Matt Stratton turned me on to Clicky Stats awhile ago, and through Clicky, I’m able to see what web searches come up with my blog as a result. I also see when these searches lead them to my blog – but then they leave because they didn’t find the answer. I thought since the search engines think I already have it on my site, perhaps I should.   Below is a sampling of the search queries that my website supposedly already has the answers for.  So, I present to you:

It came from the Searches, Volume 1.

dnx-36 firewire 400 and bandwidth requirements DNX36
Yes, DNxHD36  (aka DNx36) can certainly work through a firewire400 pipe. DNxHD36 runs at a 36mbps, while firewire400 has a theoretical max of 400mbps. This makes firewire400 a fine choice as a transport for DNx36 offline workflows.

29.97 and dnx36
This is a source of confusion for many Avid users, and I’m in the process of authoring a blog on this. DNxHD36 is a “family” according to Avid. While the “36″ label refers to the data rate for 23.976 material, the DNxHD36 “family” codec can be applied to 29.97 material. This would be technically known as DNxHD45 (45mbps as opposed to 36mbps).

“episode engine” cpu restriction
This is kind of vague. Within Episode, you can assign priority of encodes and cpu usage. Quicktime already is pretty poor with processor usage to begin with, however.

Metafuze Lossy?
Yes. After all, you’re transcoding from one codec to another – there will always be quality loss. In addition, DNxHD is a lossy codec – so, yes.

edit room day rate
This varies wildly. Depends what gear is in the room, what the room is used for (editorial, audio, finishing, color, etc.) your experience, and geographical location – and hell, what your rent is! Normally a reputable rental rate at a good facility would be a couple hundred bucks per hour or even much more.   As a side note / soap box,  don’t sell out the rest of the industry by undercutting other facilities.  Talent and experience are worth the money.  That’s a majority of what the client is paying for – not the gear.  By undercutting everyone else, the industry is forced to adopt your lower rate as a standard, then everyone has to drop their prices.  And the cycle continues. You’re shooting yourself in the foot.

Does clipster support facilis
Clipster runs on Windows XP 64bit, which Facilis has a client for. Fibre is the best choice (Ethernet won’t deliver the bandwidth needed), and it should be a recent version of Facilis software to enable file locking – volume locking will cause organization issues, but can be done.

convert red footage cluster setup
I wish I could do it better than these guys have:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/compressor_multi_cores_stitzer.html
http://www.fcsoutlet.com/home/Studio_Outlet/Entries/2008/9/1_Virtual_Clusters_-_Compressor.html

fcserver script
Good luck. Most everything is manual at this point. Try CATDV as a more GUI based alternative.

QIO-PCIE sonnet tech
The QIO comes with either a PCIE host card or a E34 (Express slot) host card. Unveiled at NAB 2009, and finally shipping now! Mac only support for now. List Price is about $1000.

FTP, KiPro
Well, once the KiPro encodes to ProRes, you can certainly FTP the file – although it’s gonna be huge. Your best bet is to offload it to a portable drive for transport or use a transfer solution like StorageDNA.

share msm database avid
I can only assume you’d like two or more machines to access the same Avid Database at the same time, in order to share media. Nope – the functionality you are attempting to do is achieved through Avid Unity, ISIS, and Interplay.

final cut server frontend
Final Cut Server (FCSvr) clients have a front-end based in Java; it looks the same on Mac or PC – and the administrator can restrict what functions a client can have. A popular alternative is creating a web page interface which ties into the database and media of FCSvr. The functions on thew web page are usually limited and typically only used for “review and approval” functionality. Several companies out there can create a custom web based interface – although it is far from cheap.

episode pro pro res 422
Yes, If Episode is running on a Mac, you can encode and decode into any of the flavors of “ProRes” (1 word). Decoding is only available (currently) on the Windows version.

How can I get edits which need review out to non tech savvy producers for approval so they can:
A) easily view the edit (did I mention easily?)
B) stay out of the edit room.

