Walter Biscardi
Forum Replies Created
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Impressive numbers on the speed to be sure, but storage is one place where I don’t trust anything but a “name array.” JBOD’s are nice because they’re cheap, but when they go down, it’s your own problem to fix the issue. I’ve been running Medea arrays for about 8 years now (since my Media 100 days) and in all that time I have never missed a deadline due to a harddrive failure. In fact, twice I’ve had arrays have individual drives go bad, but still be able to finish the project. Any time I’ve ever had an array issue, Medea can either walk me through the problem on the phone or a new array is on it’s way. Also, their Zone Striping technology helps keep the maximum speed almost until the point at which the array is full.
JBOD’s might make a nice backup unit, but I wouldn’t run them as my primary storage in a deadline oriented environment. That’s one area I won’t skimp to save money. Just my personal preference.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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[deditster] “I am an assistant editor @ a production company, and we have 7 fcp offline edit suites. Every how often should one wipe everything and re-install?. Not to mention drive spring cleaning as well”
I wipe my media drives after every project if that’s possible. If not, I try to wipe them clean every three months.
For the main system drive, generally once a year. I generally do this over the christmas / new year’s holiday as that’s a very slow two weeks here.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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[mishka] “Live Scopes – that’s what we need Core Video for, not some cheesy spins and curls at 8-bit per channel. “
Totally forgot about that one. Good call on the live scopes.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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[D Phillips] “One request has me puzzled… the client has asked for “self-starting mpeg2 discs” before he travels to India next Tuesday. I’m not sure what this is. “
You simply set the “Start Up” item in DVD Studio Pro to be the video track instead of a menu. When the disc is inserted, the video will automatically start playing the video in a few seconds.
I create looping DVD’s for trade shows in this manner. At the end of the video, the DVD is instructed to jump back to the same video track so the people working the trade show don’t have to even deal with the DVD at all. Just insert the disk and it automatically starts playing and loops.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Mackie 1202 Audio Mixer – This allows you to run the Mac audio and any other audio source to your speakers and gives you a more convenient volume control right on the mixer.
I just installed a pair of KRK Rocket 5 audio monitors in one of my suites and they’re a really great, flat sound, for $300 a pair and are self powered so you don’t need an amp. They’re available at professional audio supply stores like Guitar Center. Alesis and Mackie also have a great series of near field speakers as well.
For “loud listening” I purchased a pair of Polk Audio mid-field monitors at Circuit City and mounted those on the wall so when we’re done with the main mix, we can switch it over to regular home type speakers and really turn up the sound.
The amp I do own is the Haffler P3000 and it’s a super clean amp.
If you have an audio store like Guitar Center in your area, that’s the best place to find good quality monitors and generally the folks there really know what they’re talking about when it comes to the various monitors. If you really want to go cheap, I also have a pair of Sony speakers I picked up at Radio Shack for $50 / pair and they’re actually quite good and very flat. I got them just after the New Year and they were a new arrival at that time. Great for my mobile system.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Not sure if there are any freebies out there that are worth using, but http://www.digitaljuice.com has the VideoTraxx libraries which are only $599 US for 3,200 royalty free clips. And I think you can download individual clips as well.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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[Uwe Klimmeck] “Media Management, Media Management and if there’s still time left: the Media Management could be more reliable.”
Uwe, you forgot Media Management, so let me add that to your post. 🙂
Media Management and re-capture are the worst parts of FCP. Especially when it comes to speed clips, that’s absolutely terrible. I did a Lamborghini project a few years ago and last year we needed to make some changes to it. About 40% of the clips have speed changes. Every single one of those clips had 100% reverse applied to them when they were recaptured. Took almost 3 days just to fix those speed changes.
FCP right now is still primarily an “On line” only product unless you’re doing short projects or projects that don’t have any special effects.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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[Tae] “AH! I forgot about audio. Unless I’m mistaken (I’m still on FCP 4.1) Audio in and out is still only 2 tracks at a time. If I’m wrong, I’ll be very happy. “
This is a Quicktime issue and will be resolved with the release of Quicktime 7 and OS 10.4 (Tiger). If you go to apple.com and go into the Quicktime area, you can see a “sneak peek” of QT 7 which includes 4 channel capture.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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[Jian] “- What would be the best possible resolution? I don’t have any additional hardware other than the firewire port. “
With your current config, you can only go to full quality DV, which will still be a 5:1 compressed image. You will either require an internal capture card, such as an Aurora PipePro or AJA Kona, or an external box like the AJA Io to recapture the footage in an Uncompressed codec. Remember that you will need drives with sufficient speed to capture and play back this material. Uncompressed codec won’t improve the quality of the video image itself, what it does give you is much better quality graphics and effects.
[Jian] “- How do I re-digitize? Tried to take the clips offline and re-digitizing them at DV compression, best quality but have been problems. The supposedly higher quality clips can’t be re-connected to the timeline, or the size of the files are the same as the medium quality files (which does not make sense to me!) What do I do? “
When you say medium quality, are you talking about the quality setting in the timeline? This is only for playback from FCP and has nothing to do with the quality of your captures. Simply flip that to “High” and your video image will improve. If you’re capturing at DV NTSC (or PAL) 48khz, then you’re capturing full DV files.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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[Lars] “What do I buy or do to get rid of the latency in my client monitor? Is there a way? “
How are you monitoring your video? DV, Capture Card, what?
You can use the Playback Offset to get the canvas and external monitor locked together.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters