AJA IOHD vs. MOTU V3HD

[Jeremy Torrie]

Of course I'm referring to recording to a D-Nagra or other new disk-based device.

We have used Emmy award winning sound recordists and they are absolutely worth their rate. Especially in low budget scenarios. They tend to get uppity on set because the norm is about the picture, but as a director (and often at least an exec producer) I make sure sound is given its respect. The typical gaffer reply is 'heard any good movies lately?'

This discussion does of course raise the question of what people are using on set for monitoring. We use the BVMD-20U with HD-SDI (and it's little brother in the 9" model) and are very confident in what we see, but it is only HD. While we own ours, most will be renting. I don't believe these monitors can be bought anymore as the TriColor monitors from Sony are the replacement.

[Gary McClurg]

The typical gaffer reply is 'heard any good movies lately?'

Sounds about right... not sure if I'm sorry for the pun or not....

[Jay A. Kelley]

Graeme,

All I can say from my own perspective is that I am very careful about the number of cables coming off the camera. I HOPE there will be only two:

SDI & Audio

SDI would go to the "suite box" as you call it, and the audio goes to the sound mixer. Also if nessesary, the suite box can go to video assist, or engineer, or what have you. I look at it like a "hub" where the support equipment comes from.

As for critical monitoring from the editor.. This is the other problem I was speaking of. I know the system uses DVCPro HD or ProRes to capture, but is it also using that codec to monitor? This is a very important point that I need to look into. There's a good chance it is because as I understand it Firewire is not a "video signal" per sea, but must be decoded at each end.

Uh oh.

Jay

[Graeme Nattress]

I was just thinking about editorial monitoring. I'm not the person to speak to about on set, as that's not where myskillset lies.

For monitoring, I'd rate the IO/HD as very good from what I've seen - although it does only take prores over the FW, at least prores is full raster and v high quality. DVCproHD is neither, so unless you shot with it, I don't see it being good to use as an intermediate codec.

Graeme

[Jay A. Kelley]

I agree Graeme.. The trick is now I have to find out what to use on Set.. Bumer.

Jay

[Jason Murphy]

The typical gaffer reply is 'heard any good movies lately?'

And the reply should either be "Very few, which is why I want to get the sound right on this one." Or "See any good silents recently?"

[Mark Mannschreck]

I compressed all my r3d's at first to DVCproHD for editing since I had to shoot some of the spot DVCProHD. The DVCPro looked so bad that I went back and did it all ProRes. The difference was BIG. The IOHD looks good to me but I have had a regular IO for years and being firewire based it has always been a little sluggish. I'm thinking Kona 3.

[Jay A. Kelley]

Here's a good question:

Do We NEED the AJA IO? Does ProRes exist in FCP without IO? Since we're off-loading from a drive and with REDCine... We can monitor using one of the outs on RED, or something similar.

Is just the laptop enough? Is prores a lot slower without the IO box?

Jay

[Mark Mannschreck]

I'm using ProRes now without the HD IO. I do have the standard def IO and it plays back downconverted Prores out to monitor (realtime in 2k prores but not 1080 for some reason!) Prores is built into Final Cut (without IO HD) and is somewhat processor intensive. I can play 2k prores HQ but can't add color correction without rendering on my dual 2ghz G5. I'm sure if I had an 8 core that would be different. The IO HD does prores in hardware so you woudn't need the computer's processor as much. On my macbook pro dual core 2ghz I'm seeing similar Prores performance to my dual 2 G5.

[MikeCurtis]

I posted long thoughts on HDforindies.com over the summer when the V3HD was announced (google it). BTW, I saw one at Tekserve last week.

Both will have niche applications, no such thing as perfect all around solution.

-mike