What hardware do you use to output video?

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 8:27 pm

James Steele wrote:Hey guys.... I have a Canopus AVDC 100 or whatever the exact model number is. I don't have it hooked up right now, but are you saying that the offset CHANGES all the time? That's kind of a pain! I wonder if I'd be better off running through my JVC Camcorder instead.

I offset by 60 frames and don't seem to need to change, but i only output to an external monitor when a director wants to see it on a small TV for color and framing. My monitors don't really give a true representation of the color and I don't care

Oh wait, to be consistent with my avatar... I don't give a hoot... I mean, damn! I MEANT DAMN!!!

Kubi · Post by **Kubi** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 11:34 pm

James Steele wrote:BTW, any general recommendations on compression settings for working with picture in DP?

Yes, ADAIK DV format (so pretty much uncompressed) places the least load on your CPU. Compressed video needs to be decompressed in real time. That way you can also use your ADVC-100 for output. As mentioned before, use a separate FW800 drive.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 11:47 pm

Kubi wrote:
James Steele wrote:BTW, any general recommendations on compression settings for working with picture in DP?
Yes, ADAIK DV format (so pretty much uncompressed) places the least load on your CPU. Compressed video needs to be decompressed in real time. That way you can also use your ADVC-100 for output. As mentioned before, use a separate FW800 drive.

Interesting! I guess I should know this, but I wonder if my Dual 2.3Ghz G5 (PCI-X) is FW800? Probably is. Hmmm... Well, I don't really plan on doing anything heavy duty. Am I likely to get into trouble putting video on the main drive or audio SATA drive? Probably huh. I was only thinking of "playing" with this feature... don't know if I wanna pop for a FW drive yet.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 11:48 pm

Duh... I'm too lazy. Used System profiler and I'm FW800. So let's see the Canopus can connect to one and a drive to the other and all is groovy, yes?

twistedtom · Post by **twistedtom** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 11:57 pm

You are right James gama is different even the aspect ratio is different. Square pixels for a computer monitor and rectangular for a TV. Brodcast safe zone and the color can be different, I am with you as I have my video running on a brodcast monitor.

doodles · Post by **doodles** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 2:34 am

i find quicktime movies are a processor hog with dp. they're fine for a little tv theme or something, but when you're starting to push dp to the max with VI's, etc, when scoring to movies, try and avoid putting the picture on th same picture if you can help it. (i offload mine to another computer, using virtualvtr and a canopus)

Re; offsetting, i've been having real problems recently with audio going out of sync, but never in the same place twice (i,e, random). afetr speaking to various post-production houses, etc, it seems to be that it's quicktime which is flaky (particularly the more recent versions of it) - it's just not made for long 90 minute quicktime (.dv) movies playing back in sync> which would make sense, cos it never used to be this bad!

stephentayler · Post by **stephentayler** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 3:34 am

I swear by my Sony DSR-11 DV/DVCAM deck, which has given me flawless performance both with FCP and DP for 4 years now. It has the benefit of operating both PAL and NTSC, and can accommodate the full size DVCAM tapes as well. A true workhorse. I need about 8 frames offset in DP.

kind regards

Stephen

instacue · Post by **instacue** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 8:42 am

I have to agree with you, James, that Quicktime movies look better on a standard tv than on a computer monitor. Yes, in my recent experiment with the Canopus ADVC110, sync offset was drifting at random. Perhaps that was due to my underpowered CPU, perhaps due to which FW bus I was streaming video and/or audio from, I still don't know for sure.

Perhaps the choice of which drive (SATA or FW 400 or FW 800) virtual instrument data is on makes a performance difference, too?

Syncwise, some of you have suggested that the choice of which FW bus you use affects the stability and performance of FW video (and how you apportion audio data and video data on either SATA or FW drives).
Doodles muses that perhaps Quicktime itself is unstable.

Jim says there are other video hardware options - which of those work reliably within DP? The PCI video cards and rack mount hardware which are designed to work with FC Pro & Premiere, will they work under DP and not bog down or disable DP's MIDI & audio performance?

For many years I successfully used the Aurora Igniter LT pci card with DP - but when I realized that every time I scrubbed video it made DP crash, that's when I started searching for alternate solutions. Plus, my Aurora card won't fit in a new Mac Pro so I ultimately have to find a new solution anyway.

I need to have rock-solid dependable video sync and full horsepower DP audio performance as well.

Please keep the suggestions and tips coming, thanks!

--DP 5.1, Mac G4 Dual 1.4 Gig, 2 Gig ram, Sys 10.4.10, PCI USB 2.0 card, Aurora Igniter LT pci card, PCI 424, 2408 optical in and out to Apogee AD-8000, Apogee DA16, 3 MTP AV USBs, MTP II, MidiExpress 128. 12 SampleCell cards on Nubus Mac, 2 GigaStudio PCs, Aardsync II word clock house sync, Mach V, Mach V 2, MSI, VSL Special Edition Extended, Stylus RMX, Atmosphere, Trilogy, SoundSoap, SoundSoap Pro, Altiverb, Elektrik Piano...

Kubi · Post by **Kubi** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 9:42 am

James Steele wrote:Duh... I'm too lazy. Used System profiler and I'm FW800. So let's see the Canopus can connect to one and a drive to the other and all is groovy, yes?

Yes. The Canopus is of course FW400, the normal, old FW cable. So a FW800 drive connecetd to the FW800 port in the back of the G5, and the Canopus connected to any other FW port on the G5.

IMPORTANT: Do NOT connect the Canopus with a regular 6pin-to-6pin FW cable from the G5 to the back of the Canopus.

DO connect the Canopus with a 6pin-to-4pin FW cable from the G5 to the FRONT of the Canopus.

There's some powered FW issue that has apparently fried many a Mac FW port...

Also, the sticker on the ADVC100 says to always turn OFF the Canopus before plugging or unplugging, so do that (though I think that precaution is probably related to the powered FW jack...? Better safe than sorry!)

jweisbin · Post by **jweisbin** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 1:38 pm

Jim wrote:
instacue wrote: Does anyone have other suggestions?

Thanks!
MOTU has this new Firewire thingie called the V3HD. There's a similar box by AJA, the IO HD. And for PCI, there's BlackMagic and AJA Kona.

.

The V3HD currently can't ouptput video from your DAW, AFAIK.