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  #11  
Old 08-11-2003, 02:22 PM
CharlesL CharlesL is offline
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Default Re: one more time ... DV Quicktime videos..

First to Michael>>>> Sorry, pardon my language. What I meant was, what is the settings in FCP when u capture the DV movie? I understand your "tricks" by just copy or moving the "captured" movs, and not to re-export.

what is your FCP's "session" properties? your DV capture device settings? no. of colors, screen size, fps, etc. what is the size of your DV movies, depth/color, fps, etc??


NEW Question 1 >>> I noticed that i do not get screen flicker, but if i happen to pause/stop the DV playback when in Protools, i get a still frame, but if the actor's hands happens to be moving before i stoped the video, then i see his hands shaking violently in the still frame.

In FCP, does the "field dominance" play a part in this? settings were Odd or even frames, none, or unused.


NEW Question 2 >>> For checking out Movie offset settings, i captured a 30 sec color bar with burnt-in timecode window in DV (PAL) format, then load it into Protools. I tried to scroll by "milliseconds" (for PAL, 40 msec = 1 frame, and 1 sec = 25 frames) i still see the number on the timecode window on the DV file matches the numbers in the EDIT window mm:ss:samples counter (i do not have the TC ruler option)


For extreme tests, i set the movie offet to a very huge number, ie. 100 quarter franes, and then the timecode number on the DV mov still matches the timecode of protools as shown in the counter. Could the offset issues be fixed already in Protools 6.1 LE ?? Any idea?


recent tests >>>

I tested out a DV "bridge" device called DAC-100 by "datavideo". Anybody used this before? I had the opportunity to run some tests with it on ProTools 6.1LE. Works great!! I could select the "Play DV Movie out of FIREWIRE" with some DV movies, and viola, video appeared on the big screen!! The best part, it is about a 100 bucks cheaper than the CANOPUS ADVC-100 !! (Their model ID. sounds/looks suspiciously similar though..)

BUT, then i left the DAC-100 turned on, and connected to the firewire OUT of a Firewire DVD writer, and went to OS9, Protools 5 (32 track beta) to do some tests, and i keep getting 9093 and 9094 errors when trying to record something into a "moderately heavy" 32 track session with only a R-Compressor, +L1 on master channel, and two Dverbs. There were only 3 additional stereo AUX channels and only 4 tracks were bussed to these AUX channels. And the machine we use for the "test" was a Dual 1.25Ghz G4 with 1 Gb of ram and using Digi 001!!

Should the DV bridge devices be on their own Firefire ports? and the other firewire stuffs like external FW DVD writers, FW HDDs be daisy chained to each other on the other Firewire port?

Would a "powered" Firewire Hub help? I was thinking of getting the 002R upgrade but I am not sure if Firewire stuffs are generating such 9093 or 9094 errors??

How should firewire devices be connected then? if i have 3 FW drives, one supposed for "dedicated" DV movie playback, and 2 for Firewire Audio HDDs, one 002R in the near future (firewire), and the DAC-100 (DV Bridge) ??


Thanks and Regards
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  #12  
Old 08-11-2003, 04:54 PM
Michael Coyle Michael Coyle is offline
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Default Re: one more time ... DV Quicktime videos..

Michael: "what is your FCP's "session" properties? your DV capture device settings? no. of colors, screen size, fps, etc. what is the size of your DV movies, depth/color, fps, etc??"

Hmm.... I'm just a humble and loveable audio guy, but I don't see any way to adjust those settings in Final Cut Express. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Other than the "Easy Setup" menu being set to DV-NTSC, I do not see any settings that control the capture quality of clips. If I were to guess, I'd say that DV is DV. It's a data stream, so capturing it does not involve a size, depth, fps, etc.


"I noticed that i do not get screen flicker, but if i happen to pause/stop the DV playback when in Protools, i get a still frame, but if the actor's hands happens to be moving before i stoped the video, then i see his hands shaking violently in the still frame."


I do not see this. How are you capturing the video? If you wish, I can upload a 130M DV file to our company server and you can download it and see if the effect is the same. Send me your email address if interested. I'm coyle at chicagorecording dot com.


In FCP, does the "field dominance" play a part in this? settings were Odd or even frames, none, or unused.

Again, I do not see a setting for this in FC Express.


"For checking out Movie offset settings, i captured a 30 sec color bar with burnt-in timecode window in DV (PAL) format, then load it into Protools. "

I think your test is flawed. You need to relate audio to the video, not just a slow scroll of the timeline. A better test might be:

Create a picture a partial academy countdown, say 3 going into the 2 pop. Repeat the sequence half a dozen times.

