CompuServe Messages

Jim, >> The client just spent $70K or more on a nifty new nonlinear system, >> and the JPEG artifacts are so bad it looks like a consumer VHS dub I often see comments like this, and it usually turns out that the maker of them saw a low-resolution image without realizing it. Avid rates its resolutions with its own numbering system. AVR-1 (AVR=Avid Video Resolution) is the worst image quality but takes up the least space, and it goes right up through AVD-27, which was just introduced. A common practice is to do your offline at AVR-2 or -3, then when everything is "locked in," redigitize only the footage actually used in the production at the highest resolution. The Avid will do that automatically. I doubt you could tell which is AVR-27 and which is the original source footage, unless the source is something like a test pattern captured straight to D1. I certainly can't find identifiable JPEG artifacts anywhere in it, and I'm pretty darned picky. The only trouble with 27 is that it is SO data-intensive it requires striped drives (a process in which drives are arranged in hardware pairs — say, 2 nine-gig drives, side by side — and the data is divided between them so they can keep up with the flow. Pete