Qlab rig capable of live video/audio stream capture

[ra byn (robin)]

I need to put together a system for a client that can do both simple Qlab
audio / video playback but & also capture a SD live video stream at times.

Qlab audio needs are just a stereo feed.
Qlab video will be nothing more than a single SD stream.

Is a Mac Book Pro 13" with a ADVC110 capable of doing some real time capture?

http://www.grassvalley.com/products/advc110

or is there something better that isn't too expensive but can take a
composite video feed, merge it with whatever audio is involved & then
later, playback in Qlab as a video file with audio? (1) video output.

If a Mac Book Pro isn't up to the task, Mac Mini? Mac Pro? Desktop space &
fan noise is an issue which is why I would like to stay in the "just a bit
more than is needed" instead of a maxed out Mac Pro rig.

Best capture video / audio option at this point to go with the suggested
hardware?

Final Cut Express?

Mandatory to have external drives for speed? Thunderbolt Raid?

I haven't had to do any video in a long time so I'm way behind the curve.
Max record time could be 2 hours of raw video at a time. Then cut down.

Maybe what I describe should be two different Mac rigs though?

Thanks in advance,

ra byn

[Andy Dolph]

can you say more about what you're wanting to do with the live SD video stream?

Andy

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[ra byn (robin)]

Just catch it.

Not even to feed into Qlab with a camera cue.

Just picture a Qlab capable rig that can also handle catching video. But
not needing to do both at the same time.

Then the video will be edited & then be used with Qlab when video is part
of the show.

Very simple (in theory:)

ra byn

[Andy Dolph]

The 13" pro would probably be fine.  I don't know the ADVC110 (I know of, it but have not used it, so I can't say for sure.)  

If it has thunderbolt (or you're getting a new machine so you can get one of the ones that were announced today that has USB3) the I would use the Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle (which comes in a thunderbolt flavor and a USB3 flavor both are around $200)

Again, if you're buying a new machine, then I would tend to go up to the 15 inch MacBook Pro, mostly in order to get a discrete video card - you "shouldn't" need it, but it's a nice bit of extra power to have.

Of course, if you can afford the new generation MacBook Pro that was announced today (and starts at $2200 or something like that) it seems like an AMAZING machine (almsot a Mac Pro in a laptop) but totally overkill for your needs.

For software, Final Cut Pro is so inexpensive now, I would just use it.  It also gives you apples pro codecs which can be very useful for a variety of things.

External drives are not necessary for a single stream at a time of SD (or most forms of HD) video. Raid is certainly not necessary unless you get into very complex multilayered editing. I probably would tend towards an SSD for added reliability, but it's not necessary.

Andy

[Brendan Aanes]

If it's for a live show I'd try to keep it on two different machines if at all possible. One can likely handle the workload (as Andy says, SD video is pretty low-key these days), but by increasing the number of tasks on the machine you're increasing the likelihood of some kind of failure.

And the new Macbook pro looks amazing but lacks firewire. Which will probably not be an issue down the road, but for now is worth keeping in mind.

[ra byn (robin)]

This rig will never do both at the same time. Either offline video stuff
or online Qlab playback. I didn't realize that FW is officially dead now:(

Now we wait for the thunderbolt to FW cable I've seen mentioned...

*

[Brendan Aanes]

I believe they're out or at least announced. belkin and matrix both have a product. a bit expensive though.

at least though apple is doing this gracefully, by updating the existing MacBook pros and retaining FireWire and disc drive while introducing the new separate models with newer tech only. 

[Andy Dolph]

Re FireWire - there is an apple FireWire to thunderbolt adapter

Sent from my iPhone

[ra byn (robin)]

On Mon, June 11, 2012 5:03 pm, Andy Dolph wrote:
> Re FireWire - there is an apple FireWire to thunderbolt adapter

I just got off the phone with Black Magic Design tech support. 76gb per
hour of uncompressed SD video input!!!

So much for the internal drive of a Mac Book Pro.

How on earth do video folks store such large amounts of information &
shuttle it around efficiently? What flavor of TB raid are people using for
video storage these days?

I asked about compressed video & the tech support person said encoding in
realtime to something like H.264 would be a bad idea if any editing needed
to be done.

He also said that Final Cut Pro X won't capture video & so I would need to
use Black Magic's Media Express.

Why are we losing features in Final Cut Pro?

What next? Imovie Pro?:)

ra byn

[Brendan Aanes]

yeah, H.264 is not a good intermediate codec. try ProRes or plain old DV (since it's SD).

no one (except maybe some in hollywood) works in uncompressed video, as it's too large. and most workflows now involve footage being captured to solid-state storage in a compressed format by the camera, then transfered as files rather than in real time via tape. so i can see why they took out capture support. though its a bummer.

i'm pretty sure iMovie will capture in some sense. at least, I have done that at some point in the past, with a current version.

