Tpix
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Bob,
Thanks for your response…
I have no problem with the new apple Prores HD codec solution, and hopefully it will gain general acceptance quickly, because I love my old io…and the new io looks sweet…
but my clients want to hear the word uncompressed…and I always color correct in 10-bit.
I like to build my own systems because I am a cheap b*stard, so…
Here’s what I was thinking of doing:
-Two five bay Kano SATA port multiplier chassis, with WD 750 Gig Raid Edition drives, for ten drives in total striped as a single raid0 volume.
-I have two of the Sonnet 4 channel pci-e sata cards, so the the raid could be across two slots if necessary. I already have these cards so hopefully they are adequate and I won’t have to purchase something else.
-I would use one of the two available choices for an AJA HD card…haven’t decided yet.
My current machine that I want to use is actually a…
G5 Quad 2.5, {PCI E), 8 Gigs RAM, Internal 1.5Tb SATA RAID 0 system disk.
what do you think? Good enough for 1080i 10 bit?
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Highest quality vs what we can afford is the goal here. I visited this topic 18 months ago and we ended up sending it out for the big box Teranex. We were happy with that, but would like to know what has happened since because at the time Aja solution wasn’t great.
Show is 16×9 anamorphic.
Interviews shot in Digibeta, but quite a bit or archival material from 1945-1960. -
I will not invest in the new m100 if it does not work with fcp…sorry boris.
I can say for sure that my colleagues who still work with M100 would not either…sorry boris
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I have a raid on ebay that would certainly meet your requirements…and cost a lot less than 6kUSD, not sure what the import duty might be, but we can check the shipping from Toronto if you enquire at the auction site.
🙂
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Looking forward to hearing the results! 8k is a big improvement over 100k if it does a good job. Would love to hear about the K3 upconvert, if it is any better…
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I would…
Do all of the 720p material first as a separate online, and master it to tape at 720p (leave handles for the effects and leave blacks where the hdcam stuff will go).
Take 720p tape to a post house with Teranex and have them take it to HDCam for you. Then do a final online with your all HDCam material including the new material on HDCam converted by the teranex.
Teranex is in the $100k plus range and there are various levels – so I don’t think you want to buy one. It is a hardware and software package.
The price is about 600-800 hour at post houses for the Teranex and you should budget for 1.5 times your program time.
If you want to know more about Teranex they are on the web.
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No this is not just a shameless plug for my 3 month old LH & KBox bought to do one 1920x1080i60 HD project, and now available on ebay here with the full balance of the three year warranty transfering to the purchaser:
https://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7586490858&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&rd=1
🙂
I was faced with a one-off HD 1920x1080i60 for broadcast long form documentary that had footage shot on DV, DVCam, XDCam, HDV, and HDCam. It also had Betacam SP stock footage. The producers were very worried about how it would all look when put together, and had concerns with broadcaster acceptance.
Although there are some other differences, the choice of LH or Kona 2 came down to two issues:
1-The Kona 2 could do upconvert, but not analog component HD, which is the best picture you’re gonna get out of HDV originals.
2-The Kona LH could not do upconvert but could do analog component HD avoiding the “issue” of HDV altogether.The decision to go LH was made because:
1- all advice said that the Kona 2 upconvert gave varying results, sometimes great and sometimes perhaps not acceptable. It was suggested by all my research that way to go for a no compromise upconvert was the Teranex. Teranex was what we ultimately used for all of the SD material
2-the 12 bit analog component HD out of the camera kicked the crap out of the HDV out.Rendering an upconvert in FCP did not have good results. Oddly, also rendering a downconvert in FCP did not have good results. The hardware downconvert in the LH was great.
The Online…
The program was treated as two separate onlines. The first was done on all of the SD material, leaving blacks for the HD material and handles for effects on the SD material. This was colour (Canadian spelling eh!) corrected and conformed in SD 10 bit uncompressed, put to Digital Betacam via SDI, and sent for Teranex to be upconverted to HDCam.
The Teranex worked great. The settings are done shot by shot with the settings based on the technicians interpretation of the footage. The upconvert is then done in real time after all of the settings are done. Allow 1.5x against your total showtime for your booking. For now, Teranex seems to be the undisputed champ of upconvert.
