Video Satellite Is two steps backward

[deezy]

Today I felt the urge to put a stopwatch on a typical mix day and calculated that I spend, on average, an extra 45 minutes a day simply because I now have a Video Satellite instead of the beautifully integrated and elegant V10.

It's slower, less intuitive, more expensive, less flexible, more buggy, less responsive - klunky is the best word I can can think of. What a failure.

It's almost like you guys sat around and said "How can we set protools video back a decade or two".

This is no rant. I'm having a great day, working my ass off and lovin' it. Just wanted to share my empirical findings with everyone.

[Postman]

"This is no rant".

You may wish to share a few details about how you came up with your "empirical findings". 45 minutes wasted out of your day? How? Are you talking about Video Satellite LE, or Video Satellite with Media Composer? Or something else?

BTW, I had AVoptionXL, which came after AVoption and before V10, and loved it. However, it strongly impacted Pro Tools overall performance including responsiveness, RTAS processing, max track counts, etc. Standard def video, too. With high def video that approach would obviously suck away more resources, not only from system performance but also from software authoring due to unintended interactions.

There are several ways to run video within your Pro Tools session, or linked up to it, each with advantages and disadvantages. None are perfect. Life is full of compromise. I agree that there are several weird bugs that can pop up, and they are totally annoying and should not happen. But, it is a rare day that I have spent more than a couple of minutes dealing with Video Satellite. That is why I want to understand why you do.

[deezy]

Here's an example from about a minute ago.

On the V10 I would arm the vid track, deck online, and record. Boom. Done.

On the Satellite Media Composer I patch serial control to the Avid, click over to the MC screen, close out of my HD project, open my SD project, open capture tool, check decks, choose a tape name, enter start time, enter clip name, capture, then load clip, rename new sequence, copy start time to new sequence, repatch serial to PT, close the window telling me that I just unpatched serial, click back to PT, close window asking me to reconnect serial, click satellite link.

It's dumber than dumb. This is a 2 and a half minute procedure. Multiply this times the fifteen or so projects I do a day.

Then there's the bugs, the hangups, the constant switching of avid projects.

Who thought this was a good idea?

[Postman]

I agree with you that workflow is terrible. It blows bad.

Can you get your hands on a MOJO-sdi? That would give you the same convenience and workflow you enjoyed with V10. Unfortunately video quality is not as good, video recording is DV only and does not look incredible, but you can record audio and video directly into your Pro Tools session just like V10 did. I assume you have HD/x, right?

Honestly, I haven't tried it at all in PT10, but I believe it works as in previous versions. I have a feeling that 23.976 recording is not supported, only NTSC or PAL.

[deezy]

Ya, that's the problem - I need to have access to HD vids and this is Avid's answer to the problem. Rather than doing actual product design they just took an existing box and frankensteined it on to PT.

It's awful. The lock delay is horrendous and when I pointed this out to Avid they said they were actually proud of the lock up time they were able to achieve.

Can you say "Out of touch"?

[Postman]

Sorry, I thought you said you were capturing SD:

On the Satellite Media Composer I patch serial control to the Avid, click over to the MC screen, close out of my HD project, open my SD project, open capture tool, check decks, choose a tape name, enter start time, enter clip name, capture, then load clip, rename new sequence, copy start time to new sequence, repatch serial to PT, close the window telling me that I just unpatched serial, click back to PT, close window asking me to reconnect serial, click satellite link.

Anyway, as you've pointed out there is no HD capture within Pro Tools, probably for the reasons I described earlier. If I were in your shoes I would seriously consider a MOJO. You don't need HD picture to do what you're doing (even though it would be nice) and you could definitely save some minutes. Just my two cents.

Sounds like you're at a facility. They must have an old MOJO laying around somewhere you could borrow.

[deezy]

I do about half SD, half HD in a given day. That makes for a lot of switching back and forth.

Believe me I'd be on Mojo or V10 in an instant if it was up to me.

[Brandonx1]

You could video satellite LE, which is a pro tools system, and a decklink card. Should be a fast digitize routine and workflow for you. It's also much cheaper too. The other option is to have the decklink card connected to your pro tools rig. That way you wouldn't have to deal with multiple systems.
Best

[Buccanears]

Good thought Brandon, but it looks as though Deezy is on a PC with the V10 reference and the Blackmagic cards won't play nice with PT on PC (yet?). The Mojo SDI is now end of life so I'd like to know what Avid have as a tight sync video solution, preferably with HD pix and SDI embedded audio all in the same box. Mojo DX?

[Brandonx1]

He could still video satellite an le rig from a Mac. That's what I do and I use a windows 7 rig to mix with. works great!!!