#QuickTime conversion
8 messages in this thread
Theo,
Its probably an OK IPAS. I've heard that people have had good results with it.
I don't have personal experience with it but I do with Quicktime. Quicktime can
be a little flaky sometimes. But if the system is designed for Quicktime you
should be ok.
Your idea sounds good but if you read the whole thread its talks about hardware
advances and systems becoming obsolete. The gist is: how long are those
high-end and high-priced systems going to be around? Granted what your clients
are using are super systems and the output is great but if your target audience
is going to watch your stuff on a cheap WalMart TV under poor lighting
conditions whats the point?
My question is whether running Speed Razor under NT with a PVR board and a few
9gig Micropolis drives will doom all of the high-end systems. Time will tell.
This market has moved from its botique image to more of a commodity nature.
I do the linear thing with a Fast Machine and the non-linear thing with a PAR
board. I decided to stay with raw footage for now and not digitize it except to
the PAR as an ANI file. I waiting for the digital Beta SP cameras to come down
in price before I try and eliminate tape altogether expect for a final master.
However I will be buying a PVR and at least 4 9gig drives to do the non-linear
thing. By selling my Fast Machine and 3 of the 5 VTRs, I will more than pay for
the PVR and Speed Razor and the dual DEC Alpha to run them on.
Didn't mean to get off the subject but I thought I would give you the whole
enchilada.
Mark
MArk, Thankx for the reply. When I get more time I'll plant a thread re:
specic.the QTime converter pros/cons (i.e. Animetix IPAS) AS for the other
tasty "enchilada", yes as does most early-entry high-end product go, so must
technology such as IMIX Cubes et al,. As they get worked day &night&day to
amortize their costs, another set of "suitable" tools gets created that a
larger user-group can affordably engage. But I digress.. – Back to the boards,
Theo.
Theo,
Let me know how it goes. I got to working with Quicktime last night after your
note and got it cleaned up to 30 fps on my Pentium. Still its not like the PAR
board with Beta or SVHS output… Can't have everything!
Bye!
>till its not like the PAR board with Beta or SVHS output… Can't have
everything!<
Too bad recompressing my component PAR output into the Cube's wavelet
compression looks so bad.. 🙁 I may end up doing the QT thing myself, since
most of my output is going to the Cube nowadays. I just dread dealing with the
big files.
JNJ
>>Granted what your clients are using are super systems and the output is great
but if your target audience is going to watch your stuff on a cheap WalMart TV
under poor lighting conditions whats the point?
… My question is whether running Speed Razor under NT with a PVR board and a
few 9gig Micropolis drives will doom all of the high-end systems. Time will
tell. This market has moved from its botique image to more of a commodity
nature.<<
Mark, we have a Turbo Cube at work as well, and I'm very impressed. Not just
with the video quality, but with the usability and productivity of it. It's
nonlinear editing done right. (or mostly right) Having seen Speed Razor
demo'ed, I'd say that they're differently suited. I'd much rather do a big
video production on the TCube than in S RP. The cube is really great at
dealing with multiple video projects. (multiple video clip sheets contain each
project's video), hands on jog/shuttle/playback controls, audio mixer, and lots
of other subtleties. From what I've seen, there really isn't much comparison.
You'd have to get a hefty multiproc. Alpha to do the things the Cube does
realtime. (dissolves, shaded page turn, 2D and 3D DVE, etc.) The Turbo Cube
is realtime at 90 % of what most producers need, and pretty much skips the
rest. Speed RP does almost everything, but isn't realtime for most of it.
Personally, I'd rather have a full blown Mach RP system, But I'm more into
the great capabilities of Razor than I am in full video production. Razor is
much better in compositing, effects, and other things than the Cube.
All IMHO-
JNJ
Thanks for the note John.
Being a newbie to most of this stuff (18 mos experience) I've only dealt with
the linear thing: Fast Machine, and the PAR. Thats what we can afford right
now.
Here's the plan: a quad or 8-plex DEC Alpha box for rendering to the PVR with
about 36 gigs on line. The I can use the same machine to edit with Speed Razor
to my VTRs and get rid of the Fast Machine.
How about MPEG recording/editing? On the horizon? Next version of the PVR
board?
Bye!
>Here's the plan: a quad or 8-plex DEC Alpha box for rendering to the PVR with
about 36 gigs on line. The I can use the same machine to edit with Speed Razor
to my VTRs and get rid of the Fast Machine. <
36 gigs is a bit much for video, but I'll take a quad Alpha 300. 🙂
I don't follow MPEG that much, so I can't really help you out there. MPEG, by
it's nature, is mainly for finished video/animation. (it doesn't save all the
data for each frame) Some say they can edit with it, but I can't see that it
would look that good. (or be quick to edit) Motion JPEG (like the PAR) is
better suited for editing, or Wavelet type compression like the TurboCube, or
(of course) uncompressed. 🙂
JNJ
John,
I'm taking quite a lot of my raw video tape now and dumping it to the PAR via
S-video . I can then directly edit it with Razor or just chop it up for use
with rotoscoping with 3DS. While I can only fit about 6 minutes of video onto
the PAR drive (plus editing room), I have been able to produce 30 min videos
through Razor this way. Eliminates the Fast Machine altogether.
The specs say you can get about 4 min of video per gig of hard drive space on
the PVR. 4 9gig drives gives me around 2+15 hours of video space. More than
enough to produce a hour video tape with editing space. All for less than $10K.
What do you think? With the Alphas, rendering transitions should be superfast.
I'm not familiar with the Cube system but I would think the cost is more than
$10K.
Later! 🙂