Place audio 2 pops in a PT6 time line using the built in video, then turn on the firewire port. The audio will now be out of sync with the firewire picture.


"I tested out a DV "bridge" device called DAC-100 by "datavideo"...


I have not seen this, but my guess is that image quality will suffer with a cheaper device. I think the weakness is in the playback video circuitry. For example, the playback contrast is not as good in Dazzle as in Canopus. Shadows are washed out.


"Would a "powered" Firewire Hub help?"

If you are somehow saturating the firewire buss, I don't see how a hub will help. Maybe addition firewire ports on a PCI card would be better.


BTW, how are you importing the DV video you're using in your tests?


Michael
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  #13  
Old 08-12-2003, 08:46 AM
Firewire Firewire is offline
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Default Re: one more time ... DV Quicktime videos..

Re capturing the DV: I use Final Cut Pro. The easy setup of
DVNTSC. I just set capture at a good even tc number and capture. I do not export the movie, but rather just import the captured movie file directly into protools after the capture is complete. There is no need to recompress the movie and waste time doing it.

I use 22 quarter frames, I beleive I got that number off of digi site. Do a search. I checked it against a two pop and lipsync. Looks good to me with my system. I've produced many broadcast shows, and no one has questioned the sync.

The shaking freeze frame you are experiancing is normal. It's because ntsc video is interlaced (two fields of video per frame). When you pause an image with motion you are seeing the two fields being 'painted' on the screen in an endless loop so speaking, thus the motion between the two fields looks like vibrating or shaking.
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  #14  
Old 08-12-2003, 09:51 AM
dcornutt dcornutt is offline
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Default Re: one more time ... DV Quicktime videos..

FCP always captures at the highest quality.
The settings in FCP "quality" are for adjustable onscreen playback...to run the movie at highest quality takes more cpu.

For instance..if you have a slower computer..and you see your FCP movie is really blocky looking...open it in QT player pro..and toggle the "quality" settings under video..to best. You'll see a huge difference in quality.

The quality is already there.

However, saving a QT movie out of FCP at a lower playback setting, I believe, will continue to play back at reduced quality until you toggle the setting in your QT player. (but it will continue to always playback full quality out firewire to TV)

That's why the movies look better right out of the scratch bin.

DV movies "always" playback at highest res on external NTSC or PAL monitor...so that's not an issue. It's more when you are playing them on screen in QT player.

You can try deinterlacing your movie to deal wiht the flicker problem...but...from reports I've heard..it doesn't always cure the issue.

The video offset in frames..is a buffering delay that happens via firewire.

It's constant ..so you can offset it and its solid.

The same issue is in FCP..when viewing an NTSC or PAL monitor off your video source....there is an offset (delay) between what you are seeing on your computer..and what's playing on the NTSC or PAL monitor.

If you were routing audio and video together via firewire...and monitoring that from your playback DV device via TV and the audio outs of the deck/camera..etc....it would be perfectly in sync....while FCP on screen would be off.

You look at one..or the other.

So, this is completely normal behavior.

The idea is..since you are monitoring your audio..from PT..and your Digi hardware ..but viewing the DV movie from your DV device..via firewire...there is the offset to deal with.

There are 2 issues here.

One is...PTle does not have a smpte timeline..NOR does it have the movie playback offset. (or it didn't up to version 6..I dont' have 6...so..someone with 6 will have to let you know whether this function has been added to LE or not.

If it's still not there..the only way to offset your movie is to drag it in the timeline. ..which will through your smpte off between your audio and video.

You can always just remember that it's x frames back..etc..and adjust accordingly when spotting.

But, I believe that the extra $ DV toolkit ..will add these functions back into PTle...both smpte and the offset.

So, that part is solvable.

There is, however, one remaining issue to be dealt with.

Because of the buffering delay that I mentioned..and the fact that you compensate this by offseting the movies playback.....this basically means that the movie is only correctly insync when in playback.

In otherwords..it "offsets" the movie...only during playback..but when you stop...it still shows and stops on the correct frame (smpte).

This is how it should work as you only want the compensation offset to happen during viewing...not...throw your smpte position off (as.shifting the movie physically in the timeline would).

The problem is...if you want to "scrub" the movie...it doesn't work accurately.

Because the offset only happens on playback..not scrubbing.

So, to "scrub" the movie...you'll need to view the onscreen (in pt) movie. You can toggle back and forth between sending out firewire and viewing on screen easy enough.

The scrubbing issue ..because of the movie offset, is actually the larger issue in using DV/firewire setups.

