The installation and setup of the device was no big deal, but we had issues when trying capture from it. We had major video tearing and loss of signal, so much so that the Media Composer software could not capture anything.

This error message was displayed (click to enlarge):

Our configuration was this: SDI out of deck into the IO Express, IO Express SDI out back to deck, and the component out of the AJA device going to an external monitor. Pretty simple, right?

So, what the heck could the problem be? Here is a clue: when we would disconnect either the SDI input or output from the deck, the problem cleared up. It was only there when the deck was both accepting signal from the IO Express and sending signal to it.

I spent a couple of hours on the phone with Avid who then conferenced in someone from AJA. They were pretty bamboozled, too. After all, this was only Day 4 of MC 5.5’s release. The Avid support guy said I was his first call about the IO Express configuration. (It’s equal parts fun and stressful to be early adopters!)

Finally, the guy from AJA realized the answer to the problem. The issue was not in the hardware or software configuration. The issue was in the IO Express communicating with our deck, a Sony HDCAM HDW-1800. This deck has two options in how it handles servo/av reference. It can be set on automatic or manually set to “external.” Left on auto, this deck gets along perfectly well with a Nitris. However, when connected to the IO Express, the deck needs a little more explicit directions. Switching this deck setting to “external” has solved this issue.

Thanks to the tech support folks at Avid and AJA, our IO Express is up and running with Media Composer 5.5. It won’t get the level of workout that our Nitris systems get, but it’s nice to know it is there and ready when the need arises.

When I first got my HDTV there were probably roughly 20 channels offering HD content on Comcast Cable.  Just a few years down the road and now I get 65 channels offering HD content. TV has never looked so good. But at the same time, sadly, TV has never looked so bad. Because while I have 65 channels offering HD content, very few of them provide HD content constantly. Many of the channels still show older SD shows upconverted to HD.

But it’s not the SD nature of these shows I have a problem with. It’s the program’s aspect ratio. See, HD has a 16:9 ratio for its screen shape. It’s a much wider screen than these old SD shows were created for. And certain networks don’t do a very good job of adjusting the old 4:3 SD shows to fit inside the new 16:9 HD frame.

There’s basically 4 ways to fit the 4:3 image into a 16:9 frame.

In order from best to worst methods:

1: Pillarboxed

This is a good method because it preserves the original aspect ratio of the SD footage and does not cut anything off.

2. 4:3 Slightly Zoomed, Slightly Pillarboxed

I would deem this method as “OK”. It slightly zooms the image in, cutting off the top and bottom a bit, but it does preserve the original aspect.

3. 4:3 Flex View

This is a strange method that several networks use. It manages to stretch the edges of the image more than the center. When characters are in the middle of the screen they look pretty normal. But, when the characters are on the edge of the screen, they end up with a football-shaped head.

4. 4:3 Stretched

This is the worst method used. It stretches the entire scene evenly to fill the 16:9 frame.

So, now knowing the various methods that networks use to upconvert 4:3 SD to 16:9 HD, we can do a quick “air check” to see how specific channels compare.

All of these channels are HD and when they broadcast HD, they are correct and look great. The lists below contain only the networks that I could catch showing 4:3 SD on their HD channel.

Here’s the “Good” list…Pillarboxing:

Golf HD
PBS HD
Comedy Central HD
CNBC HD
MTV HD
VH1 HD
BET HD
FOX HD
WB HD
ABC Family HD
SPEED HD
STYLE HD
G4 HD

The “OK” list…Slightly Zoomed In:

Animal Planet HD
Discovery HD
Travel HD

The “Thanks For Trying” List…Flex View:

WE HD
IFC HD
Biography HD
HGTV HD
Food HD

The “We Didn’t Even Try” list…Stretched:

Universal HD
History HD
TBS HD
Cartoon HD
Fuse HD
AMC HD

Overtime, I plan on doing more “Air Checks” and hopefully some of these networks will change their method to a better version, and when they do I’ll let you know. Until then, do what I do and try to ignore all the Football-Shaped-Headed people walking around on TV.

RedArrowRyan

How to Successfully Move an Edit Suite

Break down tips:

Label every single cable as you unhook everything. Labeling is the most important thing you can do at this stage. As you go to unhook a cable from a piece of equipment, if it isn’t already correctly labeled, do so.

Don’t bother buying expensive cable labels. Instead, check out this method that is cheap, easy and that lasts a surprisingly long time. The only materials you need are an ink pen, post-it notes, and scotch tape.

