Little Frog in High Def

Earlier today Avid release Media Composer version 4.0.4.  This version adds support for MacOS 10.6, or Snow Leopard.  GREAT news for all those people who bought new Macs that only come with Snow Leopard installed.  If you have Leopard, 10.5, then you can stick with what you have (MC 4.0.4 is compatible with Leopard, version 10.5.8.).  I still see absolutely NO need to upgrade to Snow Leopard if you don’t have to.  No benefits for anything I do, and it only makes a lot of the software I use no longer useable.

But, if you want to upgrade to Snow Leopard, Avid recommends that you do a clean install of the OS, rather than a simple upgrade.  The ReadMe states:

You cannot perform an upgrade from the Leopard to the Snow Leopard OS. You must perform a clean install of Snow Leopard in order for the editor installer to install properly. See your Apple documentation for information on performing a clean install.

The upgrade also states that it fixes a bug with Nitris and Mojo DX systems, where Fast Scrub would cause much-too-frequent waveform redraws.

NOW…I hope that people who run Avid MC edit bays will actually get out of the old Avid mindset of not upgrading the software for long periods of time.  Avid was known for slow updates and long times between bug fixes.  This has changed…for the better.  PLEASE do your editors a favor and upgrade the systems with every new dot.release. Don’t leave poor Walter Murch stuck editing on Avid MC 2.8.3 because you have an Adrenaline and think that Avid MC 4.0 no longer supports the Adrenaline.  IT DOES!  So don’t leave your editors in the dark…dealing with bugs.

Thank you.

I need a hobby.  Well, an inexpensive one.  I really want to get into cycling and get a road bike, or get one of those single gear really LIGHT ones but then I have to shell out cash for a bicycle and all the extras.  But then I’d be shape at least.

So what do I do for a hobby?  Play with plugins and workflows and see what works and what doesn’t.  I REALLY should play with MOTION so that I can learn that application.  That’s what a friend of mine does as a hobby, and he is so good, that he wrote a book on how to do really cool things with Motion.  But I get all into solving puzzles like how can I get an Avid Adrenaline that was on a PC onto the Mac I have running FCP?

The latest thing is that soon we will have a client that wants us to finish a project of theirs.  Online it and color correct it.  They shot on P2 and captured everything at full resolution, we just need to color correct it and output.  And I have gotten really handy with COLOR, so I’d like to do it there.  Only thing is…they are on an Avid Media Composer. So how on Earth do I get TAPELESS footage from Avid to FCP to then send to Color?  If it was tape, I could recapture.  But tapeless?

I know that I can use Automatic Duck to export and EDL from Avid and open that in FCP and have a nice full sequence that will need recapturing.  And I have done this before…on tape.  But tapeless?  Can I batch capture only what is needed.

Luckily I didn’t need to figure that out.  Because The Duck (the nickname for Automatic Duck) has a great new feature.  Not sure how new, but recent.  This feature allows you export an AAF with Imbedded media.  And then Automatic Duck, thru FCP will import that and create quicktime reference movies that are tied to the MXF format, or OMFI format Avid files.  Go watch the demo here…it’s pretty slick.

So I did that.  Imported some P2, did a quick little nonsense edit.  Added a couple filters.  Then exported the AAF, opened Final Cut Pro (after rebooting the computer to that partition), imported that AAF and FCP with the aid of The Duck Importer imported the cut and the media…intact.  And was is REALLY cool, it makes a bin of that footage, and you get not only the clip, but the ENTIRE clip.  So if you need to extend shots or look for more footage on that file, you can, and re-edit!

OK then…now the big test.  Can I then send this to Color (because it is DVCPRO HD QT files, it SHOULD work), color correct, then render out to FCP again.

I did the send to Color easily…all the files showed up.  I color corrected, then rendered, and got brand new QT files (as is normal with COLOR) linked to the new exported cut.  Worked like a charm.  Not bad Wes…not bad.

Now…I wonder what I need to do with MXF 145 or 220 files.  If I need to import them, then transcode to ProRes.  Hmmm…that bears testing…

If you follow me on Twitter… or if you look to the right of my blog and see my Twitter feed… you may know that at the next LAFCPUG meeting I will be presenting the new Avid Mix and Match feature.  So…in order to do so, I am playing with that feature right now.  Seeing that I don’t have any paying work on an Avid, I took advantage of Avid Media Composer’s great 30-day trial version.  Great way to test things out.