[Andy Dolph]

I think they are wrong about final
Cut not capturing - though I do most of my capture in QuickTime pro v 7 (which is still available)

Sent from my iPhone

[Paul Gotch]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 05:29:28PM -0500, ra byn (robin) wrote:
> How on earth do video folks store such large amounts of information &
> shuttle it around efficiently? What flavor of TB raid are people using for
> video storage these days?

Big shops? Not Thunderbolt but Fibre Channel and SANs (storage area
networks) using Xsan which interoperates with Quantum StorNext,

> I asked about compressed video & the tech support person said encoding in
> realtime to something like H.264 would be a bad idea if any editing needed
> to be done.

H.264 is a delivery codec. High end video is either in ProRes or if you
are coming from Red digital cinema cameras RedCode.

> He also said that Final Cut Pro X won't capture video & so I would need to
> use Black Magic's Media Express.

That's wrong, it will but there is no batch capture or deck control.

> Why are we losing features in Final Cut Pro?

After spending years courting the pro market someone at Apple seems to
have jumped the shark. I don't think it's that they is that they aren't
serious about things like Final Cut I think it's that someone thinks
they can treat the pro market like the consumer market and discontinue
things or replace things with fundamentally different things with
impunity. They can't and they might lose the market entirely to Avid
over it.

-p
--
Paul Gotch
--------------------------------------------------------------------

[Mike P]

>>
>> Why are we losing features in Final Cut Pro?
>
> After spending years courting the pro market someone at Apple seems to
> have jumped the shark. I don't think it's that they is that they aren't
> serious about things like Final Cut I think it's that someone thinks
> they can treat the pro market like the consumer market and discontinue
> things or replace things with fundamentally different things with
> impunity. They can't and they might lose the market entirely to Avid
> over it.

There was quite a to-do over the release when a few professionals jumped in immediately and discovered little feature gaps like the inability to open any older Final Cut Pro projects thereby cutting them off from their work. Workflow changed and many features were not ported to the new version. The only thing good anyone had to say about it at the time is it was easy to downgrade to something useful. iMovie Pro was one of the things it was dubbed that used more than four letters per word :-)

Apple had to retrench fast and fix alot of things before anyone was taking Final Cut X seriously. Truthfully, I haven't seen any signs that anyone is. They already lost business to Avid over the flub.

I find it really interesting when I checked at Apple's Online Store for Software and clicked Creative just now, no products are shown. I know everything is in the App Store now, but still...

Does anyone else know where things are at with FInal Cut X these days? And has anyone played with Motion 5? I didn't upgrade because of the Final Cut X debacle - didn't know what I'd be getting.

Mike Post
(601) 307-8657
mdp...@mac.com
http://mdpostdesign.com

[Paul Gotch]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 08:09:39PM -0400, Mike P wrote:
> Does anyone else know where things are at with FInal Cut X these days?

MultiCam came back in 10.0.3. There is some effort at project export
using an XML format.

Oh for the OP it turns out that BlackMagic were right. FCP X can only
capture from firewire. Import from other sources developed for FCP7 such
as for the decklink stuff doesn't work so you need their capture tool.

So basically if you want to do much of the stuff you could do with FCP7
then you have to move to Avid.

[Mike P]

> Oh for the OP it turns out that BlackMagic were right. FCP X can only
> capture from firewire. Import from other sources developed for FCP7 such
> as for the decklink stuff doesn't work so you need their capture tool.
>

Firewire? You mean that thing Apple just decided to not include on their new CPU releases?

grumble...

An Thunderbolt-Firewire adapter will be available in July. Hope it works with FW cameras...

[Lucas Krech]

FCPX in Lion has a known (and to date unresolved) memory issue where it's auto-save feature (because they no longer trust their users to save) occasionally does not save. I was trying out FCPX and got burned on a day's worth of work as a result. If you have the money I would suggest ANY OTHER NLE system than FCPX. If just simple cuts are required then Quicktime Pro 7 is AWESOME and cheap ($30). Even an opensource and clunky option like Blender is superior to FCPX due to the non-save issue IMHO.

Now in fairness the theory was that Mountain Lion would solve this memory "bug" in their core memory architecture. But then in theory FCPX was a Pro product. YMMV.