DV movies are 3.5megs a sec. And that includes audio.
Its quite easy on the cpu...so all you really need here is HD space and good data rates off the HDs. Even a marginal HD can handle sustained 3.5 megs a sec. The trick is to not be playing your PT sessions tracks and your DV video off the same drive. That spreads the load..using seperate drives.

It's actually a quite reasonable size for the image quality you get. To get the same image quality on a MJPEG system such as the Igniter..you'd have to use about double that rate. (about 7 megs a sec or so)

The advantage of the MJPEG systems are...no scrubbing issues, no offsets to deal with...and the capture rates are adjustable from very small file sizes to full res.

The disadvantages of it are that its a PCI card..competing on your PCI bus for bandwidth.

If you are using a PCI audio system...the size of the moveis you can run (capture rate wise) are very small...and much lower res quality than DV is.

DV QT movies..even though they have quite a large data rate comparatively.....are actually very easy on the cpu...when playing them back on screen..as compared to the other compression codecs.

I tested this myself..making many different versions of the same QT movie compressed with different codecs/settings..and the full res DV movie always used less cpu. Things like sorenson..etc..hit the cpu very hard.

There is another option...and that is..to use the ATI radeon 8500 I believe..which has TV out on it.

This will actually playback "any" QT movie out to TV..and that includes DV.

You'd play the DV QT movie from within PT....and it will monitor full screen on yoru NTSC or PAL monitor connected to the ATI card.

This system..actually...scrubs accurately..and requires no offset.

You'd capture via, your 300 dollar DV coverter...then just import the captured movie into PT...and set the ATI for TV out. That's it.

The drawback to this solution is...by the time you buy the converter "and" the graphics card..you've probably spent more money than you wanted to [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

But, it might be a solution for you.

As long as your not doing any heavy scrubbing work...the DV system will work very well. As I said before, you can always toggle the movie playback in PT..to onscreen to do your scrubbing..then toggle it back out to firewire to play it.

But, the costs of this are: The DV converter (about 300)...PLUS the DV toolkit from Digi so you can get your smpte timeline and the other options you need for offseting the video playback (about 500 bucks).

The Igniter I believe at that point would cost you about the same.

The DV coverter (300) plus the ATI card (about 170) is cheaper alternative at that point.

You would not need to buy the DV toolkit with the ATI card system.

Your going to want to print timecode (or do a timecode burn) on yoru QT movies anyway for your work. You can do this in FCP (not sure about FCP xpress..but...I would think it also has this option).

The main reason you'll be doing this..is because all QT movies default to 00:00:00:00 for start time regardless of what the captured timecode is.
When you open your captured movie in FCP..it will show the correct timecode captured from the deck. But, open that movie in QT player..and it will start from zero..becasue the timecode in QT player is just "play" time...from zero up.

With your timecode burned into your QT movie....you can spot accurately in PTle ..even without the smpte timeline that requires the purchase of DV toolkit.

But, if your going to use the DV coverter for playback...your going to still need it I believe for the movie smpte playback offset function.

As I said before, I don't have PT6..so if they have added this feature into PTle...someone please chime in and confirm this.

If you have the playback offset..and a timecode burn on your QT movie..that's all you need to get your DV/transcoder system working properly and setup.

If you use the ATI card/DV....you dont' even need the DV toolkit as there is not offset to deal with (you are playing the DV movie right off your computer out to ATI from within PT.

Anyway, more info to confuse the situation further... [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
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  #15  
Old 08-13-2003, 12:53 AM
CharlesL CharlesL is offline
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Default Re: one more time ... DV Quicktime videos..

Hi guys,

thanks for all the notes and comments. I'm sure many DV and PT 6.1 newbies will appreciate it!!
A few notes here:

Michael >>> thanks!! I am currently downloading your dv movie to check out my playback.
For my flawed Color bar with timecode window burn-in test, when i placed a 1 frame beep at every second mark in Pro Tools (6.1), i see that somehow it doesnt sound in sync with the picture.