And good, because I am highly skeptical about this.  STILL.  Seems too good to be true, doesn’t it?

Well, I started out by installing it on my laptop.  I’ll get to the tower later, but it is busy converting a bunch of footage for something else, and it should be done by Wednesday.  So, I have Avid Media Composer 4.0 on my MacBook Pro dual 2.4Ghz machine.  I used the Media Composer’s AMA (Avid Media Access) option to import DVCPRO HD P2, AVCIntra P2 and XDCAM EX.  Running from 720p 23.98, to 720p 59.94, 1080p 23.98 and 1080i 29.97.  I’ll be capturing some HDCAM SR at work as DNxHD 145, then again at DNxHD 220.  Then some DV as native DV…and heck, HDV as native HDV because I have the stuff available.

So far…with my initial testing (VERY initial testing) on my MBP with the G-Tech G-Drive mini connected via FW800…it isn’t so smooth.  BUT, I was expecting this.  Avid did say that it relies heavily on the computer processing power, and fast drives, to make this possible.  I just know that a lot of people only use laptops, so I included it in my test.  SO, what I will do next is transfer everything to my Caldigit VR drive and have that connected via eSATA, and that will get me a little over 200MB/s using the AJA Disk test… or more reliably around 150MB/s using the HD SPEED TEST.  I’m sure things will be better…but I am wondering how much better?

More later…

If you follow me on Twitter (comebackshane) you would no doubt been party to the Tweets I have been making about getting an Avid working on my FCP system…with hardware. If not, then time to start following me on Twitter! Well this is the FULL story about that process…

My boss called me into his office and asked my advice about an Avid online of an FCP offline of a cut. This was for another company that was all Final Cut Pro…they called us because they knew we did all of our finishing in house. Now, they needed to do an AVID online because part of their network deliverables required an Avid project file and DNx MXF media on a USB drive.  I said yes, this is possible, Automatic Duck and you are set.  But the other company wondered if we to do this job. We currently are an FCP shop, but there was an Avid Adrenaline somewhere in storage.  But, there were a few issues with that rig.

First off, this place hadn’t used it for about 14 months, and it was pretty much been broken up for “parts.”  The Adrenaline box was still in the rack, and we had the dongle, but the HP Pavillion it used to reside in was in the server room, quite dusty and missing the side panel and the system drive.  But I heard that they were having issues with that machine anyway and the didn’t want to rely on it. Since they were making the switch to Final Cut Pro, the system got pushed aside. No problem, this place is full of Macs, and Adrenaline works on a Mac (I found this out by looking it up and posting a question on Creative Cow).

But in doing further research I hit upon a problem…the Mac Pros we have are all the Jan 2008 model, the ones that came with Leopard installed.  The ones with new PCIe boards and the drivers for them were only on Leopard.  And Avid Adrenaline says that version 3.0 system requirements on the Mac are OSX TIGER…10.4.11. I found THIS out after buying my 2008 MacPro and trying to use it alongside the may 2007 models that were running Tiger (and they didn’t want to install Leopard) and when I tried to install Tiger, Kernal Panic city.  So…another wall.

So now I am back to my original idea that I mentioned in the Creative Cow…I was considering installing Windows XP Professional Edition (SP2) on the Mac Pro I have, booting to that OS, and running Adrenaline.  Using a Mac…to boot Windows…to run Avid Adrenaline.  Is this Avid certified? HELL NO. But worth a shot. So I found the WinXP install disks and used Boot camp to partition a drive and then start the install process. When it booted into windows…the screens remained black. The OS apparently didn’t recognize the graphics card. It was an old Service Pack 1 installer…no doubt the drivers weren’t there. So I decided to drop that idea. I didn’t want to work with Windows anyway.

