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.

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.

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.