But, if i playit back at half speed (is half speed the max i can go? is there "1/4 speec" ..etc?), i think it seems to sound correct even without movie offset, ie. sound starts to playback when the frame number (on the timecode window of the DV movie) reaches "00" at the frame side. ie. 00:1:20:00"

maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me.. but if i play it back normally, it sounded off!!

firewire >>> We are using PAL here, so according to the digi site, its 18 quarter frames. I think PAL video also have two fields. I'm just wondering if FCP can capture the movie at single field? for my Aurora Fuse in Os9, I think i can control it to play back single field, so i do not see the shaky stuffs.

dcornutt >>> thanks also, for your comments. I've read abt the Radeon 8500. But, i thought i needed something to capture videos, thus its either this DAC-100 or the igniter X LE. Besides, I'm not sure why, but ever since i bought this new Dual 1.25Ghz G4, i cannot capture sound using the MAC's internal built-in LINE IN when i am in FCP. So if i need to capture both Video and guide Audio from BETA SP tapes or VHS tapes, i need to do it twice, and an hour programme would take 2 hours just to capture and prep it!!!

thanks for your explanation re my "quality/colour" issue. So, if no matter what settings i set, the output quality via Firewire will always be the best? I think i get it now. Coz, during my own "experiments", no matter what screen size or color settings i set, the file size of the DV movie is always just as BIG. But the onscreen video size was affected if i choose to view it on screen. ie. if i set it to 320 x 240, then i get a smaller movie window (as compared to 720 x 576)

And YES YES YES!!! PT 6.1 LE have the option to output video via firewire, and it also have the option to perform the sync offsets !!!

Thus, with this offset (once i get a good number, or I'll just stick with the number recommended by digi, ie. 18 quarter frames for PAL), during playback, it should be in perfect sync? And when i pause the movie, what is shown on screen will exactly match the "timeline" ?? so i can still stop, place a sound effects (for effects spotting) and nudge it forward and backwards? This is not "scrubbing" right? I do not use scrubbing for efx placement anyway. i always nudge it forward and back manually using nudge.

What is scrubbing used for anyway? movie scrubbing and Audio scrubbing? can't we use nudge?
If i set the nudge values to "40 msec" (ie. in PAL, 40 msec = 1 frame) i can "scroll" the movie back and forth, frame-by-frame by pressing the + / - keys. same with nudging audio regions by "frames"

Also, if i capture the video from a BETA SP deck or a DVCAM deck, i have the option to print the timecode window on screen while capturing. BUT, if my sources were VHS tapes, then i would require my clients to print it beforehand.

I'm not sure what the DV Toolkit have for me. I've already "survived" 3 years (ever since Digi001 came out) of doing audio post without the timecode ruler, thus i'm sure i can live without it for another 3 years. It is not cheap, 795USD!!

ok, enough for now, let me test out Michael's DV movie and I'll report back!

Thanks and Regards,
[Charles]
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  #16  
Old 08-19-2003, 06:57 AM
CharlesL CharlesL is offline
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Default Re: one more time ... DV Quicktime videos..

Hi guys again,

I'm so glad the DUC is up again. I spent the past few days testing out the DV bridge, PT 6.1LE, and the video from Michael.

Anyway, here's more questions and some repeated for older ones..



1 I would still like to know is there going to be any difference if i set the compression in FCP when capturing the videos as DVPAL (DVNTSC, if u are using NTSC) format?
ie. in "sequence presets", there is an option for "Quicktime video settings" . The Quality is by default 100%.

Also, in "Capture Presets", there is also compressor settings. Will this setting "overwrite" the settings in the sequence presets ? Does it matter? during my brief tests, file sizes remained the same, but only video quality suffered if i set it too low. However, if 100% is taking up a lot of resources, then I'll set it lower.

2 I've got a few external firewire harddisks, and I'm also thinking of getting the 002R in the near future. I've read somewhere that, the DV Bridge needs to have dedicated firewire port. And I believe the 002R also. So, question now is, if i get a powered Firewire HUB, are the additional ports in these Hubs considered dedicated ports? or do i need to install another digi recommended PCI Firewire card into my G4 ?

So, if I have a few external firewire harddrives, does it mean they ALL have to be on dedicated ports too? so if i have 3 drives, I'll need 3 dedicated ports + 1 more for the DV bridge + 1 more for the 002R ?

That's all for now.

Thanks and Regards,
[Charles]
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  #17  
Old 08-29-2003, 08:57 AM
CharlesL CharlesL is offline
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Default Re: one more time ... DV Quicktime videos..

Hi

Just a little update in case anyone interested..

After checking out the "cheaper alternative" to Canopus ADVC-100, (ie. the DAC-100 by datavideo), I've decided to dump the DAC-100 and go with the Canopus ADVC-100.

Everything is fine now, except on still frame, the flickering / jitters still happens on my TV screen. However, on my LCD monitor taking SVHS signal from the ADVC-100, the flickering does not happen.

I checked out EchoFire 2.1 's demo, but no use. Can't even get it to output DV video in Pro Tools LE 6.1 !! So, cannot utilise Echofire's "still frame" function.

That's all for the mo.

Regards,
[Charles]
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