Back to my idea about trying this on the Mac. Further research and further question asking of several friends and colleagues turned up the fact that I could most definitely use Avid Media Composer 3.0 with the Adrenaline box using Leopard. And since I had 3.0.5 on my home system, I just cloned that drive and brought it to the work machine. OS 10.5.4 and QT 7.4.5. Avid is picky about the OS. But when I booted to 10.5.4…only one monitor worked. Again, the OS didn’t recognize the graphics card, an ATI Radeon 3870. And looking on the web page for a driver turned up the line “MacOS has all the drivers installed in their system, so no driver is needed.” Riiiiight. Further advice said that 3.0 and Adrenaline worked fine under 10.5.6…so since this was a cloned drive I installed it and restarted. THERE was my second monitor.
OK, so I booted to 10.5.6…had the Adrenaline connected via Firewire, bought a Keyspan serial adapter for deck control, and connected the system to the SRW-5800 HDCAM SR deck we have in house…to see how things worked. Well, I could see the image from the deck, but I couldn’t get deck control. SO CLOSE! I could capture to DNxHD 145 and 220…but I had to have deck control off to do so. Hmmm…can’t have that. Have to figure out deck control.

I tried replacing the RS-422 cable…that didn’t work. I tried updating the drivers for the Keyspan…that didn’t work. I got an adapter so that I could try it on the RS-422 cable that I used with FCP (I didn’t before because the connection type wasn’t right…female/male connector issue) and it STILL didn’t work.

God dammit all! So close.

So I posted the question on the Creative Cow and on the Avid_L yahoo list (via a friend) and on FCP_L. There were lots of suggestions, but then one that seemed odd. Terry Curren suggested that I just use the Kona serial, as this is what someone else does (Greg Huson) and it works fine. Greg happens to have FCP and Avid on the same boot drive, and figured out that Avid recognizes the Kona serial port. So I installed the Kona drivers and sure enough, there was that option in the Deck Configuration list. So I chose it, and launched the Capture interface, and…

I had deck control!

There we go…finally. Avid Adrenaline fully functioning. I captured HDCAM SR with timecode, I could output to a monitor, output back to the deck. Everything. Now I just need to test the online workflow. Take one of our finished locked shows, use Automatic Duck Pro Export 4.0 to convert the FCP EDL to AAF or something Avid can read, then recapture the tapes from HDV. Then re-acquaint myself with the color correction tools.

So now I have a bay that can online FCP or Avid. One computer, two separate boot disks (actually, four…one with FCP 6.0.5 (Final Cut Studio 2), one with FCP 7 (Studio 3), one with ProTools (to check our online sessions on occasion), and one Avid 3.0.5. One machine, two editing platforms with hardware.

I have many people to thank for this. I couldn’t have done this without the Creative Cow and the many people there, like Terry Curren and Mark Block…Greg Huson for figuring out the Kona Serial thing…people on the Avid_L and FCP_L on Yahoo…and friends Pat Sheffield, Paul Kavadias and John Malm. This is the reason I post on and visit all the forums I do. People helping people…best tech support you will EVER get.

Man…what is UP with Avid lately? Three major releases of the software in just one year? And all with major feature enhancements. OH…and all with a very low upgrade cost…$350. It wasn’t 5 years ago that upgrades were 1-2 years apart, and cost thousands of dollars.

With the release of Avid Media Composer 4.0 (and Symphony 4.0, and Newscutter 8.0), Avid brings to the table something huge. Not only mixed FORMATS…but now mixed FRAME RATES on a single timeline. 59.94, 29.97, 23.98…DVCPRO HD 720p, XDCAM 1080i, DV, 1:1… all playing at once at “full quality” with no transcoding. What an UPDATE! Now with AMA (Avid Media Access) that just opens a bin and populates it with media when you add a tapeless medium, and mixed format timelines, a timecode reader that requires zero rendering…this is some MIGHTY powerful software.

- Eliminating timely transcode processes with the capability to mix and match different frame rates and resolutions in an open timeline within the same project.

- Expanding native support for file-based media with the addition of industry-leading formats such as Panasonic AVC-I and Ikegami GFCAM. GFCAM support is a result of Avid Media Access (AMA).

I wonder how it does this mixing of frame rates. Does it do it RIGHT? Adding the proper pulldown to 23.98 when in a 29.97 timeline, unlike FCPs 2:2:2:4 pulldown nonsense. And what does “full quality” mean when mixing XDCAM 1080i, DVCPRO HD 720p and DV? Does it play each format at IT’S full quality? Or does it convert it when you play back to the sequence settings, with no transcoding required? Guess that is for us to see and find out.