Keep all equipment and cables from one edit suite separate from all other equipment and cables.  In our move, we will handle this by placing a single person in charge of a particular edit suite. They will be in charge of labeling cables and breaking the bay down.

Moving tips:

Move each suite one at a time or keep them as separate as possible. For us, the person that breaks a particular bay down will also transport the equipment and cables from that bay in the old building to the same bay in the new office.

Double check and Triple check that everything is unplugged when you start moving equipment. Something as simple as a thumb drive left in a CPU could cause major damage to your equipment if it’s accidentally snapped off or broken.

Hooking up tips:

Place all the equipment where you want it first, then start cabling. Run power cables first, then anything computer related, then your audio and video cables. Be sure to run your power and audio/video cables at right angles to avoid interference. If all your labeling is correct it should be only a matter of time before you’re back up and running.

Hopefully, these tips will help you one day, whether you’re moving a single edit suite or several suites like we are. Just take your time and label, label, label and you should be fine.

redarrowRyan

Yes, 9724 is our future street address.  1101 has the same relation to our new office, it’s our suite number.

As for 2131-40 and 2131-50, well these were numbers none of us at Red Arrow had heard of until it was time to start designing the layout of the new edit suites. Brandy, who is doing our interior design, put her head together with Ryan to find a color scheme that would be aesthetically pleasing, yet neutral enough to not cause perception problems when we are color correcting footage.  The results: Benjamin Moore 2131-50 (Nimbus Gray) as our primary color and 2131-40 (Smokestack Gray) as our accent color.  When we stopped by the office today, the new wall upstairs had already been painted with 2131-50.

So that’s the numbers.  Not quite as exciting as the numbers of the candidates to replace Jacob on Lost island, but close.

Here are a few more snapshots of the work being done at the new place.  The drywall is almost complete.

The tile is being laid in the new downstairs bathroom.

And, while the edit suites are going to remain largely untouched by the remodeling, that hasn’t kept them from being used to store all sorts of odds and ends while the construction crew is working elsewhere.

I’ve also been coordinating with our internet/phone providers and installers to make sure everything will be where it needs to be.  We fully expect to have our T1, cable, and phone lines up and running the day we move in to the new space.

At the time, 95% of our work involved editing offline cable television shows with no producers sitting alongside us.  Projects were usually brought to us already digitized on firewire drives, so we rarely had tape decks alongside our edit systems.  So to continue the work we’d been doing, our rooms would really just need to have enough space for a desk and an Avid.  We found the perfect space with one large “client-sized” bay and 3 smaller “edit-sized” offices.  A few days after signing our lease, rushing up a couple coats of paint, and transferring over our equipment, we were up and running.

In the three years since, Red Arrow has grown and adapted as we’ve added new clients and as the needs of our old clients have changed.  We upgraded our Avid suites in comfort and technology.  It’s now possible to stretch out on a six-foot couch while watching the output of your HDCam master on a 56 inch TV. Or you could challenge one of the editors to a game of foosball while transcoding your RED footage for your 1080i project.  With multiple producers in-house and a bevy of decks floating from room to room, at times it can feel like we’re busting at the seams.  So with three years under our belts, and a newly expired lease in our hands, Ryan and I decided it was time to re-evaluate the needs of Red Arrow and start looking for new office space.

After much searching, we found the perfect spot.  We’ve been working closely with our new landlord to modify the space to better fit our needs.  Construction has started on the interiors. Floorplans are being created for every room of the office.  Custom Avid desks are being built.  Over the next 6-8 weeks, I’ll be updating the blog periodically with pictures, leading up to our move to the new space.  Here are a few shots of the work so far.

New office lobby being prepped for hardwood floors

Stairway being built to second level.

Rewiring, rewiring and more rewiring.

The scenario:

You have footage on a DVD that needs to be used in your project.  It could be a home movie or security camera footage or another amateur footage.  This footage is the video that will be in the final version of the show (in other words, it is not a screener for footage that will come later on tape).

The problem:

In the offline edit, if you cannot digitize the footage in a low-resolution (to save drive space) directly from the DVD, because it cannot then be batch captured in the online.

So, what do you do?

This a workflow question.  No matter how you decided to tackle the problem, there is going to be a trade off.  Some methods will take extra time; some methods will incur extra expense.