Of course, sometimes A) means burning a DVD or laying off a tape, which is time consuming, not secure, and let’s face it, decidedly not green.  It also can eliminate FTPing a file to a server to then be downloaded and watched as a viable solution, as sometimes this walking and talking at the same time complication can cause more time in tech support than just letting them in the edit room, which violates B).

Aside from my column and proposed workflows with Final Cut Server, I have something even simpler…and in 2 flavors.

Scenario 1:  Small scale.

What you need:

Your Edit Bay NLE
Generic Computer (Mac, most likely)
AppleTV with Video Monitor (HDMI)
Extras: Encoding solution, Shared storage, same LAN access.

Procedure:  Editor exports a full QuickTime file in the appropriate H.264 format for AppleTV, to a shared network drive.  AppleTV runs off of iTunes, so your generic computer picks up the H.264 file, which sync (or streams) to your AppleTV.  Now, the producer can view the cut in the comfort of the plush couch of his 4 wall, and not in the edit room.  This can be streamlined even further by having the editor export a QT Reference to a watch folder, which the encoding solution would pickup (make sure all volumes containing the referenced media can be seen by the encoder) and proceed with the H.264 encode, then sending the file to the generic computer running iTunes.  Having all of the satellite AppleTVs stream from the 1 machine makes media management very easy.

Limitations?

5 AppleTVs can sync to 1 iTunes Library.
1 AppleTV can stream from up to 5 computers.
AppleTV is specific in what formats it will play.

Scenario 2:  Larger Scale

What you need:
Your Edit Bay NLE
Several Mac Minis with DVI to HDMI cables (for a Plasma / LCD display), Apple Remote.
Extras: Encoding solution, Shared storage, same LAN access.

Same concept applies: Editor exports a QT or QT reference, and either the 3rd party encoding solution delivers the file to a shared network drive, or the NLE does.

Here is where the Mac Mini comes into play.

OS access is a no-no for a 2 year old.  And for Producers – for the same reason.  So, here is what I did:

Parental Controls Preference Pane (Click to Enlarge)

Create an admin account on the Mac Mini.  While in this account, create a new user (“Producer”), and enable Parental Controls on the account.  In Parental Controls on the Producer account, activate “Use Simple Finder” and “Only allow selected applications”.  In this box, select the application Front Row.  Make other changes at your discretion, but these are the biggies.  This will ensure that this user has limited access to OS functions and can only run Front Row.

Now, we need a way to have the Mac Mini see the shared / network drive without user intervention.  Automator is an easy way to accomplish this.

Open Automator.  Create a workflow that:

Gets Specified Servers and make sure to put the username and password in the URL; i.e.: afp://username:password@192.168.1.1/DRIVE_FOLDER_WITH_ENCODED_MEDIA

Add a “Connect to Servers” Action.

You can download the workflow here: producer_automount.

Automator Network Share Mount Workflow (Click to Enlarge)

Save this as an Application.

Run this to test.  Does it work?  Great!

Now, create an Alias to this shared / network drive.  Place this alias in the Movies folder on your Producer account.  This allows Front Row to see movies located on the shared / network volume.  You can change the name of the alias if you wish to something a bit more verbose.

Place the Automator Application you’ve created in the Login Items under the Producer account.  Also, add Front Row.  Set the system to auto boot into the Producer account.  In System Preferences, disable any Bluetooth keyboard / mouse options – so the Mac doesn’t look for Bluetooth devices.  If this is not disabled, the Mac will look for devices on bootup, potentially stalling the launching of the Automator Application and Front Row.  Reboot.  As the system is rebooting, disconnect your keyboard, mouse, and make sure you have your Apple Remote handy.

When the computer reboots, it will boot into the Producer account, auto mount the network volume which has the media you want them to see, then launches Front Row.

Now, using the Apple Remote, navigate through Front Row, and through the MOVIES section.  Because we placed an alias to the network drive (which the computer is connected to via our Automator script), Front Row can now see that drive.

Success!

