Grass Valley Turbo Woes

The T2 iDDR from Grass Valley is a fantastic device for playback on show site, however it's a giant pain for video editors. First of all, you have to make sure your onsite techs get copies of the original video files from the client BEFORE they get ingested into the Turbo. If those copies aren't held on to, the files get mangled into some ridiculous codec inside the machine and are nearly impossible to get back out in a reusable fashion.

The Turbo should also never be used as a recording device. Ever. Pulling files off of this thing is more trouble than anything. If there's a simple way that I've not found, then I'd love to know, but we've stopped the circus of trying to convert and export recordings from the Turbo, or trying to use the included Edius software... we've gotten to where we just put a Canopus ADVC 700 on the DVI/Component output and just re-capture the footage in real time into Final Cut. You can't do HD through the canopus, but oh well. Standard def is better than no def.

No Audio after Final Cut Capture (Part 2)

In our other edit suite, we will sometimes get the same "no audio after Final Cut capture" issue from Part 1. However, the fix in the other suite is to power down and power back up the firewire attached Mackie Onyx 1220. Seems to work 99% of the time, but we still don't know what the issue is.

ViewSonic Monitor Not Showing on Boot

We have 2 ViewSonic VG2227WM monitors (1920 x 1080) used as extended displays on our Mac Pro. A suspected issue with the graphics card (ATY Radeon X 1900) is causing the monitor without the task bar not to show up on boot. You have to switch the resolution to something other than what it's set at for it to be recognized. (display icon at top right, under "Display 2"). To get around this until we can replace the graphics card is to duplicate a 1920 x 1080 display setting for Display 2...then just switch from one to another to force the Mac to see the second monitor.

No Audio after Final Cut Capture (Part 1)

Every now and then, after using the Log and Capture function in Final Cut 7, there will be visible levels but no audio coming from Final Cut playback, but there will be from other sources (Quicktime/iTunes, etc). Our fix is to save the Final Cut Project, quit Final Cut, then power down and remove the firewire cable (usually happens after capturing from a Sony DVCam deck). Then reopen the Final Cut project and audio is back.

Trimming an .flv Flash video file.

We used Moyea's FLV Editor Lite Free Edition. Only needed to trim the beginning 20 minutes from the Flash video record. Worked great. The limitations on the free version were not a problem (only 2 cue points, no project function, etc)

Creating .mp4 files with Chapters

From Final Cut 7.0, our chapter marks (using the 'm' key and creating "CHAPTER" marks) were correctly read by Handbrake, which could then create the appropriately sized .mp4 files. NOTE: A chapter mark is needed at the 00:00 mark, in order to select the beginning portion of the video. The chapters were viewable when the .mp4 file was opened in QuickTime X and View > Show Chapter Info was selected.

SIDENOTE: These chapter markes seemed to be read by Handbrake only when included in an NTSC timeline. Our HDV timeline self-contained Quicktime files did not seem to be read by Handbrake. We just created a new NTSC sequence, copied the footage from the HDV sequence and re-rendered and exported.

Final Cut Capture Now Lag

When attempting to use the "Capture Now" button in the Final Cut 7.0 Log and Capture Window, the preview window would show black for a good 20-30 seconds before actually showing video and starting to capture. Answer: Time Machine was actively backing up. Turned off Time Machine...good to go.