[I should mention that I spend almost all of my time using Avid software, so this conversation may or may not apply to other non-linear editors.]

Digitize and Deal

One option is just to digitize straight from the DVD and deal with the consequences.  You can digitize in full-resolution from the beginning.  You will have a mixed-resolution timeline.  Not all systems will handle this well.  Also, some people (i.e. certain clients) won’t handle the shifting between low-res and high-res well.  You will waste drive space by have a lot of raw footage in high-res.  Should the footage need to have effects applied to it, the render times will be considerably more.  However, the footage is ready for the online.

Or, you could choose to digitize from the disc at low-res and use the footage normally.  Then, you would be sticking the online editor with replacing the footage by hand.  If just a shot or two is used, maybe this is the way to go.  If the footage is used a lot, the online editor won’t be happy with you.

Dub and Deal

Another option is to dub the footage to tape.  Then, you treat that tape as you would any other source tape.  There are some obvious negatives to this choice.  It takes more personnel and machine time:  someone must make the dub, log the tape, and (finally!) digitize the footage.  It uses an addition tape (depending on your budget, this could be a big deal).

However, there are some perhaps less obvious advantages to this workflow.  If you have a drive die, then you can easily redigitize your entire project.  This is fairly rare these days but could happen (no doubt when a deadline is looming).  Sometimes shows have to be changed even after they’ve aired (network legal finds an issue, for example).   Being able to batch capture all your footage is a huge plus in this situation, as well.  What if you need to re-build your project for a future demo reel?  Again, the “dub and deal” method can be advantageous.

Import and Deal

You could choose to import video files from the disc (or rip then import, depending on your system).  This would allow you to batch import the footage for the online.  Also, this method is (probably) less time consuming than the “dub and deal” method on the front end (though imports can be considerably slower than real time).  However, this method could be very time consuming on the back end.  Suppose the footage is 60 minutes long, and you import from the disc.  You may only use 20 seconds of footage in the show, but the entire file must be imported for the online.  There is no “partial import” of files.

And in this example, “The DVD Problem” could be “The Quicktime Problem,” (or AVI, MPEG, etc.), as well.  The same advantages and disadvantages of the “import and deal” method apply to any video file import.

What’s the Solution?

(Cue radio self-help show legal disclaimer: “Your situation may be fact dependent.”) A workflow for using DVDs is going to depend entirely on individual factors: project, computer system, amount of video on disc, and so on.  We’ve used all three of the above methods on different projects.  What is your workflow for DVDs (or long quicktimes) and how does it work for you?

Hey, hey!  Wake him—what’s his name?—wake him!  Stay with me people! I know the phrase “drive letter assignments” doesn’t exactly scream with excitement, but this is actually very important, especially if you work with imported or linked assets.

(Quick side note: this discussion about drive letters obviously only applies to Windows.  I’m not a Mac hater, so no nasty comments.  I edit on XP; I write my blogs on a stylish, classic 12” PowerBook G4.)

I plug an external drive into my machine.  I hear that familiar “duh-dunk” sound effect.  I start editing with excited, reckless abandon.  Check, check—wait a minute.

With modern computers and peripherals, we are so comfortable with plugging things and they are ready to work, but we rarely take the time to think about what is going on under the hood.  When you plug an external drive into Windows, it is automatically assigned a drive letter.  The actual letter assigned is not something that you typically pay much attention to.  But, maybe you should.

If you’ll recall from my last post, I do a lot of offline editing on external drives.  In our facility, some of our bays are specialized (one is better equipped for DVD authoring, for example), so it helps to be mobile with my project in case I need to change bays for the day.  When I hook a drive up to a computer, I always check the drive letter assignment.  Why do I care?  Good question.

When I import things into the Avid (music, SFX, graphics, and so on), the software remembers the specific place those assets came from.  This allows the Batch Import function to be possible, because the Avid remembers where it got stuff.  But, if the drive letter has change, the batch import no longer works.  For example, suppose I import a bunch of stills from this folder on my drive: H:/GFX/.  Then later I need to import them again for some reason, but Windows has re-assigned the drive letter.  If the drive letter has changed (F:/GFX) the Avid cannot batch import.

Okay, skeptic, I know what you are thinking.  How often does that really come up?  It’s a fair point.  Once you’ve imported stuff into the Avid, then you rarely have to worry about the original file since the Avid is creating new MXF media anyway.  Here’s another reason you should think about drive letters: linking to files.

