Vik Narayan
Forum Replies Created
-
Jack
Pl. post your situation on the Boris FX forum. Provide detailed info about your system hardware, OS, FCP version, BCC or Red version etc. Their engineering team is very proactive about troubleshooting. There is also a very active community of users who will be happy to help you.
Btw, I ran into a similar situation about a year back. A reinstallation solved the issue.
Vik Narayan
-
Bob
This realization is definitely dawning on me. I remember the old AVIDs; I worked on the second AVID that came to India back in 1993. It cost more than a nice house in a good neibourhood (i’m not even kidding). Last year, my wife picked up a copy of MC5 for $295 at her university. Figure that!!
Vik Narayan
-
Good question Bob, let me explain. I am stepping into a new role as a editor/post supervisor in my new job. I have been a post guy for many years but have worked in either local AVID storage, AVID Unity, or XSAN environments in large installations where the IT guys or contracted pros took care of all the back end stuff so I could get in and edit.
Till 2 weeks back Rorke Data was “some ‘joe schmo’ company that had sold fibrejet software to these guys a few years back” and i needed to get an upgrade from them now. The Fibrenetix Cubex storage they have currently is aging fast and will need to be replaced soon. Every vendor likes to tout their product as the best/most cost effecient/ etc. etc. and I know better than to take them at face value without due research. I had no idea fibre management software licenses were this expensive per client; it was already eating into the post budget. I was trying to see if moving away from fibre would be a viable option – therefore my question “is this overkill?” I wanted to find out what other solutions were out there? Who are the trusted names? Was todays “copper” technology the cheaper yet reliable way to go, much like SATA drives have caught up with SCSI drives.
Since I was in unchartered waters here, but knew I had to make some strategic decisions now and in the future, I came to the place and the people I trust, the Cow forums. Through this conversation, and by scouring through similar threads, I have learned a lot (atleast compared to where i was). I am starting to understand how to estimate bandwidth based on the codec, # of clients, and # of streams, and then calculate how much headroom Gig E/10 Gig E/Fibre will provide. The very fact that I mentioned Rorke Data in my last post was because i read one of your posts on a different thread where you spoke highly about their products. Similarly, I have learned that Small Tree is another major player offering high performance copper based solutions. I feel more confident about looking at their products without worrying that I am being served the proverbial cool-aid. I am planning to stop by their booths at NAB. Maybe I’ll run into you as well 🙂
I apologize if I came across as if I was taking all of you for a pointless ride. I am not looking to buy a Porche at the price of a Hyundai. I just want to make sure I am getting a Porche when I pay for one. I assure you I leave with knowledge gained.
Vik Narayan
-
Thank you gentlemen, for your valuable insignts. I suppose the best route for me when it is time to upgrade will be either to stay with fibre or jump to 10gbps ethernet. I will most definitely look at Small Tree and Rorke Data (who are supporting our current very basic fibre solution).
Vik Narayan
-
So I suppose a Gigabit ethernet would support upto 4 streams of ProRes 422 (assuming this would be a linear equation).
-
Thank you Bob & Matt, for taking the time. I figured my very questions may exhibit my ignorance in this area.
Bob – In the new setup, I will be using an 8 core Intel MacPro connected by fibre channel to the SAN for all my editing, color correction, mograph & compositing work. One G5, which will also be on the fibre network will be used only for recording voice tracks and closed captioning. I wanted to repurpose the other old G5 for CatDV purposes – but your suggestion that I could use a Mac Mini as a CatDV server makes me want to reconsider.
At the risk of touching on a contentious issue, I want to ask you another question: for the post production of a locally syndicated travel show edited using ProRes 422, is fibre storage an overkill? Are Gig/10 Gig storage networks significantly cheaper for comparable performance for the bandwidth I am pulling, or do the costs level off once all the nuts and bolts are taken into consideration. I ask this because each seat of Fibrejet + the required maintenance contracts works out to be so expensive. We have plans to add another show in the future, which would mean potentially getting a whole new shared storage system with at least one more primary editing system. Should we consider ditching fibre for copper? I apologize if my questions are too open ended with too many variables that need consideration.
Thank you
Vik Narayan -
Thank you Jeremy.
-
Thanks a ton guys.
Logan, turn out Perian was indeed the culprit. As soon as i removed Perian and tried the Log & Transfer, it worked smoothly like it never had an issue ever! You have no idea how much trouble you’ve saved me. I spoke to Pana tech support and they had no idea.
Keep up the good work guys.
Vik Narayan
-
Quicktime movie Animation codec with millions of colors+ should do the trick. Make sure to select the “+” as this will include the transparency info.
-
Matthew,
Can you give a little more details about your situation. Are you using just a chroma key, or are you using any additional matte contol plugins? Have you checked the key against the checkerboard background? – this is a good way to see if there is transparency in the ‘opaque’ areas of the frame.