[Wayne Abler]

I’m not familiar with Toast for DVD authoring. Forgive me if I’m covering something you already know. 16:9 video for DVD is squashed, anamorphic. So there are two things to keep in mind when creating the DVD. First you have to make sure Toast is set up to support 16:9. That should flag the content as 16:9. Then your playback device needs to be set properly. If you’re viewing on a 4:3 TV the DVD player should be set to “4:3 and letterbox” for proper playback. then your 16:9 video will display at the correct aspect ratio. Most computer playback systems will display it at the correct aspect ratio if the DVD was authored as a 16:9 disc. If your project is playing back as squashed 4:3 on a computer that’s probably an indication that the 16:9 flag was not set in your authoring program. If however the video looks fine on a computer but not on a DVD player, then the DVD player needs to be set properly. If the DVD player is hooked up to a widescreen TV the DVD player should be set to 16:9. Most DVD players have a setup button to access the aspect ratio menu. Most players won’t let you access the setup menu if a DVD is playing.

good luck

Wayne

[Wayne Abler]

I’m running HDX with 11.5.1.

On the analog video output it does say
SD Composite Y/C.
With the exception of the screen effect, it does look like it’s supposed to work.

I never tried it before so I thought what the heck. It would be better than a composite dub, which is what I ended up doing.

We’ve used breakout cables like this to take S-Video out of a deck and run it through 2 cables of multicore BCN cables and then add another break out on the end so we can plug an S-Video cable back into a projector. Never had a problem.

I’ll have to see if I can find a monitor capable of Y/C on separate BNC inputs and see if that works.

[Wayne Abler]

Good Point. Thanks

Wayne

[Wayne Abler]

I can’t help you with the Kona card. However, with Media 100 Producer (the firewire enabled SW) you can output to a firewire deck and then take video out of the deck to your program monitor. We do it iwth a DSR 30 and take S-video and audio out of the deck to the program montior and audio mixer.

Wayne

[Wayne Abler]

We recently shot our first project with a Panasonic HVX-200 and a Firestore FS 100. It was a standard definition project shot as DVC-Pro. 20 minutes of raw footage (84 clips) imported into Media 100 HD v 11.5 in just over 2.5 minutes. Obviously considerably faster then digitizing a tape in real time. The import P2 interface of Media 100 allows you to select which clips you want to capture. So if you’ve logged a bunch of bad takes you could opt to not to import them. All in all this will be a time saver for some of the projects we do.

There are issues you have to deal with. For example, long clips get segmented into 2 GB chunks. If you’re shooting DVC-Pro HD that means those 2GB chunks will 2.2 minutes long, 9 minutes at DVCPro data rates. It’s not a huge issue for most of our projects but if you’re recording a long performance it could prove to be a little bit inconvenient. We’ve done some tests with long, segmented clips and have found nothing that would indicate a problem. It would be nice if the Media 100 software could recognize segmented clips and combine them in the bin for us. I would imagine the media files would or could remain segmented. Sort of like the old days when all long clips were segmented anyway or a least you had the option to segment them.

Using the firestore itself is pretty straight forward. I’d love to see a feature that would easily allow you to delete bad takes in the field as long as you could quickly undo your delete. You can do it now but your have to jump through a few hoops via menus. The menu system is a little clunky but much better than say a Marantz digital audio recorder. There are options to record in other formats but using the P2 format appears to be the best choice for working with Media 100.

I’ve done limited testing with DVCPRO HD. It seems to work fine but I have yet to use it on a real project. I’m guessing that importing DVCPRO-HD is going to take 4 time longer than DV so 20 minutes of footage would probably take 10 to 12 minutes to import. Just a guess.

We don’t have any P2 cards. While they are convenient, the cost per GB is still to high compared to an HD recorder.

As someone mentioned earlier, you don’t have the benefit of tape on the shelf so we are using low cost hard drives in firewire enclosures to back up and archive video we want to save. Data back up tapes might be more reliable in the long run but hard drives are definitely faster and easier. We’ve had issues with data backup tapes in the past too. So I just don’t think any solution is absolutely bullet proof.

I’m not a huge fan of any of the “prosumer” cameras like the HVX 200 or XL-1 or PD 150. I prefer cameras with a “real” lens and iris. However for the price, these cameras do take some impressive pictures. I am looking forward to the day when P2 card prices and capacities become more useful.

With storage getting better, faster and cheaper, I think this type of work flow is something we’ll all enjoy. No more digitizing tapes. As with any change, there are a few trade offs. I think the future will bring improvements that will lead to better and better products. For many of us this is probably the beginning of the end of tape. It’s been 31 years since I shot my first back and white reel-to-reel video tape in junior high. It will be interesting to see how long the transition to tapeless will take.

Wayne

[Wayne Abler]

Have you tried deleting the media and then recapturing? That’s worked for me in the past when other methods failed.

If there’s some footage you want to keep and some you want to trash, you could create a new bin kith just the clips you want to trash, do a select all, and the hold down the option key and select delete media from the edit menu.

The find media function in Media 100 can also be handy for tasks like this as well.

Good luck

Wayne

[Wayne Abler]

Have you force rendered your titles? If not go to the media menu, select render, then check titles, check all, and check force render. Then export your program. That might do it for you. I think I remember some version that didn’t render titles on export. Good luck.

Wayne

[Wayne Abler]

We use several on a regular basis on 2 Media 100i systems and we’re looking forward to adding Media 100 SW when firewire becomes available to compliment our investment in Media 100 HD(x) :

Sony HDV HRV 10MU, Sony DSR-30, JVC SR-VS20 and SR-VS30U.

We’d love to see compatibility with Panasonic DVC-Pro 100 and P2 equipment as well.

We’re looking forward to the release.

Wayne

[Wayne Abler]

I don’t have any benchmarking applications installed on my G-5. Do you know of a good one I could download and try?

The extent of my testing was capturing a couple of uncompressed HD 10 bit clips including one that was 6 minutes long. When I was having problems I couldn’t capture for more than 10 or 20 seconds without an error.

When I downgraded to firmware 1.3.2 I was still using Raid Admin 1.5. Thus when I launched raid admin, it gave me a warning that some features of the software did not match the current firmware installed on the raid. The option to allow host cache flushing was disabled and grayed out under firmware 1.3.2 and that’s why I believe that combo worked. When I upgraded the firmware back to 1.5 I turned off allow host cache flushing (it was on by default and that was the problem) and everything worked again.

While I was downgrading to 1.3.2 I found this article at Apple’s site which recommended turning off host cache flushing.
https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302780

Of course now that I can capture uncompressed HD Media 100 will let me start capturing compressed HD with version 11 right? O well. I’m just glad the raid is working as it should.

[Wayne Abler]

Floh;

Downgrading the Raid firmware to 1.3.2 worked. But while I was downgrading I found this article at Apple’s site:

https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302780

So I upgraded the firmware back to 1.5 and turned off
“Allow Host Cache Flushing” and everything appears to work as it should now, at least for my 6 minute capture test.

I don’t have an immediate need for HD but it’s nice to know it works now.

Thanks

Wayne