Just had a great demo of CatDV 8 which is a media management tool and much much more. After seeing Final Cut Server in action a few months ago, I can already tell this thing seems much much easier for the end user to use. The fact that it can be used in the field and tie directly back to the main server is incredible in and of itself.
Clients can view their proxy files over the internet directly off our server? Cool! No more window burn DVDs!!! Yay!
Due to our frantic production schedule I don't really have time to play with it right now, but over the holiday break, I intend to download that 14 day trial and really get in to testing all the details. But wow, I thought CatDV was just a simple, low end tool. It's anything but. Can't wait to really try this out, especially as we plan out our new facility and improving our data management.
My edit suite runs two 25' DVI extenders, VERY heavy duty extenders that were about $120 each. This suite has run with the G5 Quad 2.5, the Mac Pro Quad 3.0 and the Mac Pro Octo 3.2 with zero issues running two DVI monitors and the extenders.
Now I get the $7,000 top of the line Apple Octo Core machine with the ATI 4870 graphics card which of course Apple mandates with one regular DVI port and one Mini DVI port. I got the adapter that allows me to run two standard DVI monitors. The one connected to the Mini DVI port is not coming on. We even switched the cables in the back of the machine and only the regular DVI port is putting out an image to the monitors.
Now we're going to have to come up with another workaround. If you have a "special monitor" (i.e. Apple LED Display) that requires a "special DVI port" because you don't want to pay the licensing fees for regular DVI, why don't you create an adapter cable the OTHER way around? Regular DVI to the Mini DVI required by the Apple monitor?
Just installed FCP 7 on one of our iMacs and if I try to do a ProRes Easy Setup, everything greys out and I can select anything. So I selected an HDV Easy Setup and manually went into the Audio / Video Settings to switch everything over.
We have the iMac networked to a SAN and we do all the capturing via our AJA Kona 3 systems, but we can also edit on the iMacs as needed. Guess Apple needs to fix this because what if you're working in a tapeless format that doesn't require a capture card for ingest? Need to be able to select a ProRes easy setup even without a capture card.
In case you haven't read the light grey print on Apple's website....
Mac OS X Snow Leopard requires an Intel-based Mac.
No whining, no griping, if you haven't upgraded to an Intel Mac, then stay on Leopard and keep working away. When the time is right, you will be able to upgrade to an Intel Mac and Snow Leopard at the same time.
Oh and Snow Leopard is only $29 to upgrade from Leopard so that's pretty cool. No $129 upgrade fee or whatever is has been for the past few OS updates.
Recently a thread in the Apple Color forum had somebody remark that if you're delivering to the "Big Boys" such as Discovery and PBS you really should have external scopes in your shop. It's also been suggested that external legalizer boxes really should be used as well when delivering to the high end networks.
The true fact of the matter is, the scopes in Color are very accurate, to the point that I don't see any differences on an external scope when we do have one. The Broadcast Safe in Color is good enough for "the big boys." We have delivered about 66 episodes of "Good Eats" in HD to the Food Network, not a single rejection for video quality, and have now delivered two HD programs to PBS. No external scopes, no external legalizer. Just FCP to Color to FCP and out to tape. In fact, about 20 or so episodes of Good Eats was color graded ONLY using FCP's 3-Way CC, Broadcast Safe and Levels filters. All of those were legal.
If you can afford an external scope and want to drop $12,000 to $20,000 for a good Tektronix scope, then by all means have at it. We actually could afford one if I really felt I needed it, but I personally would rather spend that money on something more useful to our day to day operation, say like 3 FSI color reference monitors to replace our aging CRT monitors.
But as far as being perfectly broadcast legal and delivering to the "big boys" of broadcast, the tools within FC Studio are perfectly capable of delivering a legal product in the hands of an operator who knows how to use them.
As usual, the guys at FSI keep adding in more and more features based on user input and the latest round of updates have a couple of especially neat updates. And of course, these are free to all current owners of FSI monitors, just download the update from the website.
EBU Gamma. True 2.35 EBU standard gamma setting for the monitor for anyone delivering material to european broadcasters. Yes, 2.4 is mighty darn close, but because of a request from a European user, they decided to make the monitors go exactly to the European gamma spec.
Timecode Display. The monitors themselves can now display on screen timecode pulled directly off the SDI feeds using LTC, VITC 1 and VITC 2. So no more having to turn on the TC display via a tape deck or a camera, the monitors themselves can now display on screen TC. I've actually asked for a few improvements to this feature already.
NTSC Setup. You can set the monitor up to 7.5 IRE if you're working on SD material that requires 7.5 delivery.
Scope Position. Now you can put the scopes in any of six positions instead of just having it in the lower right.
Active Boundary Marker. This is really really neat and it took me a moment or two to really figure out what they had done here. Because the monitors have the ability to show full resolution video without using up the entire screen, it can be difficult to tell if you're missing any lines of image in the picture. For example, in 1:1 SD mode on any of the monitors. You see black on the top and bottom of the image because it's sitting in the middle of the monitor so if there are any lines of resolution missing in the image, you can't tell because it'll just look like the black border around the image.
Turn on the Active Boundary Marker and a line is placed 1 pixel above and below the image frame. Now you can see where the edge of the image SHOULD be. If you see black between your image and that line, then you're missing image information.
And of course there's more stuff in the latest updates, but these are some of the highlights that I've noticed so far. Very cool stuff!
So I was at an Apple Business Networking event last week here in Atlanta and I asked my business rep about signing up for some One-on-One training for iWeb. It's a simple enough program but there are some aspects of it and re-working my website that would be better if I worked with a trainer one-on-one at the store. He told me I can't sign up for one-on-one unless I purchase a computer. It's Apple's new policy that people cannot simply sign up for one-on-one training anymore unless you purchase a product.
Ok, so I have 4 Mac desktops, 4 iMacs, 1 MacBook Pro, 1 Mini an iPhone, 2 iPods and 3 full copies of Final Cut Studio, iWorks and iLife. And that's just what I currently have. All told we've been through about 20 or 30 Macs since 1998 with my two companies. But I'm not permitted to purchase one-on-one training because my last purchase was about 3 months ago?
You would think that in this economy we'd be looking for ways to add revenue stream, not remove it. Nice way to treat a long term customer.
After seeing the FSI monitors and all their features at the first demo, I suggested to Dan Desmet they should create a video version of their user manual to make it easier to understand everything. Well that conversation led to the new How To video manual that was launched on the website last week.
Professional Video Editor, Producer, Director since 1990.
Credits include multiple Emmys, Tellys, Aurora and CableAce Awards.
Owner / Operator of Biscardi Creative Media, a full service video and film production company with about 65% of our work in HDTV. The show you know us best for is "Good Eats" on the Food Network. I developed the HD Post workflow and we also create all the animations for the series.
Favorite pastime is cooking with pizza on the grill one of my specialties. Each Christmas Eve we serve the Feast of the Seven Fishes, a traditional Italian seafood meal with approx. 30 items on the menu.
If I wasn't in video production I would either own a restaurant or a movie theater.