-L

Lucas Benjaminh Krech

Lighting and Video Artist

www.lucaskrech.com

646.263.8439

gChat: lucaskrech

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On Jun 11, 2012, at 6:02 PM, Mike P wrote:

[dan howarth]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 7:04 PM, Lucas Krech <des...@lucaskrech.com> wrote:

FCPX in Lion has a known (and to date unresolved) memory issue where it's auto-save feature (because they no longer trust their users to save) occasionally does not save. I was trying out FCPX and got burned on a day's worth of work as a result. If you have the money I would suggest ANY OTHER NLE system than FCPX. If just simple cuts are required then Quicktime Pro 7 is AWESOME and cheap ($30). Even an opensource and clunky option like Blender is superior to FCPX due to the non-save issue IMHO.

Now in fairness the theory was that Mountain Lion would solve this memory "bug" in their core memory architecture. But then in theory FCPX was a Pro product. YMMV.

i was an FCP user for four or five years -- but with various FCPX troubles in the last year or so, i've painlessly migrated to adobe Premiere -- solid and easy to learn / use. and FASTER. the  advantage in ACTUALLY USING the whole 64-bit / 16 gigs of memory is astounding. (surprise eh) it's a lot faster to render things --- a lot faster. uh what was the original question ? 

[ra byn (robin)]

So assuming that uncompressed video isn't necessary & minimal video
editing will be needed. (the equivalent to fade in / fade out & possibly
some titles outside of Qlab),

What is the SD composite video capture hardware that makes the most sense?

From what I could tell talking to TS, the Black Magic Intensity Shuttle TB
only does uncompressed video capture.

I'm sold on QT7 Pro as a starting point falling toward Adobe Premier if
need be.

Thanks in advance,

ra byn

[dan howarth]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 8:43 PM, ra byn (robin) <ra...@rabyn.com> wrote:

So assuming that uncompressed video isn't necessary & minimal video
editing will be needed. (the equivalent to fade in / fade out & possibly
some titles outside of Qlab),

What is the SD composite video capture hardware that makes the most sense?

hmm well --- 

what kind of camera will be outputting the composite signal ?? what makes most sense to me would be to 

record onto the camera's system - hopefully it's an internal hard drive or an SD card ?? and not even 

bother running a video-recording-stream-operation on a laptop that's at the same time probably the 

MAIN system for some kind of "show" event ?? let the laptop play the qlab show. 

just let the camera record do its thing ?? maybe i didn't read the part earlier that the .. show .. is like six hours long 

or something ?? as well this adds an extra step of nightly-video dumps .. i'd put a handful of 64gb SD cards into the 

budget - then at least you're doing only one video dump session a week on a busy show. 

besides if this project has some kind of decent camera -- why bother with SD at all ?? let the camera do its work, 

hopefully in HD - and record internally etc etc. that makes sense to me. 

i do have experience with the advc110 -- i believe there was a question about the lag -- there's a noticeable 

lag from real-time all the way through the whole system (camera, advc110, core-video, qlab, etc) -- 

like i can see action on the stage and then look at the qlab-output and -usually- see the same action again. 

i haven't measured this lag because i don't particularly need to. 

for capturing the advc110 has been helpful and reliable. i've done vinyl LPs, pulled the audio tracks off a VHS tape .. 

as well as a composite video signal input and simply record that input --- as rabyn you are looking for ?? 

the on that makes the most sense is .. a thunderbolt unit .. at this point it's forward & backwards compatible with -most- of 

the latest apple laptops. 

From what I could tell talking to TS, the Black Magic Intensity Shuttle TB
only does uncompressed video capture.

that's a good one .. you might consider adding a thunderbolt external hard drive into the package -- i don't have a portable one 

yet or i'd offer some thoughts. i do have the promise pegasus raid unit that apple was pushing -- that thing is amazing. 

I'm sold on QT7 Pro as a starting point falling toward Adobe Premier if
need be.

yes indeed -- QT 7 is a great idea for this sort of .. basic media stream .. and a lot of other projects too. 

[Joel Webster]

Apple have lost me to Premiere (back to Premiere...), which is working out pretty well, plus the new cloud license allows me to work on a Mac and a PC - though not at the same time, though since there's only one of me...
While the new MBP hardware looks nice, OSX looks absolutely horrible. More barely concealed Spyware (Facebook) and more bloat. Just the opposite of what I want.

From memory SD DV datarate works out at about 3.5MB/s over firewire. Personally I'd just dump the SD stream direct to tape, or to something like an Atomos Ninja with HDDs.

Joel

[steve payne]

I tried Final Cut Express with the idea of upgrading later to pro. It was terrible and after avile I just went back to Vegas Pro (on a PC) Now my final cut express wont even work. I got a notice to update one of my other programs and FCEx quit working completely. I gave up.

I'm no pro but most of the media folks I know use Adobe.

Steve Payne

stevep...@gmail.com

BTW Robin. Why don't you just capture your video on the camera and edit it like normal.