Once this was done the HD part of the job moved forward. The HDCam material was digitized via SDI. The HDV material was digitized via component HD, and the Teranex material was recorded in from HDCam via SDI with the timecodes of the Teranex(ed) material already matching the master program timecodes, No muss no fuss.
It was surprising how well the HDV original performed when digitized analog component. Using this method the footage was indistinguishable from the 8 bit HDCam. Most of the material in this show was fairly static, so the HDV recording codec was not under much load motion-wise – so it wasn’t a definitive test. Anyways, the results I saw certainly wouldn’t have me jumping out to get an HDCam for $50k more over HDV for 1080i60 work.
Drives, 8 or 10 bit.
I did the colour correct, and prefer to work in 10 bit. I feel the difference is huge, especially if you have to blow anything up. Everything holds up better and the shading is much richer. Even though the delivery was 8 bit HDCam, I digitized all in 10 bit uncompressed 1080i60 for the colour correction and HD conform. If your show is going to be a film print one day, then I would definitely go 10 bit.
I was able to digitize and work fully in 10 bit uncompressed on an 8×400 drive SATA RAID with a dual 2.7 and 6Gb RAM. I used two Sonnet SATA controllers. The slot configuration was: LH nearest the video card, with the two SATA controllers in the next two slots. The slot farthest from the video card is the fastest one. The 8×400 drive RAID had 4 drives striped RAID0 across the two controllers. I had a second 4×400 RAID set up for bouncing renders. 12×400 in all It all worked great.
I was not, however, able to output 1080i60 10-bit Uncompressed on this RAID. It was not quite fast enough, and adding drives to the RAID did not help.
The RAID did handle an 8-bit 1080i60 uncompressed output which is all that was required for HDCam work anyway and everybody said “spectacular” when they saw the finished show.
If the output had been to HDCam SR, which is 10 bit, I would have had to have a faster RAID . I also could have sent the entire finished program (around 600 Gigs for 10 bit 1080i as a Quicktime movie on a hard drive for output.
My experience with this would make me hesitant to believe a 5 drive SATA RAID would work well for uncompressed HD (1920x1080i60). I don’t think any 7200rpm five drive raid could do it, no matter how much bandwidth on the host card(s).
If you don’t want any nasty suprises at the end, the best way to practically test a RAID is to fill up your drives with media, make a big sequence, turn of mirror video on desktop, and do a test print to tape at full quality. If FCP won’t do it the RAID isn’t fast enough.
In the end, this show worked out great, and everybody was very happy. It pretty much went as planned.
I think there’s some nuggets in there for you…and good luck with it!
PS. the only reason I’m selling the LH is because I have an io and won’t be seeing another HD project until perhaps late in the year…the LH worked great!
There’s also the RAID and a Final Touch SD available listed with the same seller.https://search.ebay.ca/_W0QQsassZliz8954QQhtZ-1
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I have both side by side, 23″ cinema display, and 24″ dell.
No problems at all with the dell, excellent value compared with the cinema display
Only noticeable difference is that as you move to the side, the dell contrast drops off quickly. Not good for large groups around the monitor at odd angles.
I would buy the dell again over the cinema display because of the better price and features.
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I was very glad to hear of Boris’ acquisition of M100. They are a solid software company and on all fronts that is where M100 is weakest.
I am skeptical that Optibase will develop any new hardware products for M100.
I know of three other editors in my area with 7.5 or below M100i machines. NONE of us are upgrading until the OMF is included or is a reasonable price. Boris, you need to buy the omf option from diaquest, or develop your own. You have thousands and thousands of customers with M100i machines…and the software is a dead end!
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Save yourself a lot of $$$…
You can put four ATA hard drives in any MDD G4 Mac (including the 1.42 dual which I have 1.6 terabytes in – 4x400Gig) without using a pci expansion card. The controller closest to the processer is ATA100, and the one near the front is ATA66. Each drive chassis will hold two drives.
I have never had a problem with M100 300kb playback and without RAIDing the drives (I always target audio and video to different drives for better performance).
If you have only your M100 card that leaves you with three open pci slots. I would suggest that you leave the backplates to the pci slots off, and perhaps purchase an exhaust fan (as I have done) that takes up one pci slot as these machines have a heat pocket at the top.
Currently here in Canada 4×400 Gig drives – 1.6 terabytes – will cost you about $1100CDN