m going to keep my scopes and even check things like SC/H phase, quadrature, and even dream of getting one of those new Tek scopes that will display the lightning patterns and be able to check gamut errors.
Sigh…good times. Good times…
I’m going to go tweak my Quad machines now….
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

I too like to use the option-drag method of adding transitions and have had the same thing happen to me. I like to option drag audio transitions a lot for blending nat sound clips under the video. I usually keep a few “standard” lengths of the audio transition in my favorites folder. I’ve had instances where, after dragging the effect from the favorites folder onto a track and then using that same effect by option dragging it from one spot in the time to another, the duration of the transition will change, usually to a single frame duration. Once the original favorites effect gets “corrupted” in this manner, all subsequent uses of the effect will result in the same problem. I don’t know why or how the favorite is getting corrupted, but a simple workaround is to just delete it(the favorite) and make a new transition and drag it back in the the favorites folder. It will then work normally when option-dragging it later. I’ve had it happen a few times but haven’t been able to reproduce what causes it to go bad. I’ve just learned to work around it. :\
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Sony is known to kind of do things “there way” at times.
Focus Enhancements has a product that is designed to convert one kind of file to another in the video world. You might want to take a look at:

https://www.focusinfo.com/solutions/catalog.asp?id=213

I haven’t used this product but it might do what you need to convert your files.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

For what it’s worth, we have been shooting on Digibets for the last 8 years or so. We currently have and use both a model 700 and a 709 that have been very reliable and are true workhorse cameras.Recently, in answer to the HD demand we have been renting an HDCam out of Chicago when needed. Finally, we decided to buy our own HD camera. While the 950 is one heck of a good camera, it’s also a little pricey for our company. We decided to go with a Sony XDHDCam instead. Even though is is an mpeg based camera, we thought it looked pretty good and would work for what we need it to do. It also has the added advantage of a variety of frame rates for shooting and includes both over and under cranking abilities.
With some reluctance, I finally convinced out shooters to not just “save” the XDCam for HD projects but to also use it for SD projects as well. We simply shoot everything in HD now and downconverto to SD when needed. The work flow works well. The files can be imported directly into the Final Cut system for HD and brought into the legacy Avid Symphonys via SDI in standard definition. To the Avids, the deck works and looks just like a vtr and capture is down the same as with tape. It’s been very painless for the editors so far and we’ve had no problems at all.
As for archiving, we still master to Digibeta, but I suppose that we could simply lay the finished “master” back onto one of the XDCam disks as well. As for storage, the discs take up much less space than Digibeta tapes and actually cost less as well.
As for HD XDCam’s “legs”…who knows for sure. Sony has a pretty big investment in the format. I don’t think that it’s going to disappear in the near future, but one never knows in this business.
The HD XDCam format does what we need it to do today and it’s working well for us and is reasonably priced to boot. Is it the same as the HDCam? Nope. Does it cost 100K? Nope. Does it do what we need it to do? Yep. The Digibeta cameras are being used less these days and the XD camera is being used for both HD and SD projects. Everyone, including the clients, is accepting it and it just works. I guess that it’s all one can expect in such a dynamic and fluid business as this one.
I think that once you got used to the format and especially the camera itself, you won’t be disappointed.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Try increasing your audio track size. I don’t believe that the audio waveforms will show up when the tracks are at their smallest settings.Try the next larger setting and see if that does it.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Well, in a short and very unscientific look at the stills (while taking a short lunch break from editing and wolfing down a noodle bowl) it would seem that the Sony has the edge in resolution both horizontally and vertically. I can still see details in the wedge charts on the Sony after the Panny tops out. Noise levels at high gain seem to go to the Sony as well. Just viewing the stills at +12db shows a fair amount of noise on the Panny and lesser amounts on the Sony. I don’t have the specs. for the Panny in front of me, but the Sony looks to be a bit more sensitive at zero gain as well.
The Sony does, however, show the typical “clinical” look for colorimetery…a bit on the neutral/blue side for my tastes. The Panny has a definite warmer overall look. Maybe a bit too much for me, actually. I still shoot every now and then with my old Panasonic WV-565 Betacam SP and it has a very similar look. Very Ikegami-like. Sony’s factory settings always looked a little cold to me. I have setup all of my Sony cameras to give them a little warmer look, mostly by changing the mid gamma settings a bit and tinkering with the detail thresholds/amounts to achieve a little warmer & friendlier look.
All in all, the Sony looks pretty good and I look forward to putting it through the paces soon while demoing the camera. We will be facing it off directly with an HVX-200 as well. I’ll try to see if I can get similar results to your tests.
Thanks again and good timing.
Tom