Now, you have the ability to play back ANY file format QT can play back, from an unlimited number of machines AND restrict access to what clips can be seen by mounting different network shares though Automator.

As an added bonus, if the Producer decides to think outside the proverbial box, and hit the MENU key on the remote while at the Front Row main menu – it will take them to the OS desktop.  Surprise!  No keyboard and no mouse make tampering very difficult, PLUS you’ve already locked out OS functions with Parental Controls.  All they can do is turn the Mac Mini volume up and down…. and simply hitting the MENU button relaunches Front Row.

Success! Easy edit review with a nice Apple sheen.

Among the goodies:

Final Cut Studio 3: Increased RED support (confirmed), as well as no support for blu-ray within DVD Studio Pro. I am unsure if this means no authoring ability or the user not being able to even build a project.

Avid: Specs for Nehalem support. This is, of course, unofficial.

Nehalem Mac Pro

OS 10.5.6

2.66 or 2.93 Quad

Core Intel Xeon processors (8-core)

6BG of 1066 DDR3 ECC SDRAM

NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB**

640GB 7200-rpm SATA 3Gb/s

**It should be mentioned that I did not see any Mini Display Port extenders on the NAB show floor, which make any Nehalem Mac install extraordinarily difficult.  One can, of course, convert to DVI, as a fallback.

More as they trickle in.

• Launch Metafuze on a PC. (comes with the Avid installer, or download here.)
• Import the Left Eye & Right Eye (in that order) Folders. Avid calls this scanning. These will have unique file names, but the numeric values in each file name will match Left Eye & Right Eye files, and must have the same file format (size & resolution) and same duration.
• Highlight a Left Eye file AND a Right Eye file. On the right window pane there are transcoding options. Select your flavor of DNxHD, and Click the Create Stereo Group button.
• You now have Avid appropriate (OP1a) MXF wrapped video files which can be loaded into Avid (without Avid having to re-wrap the file). Utilizing the Stereoscopic settings in Avid, you can now view Left Eye or Right Eye only, over/under, or checkerboard. Remember, you can only view your 3D playout correctly via the DVI port on your computer – not via the baseband video output on your Mojo or Nitris DX. Don’t forget your IR 3D glasses and 3D capable display!

Here is what is going on with your media, as you work within the Avid:

• Almost everything you are doing in Avid (from launching the Avid, saving any bins, leaving capture mode, or closing the application ) is causing the system to read and write data to your media drives simultaneously.
• Each partition will have one OMFI MediaFiles Folder and/or one Avid Media Files Folder (for MXF media).
• Each media files folder contains two database files (msm.MMOB and msm.FMID) which keep track of all of the changes to media files; keeping them constantly linked to the master clips in your bins (pointer files living on another drive in your applications folder).
• Every time you launch the Avid, save any bins, leave capture mode, or close the application it is forcing those database files to index all of the files in that media files folder.
• By having 2 database files on one very large partition containing 500GB 1 TB, etc of media , the Avid is indexing the hundreds of thousands of files included on that partition . That, in turn, taxes the database files beyond a reasonable level and they begin to either lose track of media, or fail to complete their updates.
• Media Databases no longer update correctly, causing things like “OMFI HP Domain INIT Failed” errors as well as ‘Media OffLine” messages, among others.
• By creating more, yet smaller Drive Partitions, the Avid can more efficiently and reliably maintain its Media Database files, giving overall stability and speed back to the system.

Avid Customer Support has found that partitioning down larger striped sets to sizes of approximately 250-300 GB has TREMENDOUSLY helped overall performance and stability. We recommend this for systems setup with larger than 300 GB partitions, in use with a 12 or 24 way stripe.

A note about Windows File Limit:

The Windows OS starts to slow down after 10,000 files. This is a limitation of the OS itself, not of the Avid. After 10,000 files, the system cannot buffer it’s file count fast enough, as well as the Avid’s Media Databases also not updating correctly, if at all.

More info available at:  http://avidtechnology.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/avidtechnology.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=71457