As you may have noticed from Ryan’s posts (or my lightsaber blog), we are fans of Boris Red.  Unlike the Avid software, Boris does not import assets.  It links to them and will always need the original file to be available.  If an image (or video or audio) moves location because the drive letter has changed, the effect will no longer work.  This is also true for the Avid Pan & Zoom plug-in and the stand-alone program After Effects.

Keeping this drive letter / file path in mind is especially important as an offline editor.  At some point, I’ll be handing my project off to an online editor, and that editor and I need to be on the same page (or, I guess, more appropriately: on the same drive).

Now, perhaps I’ve convinced you that my drive letter madness might make some sense.  So, I think it’s only fair to give you a bit of my method.

When starting a new project, I always assign my project a drive letter.  I typically choose a letter that is part of the project name.  I Sharpie it on a label on the drive, and I rename the drive putting the drive letter in the name.  For example, if my project is called “My Project” then I’ll assign the drive to letter M:, and in My Computer rename the drive “My Project (M).”

Note that Windows always displays the drive letter in parenthesis in My Computer.  So, my drive will look like this in My Computer: My Project(M)(M:).  The “(M)” I added to the name matches up to the “(M:)” Windows displays.  This helps my feeble brain to realize the drive is mounted properly.  If I open My Computer and see My Project(M)(H:) I know to manually change the drive letter.

To change the drive letter of a drive in Windows XP follow these steps.  Right click on My Computer and choose “Manage.”  The Computer Management screen will open.  Under “Storage” click on “Disk Management.”  All of the computer’s drives are now listed.  Right click on the drive and choose “Change Drive Letter and Paths…”  Click the “Change…” button and select the drive letter you wish to use and click “OK.”

Hey, Avid, Where Did You Put That?

When the Avid software creates media (by digitizing, rendering, importing, and so forth) it places that media into specific folders.  For projects using OMF media, it places the media in a folder called “OMFI MediaFiles.”  For projects using MXF media, it places the media in a folder called “Avid MediaFiles.”

All the OMF files will reside just inside that OMFI MediaFiles folder.  The MXF media are buried a bit deeper than that.  Inside the Avid MediaFiles folder is an “MXF” folder.  Inside the MXF folder are numbered folders (named 1, 2, 3, etc.).

The Avid creates these numbered folders as it adds media.  The software limits the number of files within a numbered folder to 5000.  When the folder approaches this limit, a new numbered folder is created and used.

Now, all of the organizing Avid is doing is out-of-sight-out-of-mind most of the time.  That’s a good thing.  We editors have other things to worry about, right?  But, knowing how Avid is organizing its media files and folders allows us some handy, dandy tricks.

Two Projects; One Partition

I do a lot of off-line editing.  Since so much of my media is in a low resolution, I can often fit two or more projects onto one drive.  However, I certainly want to make sure not to “cross the streams” (as Dr. Spengler would say) and get the media from two projects mixed up.

Before starting a second project on a drive, I’ll rename the Avid MediaFiles folder to “Avid MediaFiles [Project Name]”.  When I start digitizing, Avid will see there is not a folder simply called Avid MediaFiles, so it will create it and start using it for media.  Viola!  My projects’ media stay separate.  If I need to go back to the first project, I can rename the second project’s folder to “Avid MediaFiles [Second Project Name]” and the first project’s folder to the standard “Avid MediaFiles.”  (Note that this works with the OMFI MediaFiles folder, too.)

Number Theory

The numbered folders inside the Avid MediaFiles>MXF folders provide us with another slick trick.  The Avid automatically makes folder number 1 and will add additional folders when 1 starts to reach its limit.  However, I can manually create a folder (as long as the name is entirely numeric) and manually organize it.

For example, suppose I digitize my first tape (#101) for a show.  I can then create a 101 folder and drag the new media (which Avid will place in folder 1) to it.  I can repeat for my next tape 102.

Depending on the show, maybe I want to create a different folder for everyday of digitizing: 20100315 (today’s date: 2010-03-15).  Maybe, I could choose to store all of the imported elements of a series in the same folder for each episode.  For example, I could place all the GFX in 99, the SFX in 98, and the music in 97.

Too Tedious?

Managing the Avid’s media folder in this way is tedious, and certainly not every project needs this level of attention.  These tips are probably more the exception than the rule for most projects.  However, these are good tricks to have in an editor’s tool bag.