CASABLANCA Non-linear systems: anybody have experi

[MovieStuff]

I almost bought one a couple of years ago when they first came out but I needed something more high end that had batch digitizing. The image quality on the Casablancas are excellent. Hoever, and this is a BIG however, the removable drives are numbingly expensive and you MUST use their drives. Now, the cool thing is that they are hot swappable, meaning you can remove one in the middle of a project and stick another one in like a jumbo 8 track tape. BUT, because you can't batch digitize using timecode, then you must do everything at high rez.

A lot of the work I do requires me to digitize as much as 4 or 5 hours worth of material to sort through when I restore an old movie. On a system that will batch digitize, you can digitize in low rez first; edit, then the system will reload only the footage you need in high rez. The Casablanca won't do this. However, it is so easy and straight forward to use, even my mother could use it. One thing though, splurge and get the keyboard. The on screen hunt and peck keyboard is a joke and you'll hate it within 60 seconds. Otherwise, I recommend it if you have a small budget, time to render and want a machine that you just turn on and go. They claim to have a zero crash rate. Solid state with no software, supposedly.

Roger

[Alex]

That's a tough one.

Casablanca has some useful features.

The Avio is much more basic, and I believe they may not even allow you to do simple insert audio functions. (I believe the original avio release was designed that way, they may have upgraded it)

The best test I can give you to do to determine if you like the Casablanca or Avio is to find someone who owns the exact system you plan to buy, and actually create a simple project and pay them to do the project....

I'd recommend a pre-determined price structure versus an hourly rate (probably no more than a hundred dollars)

The beauty of this approach is you get an experts time, but because you have an actual project to get done, you can "feel" and understand what the unit can do and not do.

Final Cut Pro made by Macintosh seems to be pretty solid these days...but by the time you buy the proper turn key system, I think you're spending between $5,000-$7,000.

Here's the funny part, that is actually insignificant when you consider you may be spending over 1,000 hours in front of it....

It's actually cheaper per-hour than the expense incurred in seeing a movie.

Although you probably won't go to a thousand movies....but it costs money every time you leave your home....

One issue to consider when you buy a non-linear system, firewire interface seems critical these days because it allows for the loading and unloading of digital information between your computer and your video record machine without any theoretical loss...at least that is the claim made by advocates of mini-dv technology.

Alex

[This message has been edited by Alex (edited August 07, 2001).]

[dogstarman]

Roger and Alex,

As far as the drives go: the original Casablanca has been phased out and replaced with two new models, the AVIO and the KRON. I have no idea about the KRON (out of my price range), but the AVIO comes equiped with a 20gig drive that is, as far as I can tell, not removeable. On the other hand, it captures and compresses in MPEG2 format, so the ammount of material you can get on the drive is (for example) 200 minutes at (mini)DV quality, 170 minutes in Beta SP mode. Not bad for me, as I would just about have 170 minutes of material (after doing a rough cut on film), so I could actually transfer it straight from Beta.

On the other hand, I was going through the AVIO/ KRON user group forum last night, and there seems to be a lot of posts about the AVIO's dropping frames, but most people complaining about this seem to have bought their machines around the time of the product launch, about 18 months ago.

As far as sound, I was watching the product tutorial last night for a few minutes, and I can't figure out if you can do sound inserts either... that would deffinately kill the prospect of buying one, wouldn't it? It seems unimaginable that they would design the thing that way. Of course, I guess they are aiming for the prosumer VIDEO market, and not people who are going to have thousands of little sound clips totally seperate from their image files... grumble, grumble....

[dogstarman]

Alex or Roger, maybe? (ALRIGHT, THAT'S ENOUGH! Don't make me come back there...)

I had the chance to check one of these out (the AVIO model) today, and the authorized dealer in my city gave me some literature and a free tutorial video for the product. They seem to be pretty straightforward, and the image quality that they produce for something imported, edited, and then exported is realy quite good. Seems like a possible sollution/ alternative to a very elaborate and expensive NL system on the PC or Mac... especially if you'd have to build a whole new machine just to begin with.

Any thoughts?

[Alex]

Great question about can the two stereo pairs be used as mono...the answer I got a while back was a blank look, and...well, your importing the signal as a stereo signal.....

and then some mumbling followed....

That's a great user group question to know.

The Final Cut Pro works best if you access their various user groups.

Very helpful most of the time.

Don't forget to consider a simple video job with someone who has the system...

It really is the best way to determine if the non-linear unit is for you.

I'm assuming the drives are swappable...a very imprtant feature....and of course, if you have a power failure, you need to know when you boot back up that the all of your work hasn't been lost, I think that is the case.

-Alex

[dogstarman]

TA-DUM!

Today in my Philosophy of Film course I met a guy who is always bitching back and forth with me about the prof, who doesn't know a wipe from a disolve (literally). Anyway, we get talking and it turns out this guy is the Assistant Producer at the local PBS station. This is particularly interesting 'cause they are in the middle of upgrading to HD and geting a whole new production facilaty. The best part is, they have an AVID Xpress and this guy has full run of it, day and night. Even better than all that, he (claims) to be a big fan of indie/ low-budget films and has been trying to filnd a film project to work on for his resume/ reel. And he's an insomniac, or so he claims. The gods must like me today....

Looks like I might not need to sink even a cent into the AVIO after all... now then:
anybody have any AVID tips?

[dogstarman]

Alex,

I downloaded the AVIO manual from Draco's site. The thing with the sound is, your original source audio (they presume from your videocamera): this occupies one of the three stereo audio tracks that the AVIO has to play with. You CAN'T delete the SOURCE audio, nor, it seems, can you do to much as far as moving it within the video mix. However, you still have two stereo tracks with which to play with, and within those stereo tracks, you can cut, drag and drop audio samples that you import in the audio function. All the samples can be trimmed and independantly adjusted, then dropped anywhere on the other two stero tracks. Thus, you'd have to do some premixing of ambient/ sound effects/ music and the like before-hand, and probably just lay them in very carefully. Now I'm curious if I can use the two stero channels as seperate mono channels... By the way, at a list price of $1,300 it's much less expensive than the cost of a Mac and all the gizmo's that go with it.
I Know a guy who does industrial video work who bought a G4 pro-whatever-the-hell-it-is to use with his VX2000. He sent the G4 back: told me it was the most unreliable thing he ever tried to use. ???

[dogstarman]

SHIT! I hadn't thought about that! Euphoria is a bad thing.

OK, fuck... this is an AVID Xpress, like I said, and it's one of the big devils. Not the little, Mac-based $10,000 turn-key jobs: the $100,000 ones. (You knew that.)

So, um, how much AM I looking at, roughly, for drives? Any clue? I don't even know what kind these things take, fer chrissakes...

Couldn't I just dump everything onto a Beta SP tape at the end of each session? I mean, If I plan ahead (realistically) and say "OK, we can get through, say, 7-10 minutes a session..." couldn't I do it all in little chunks, export it out, and when it was all done, re-render it and do the transitions to connect all the 7-10 minute bits? Bad idea? Too much generation loss? What?

"Un-fucking-beleivable! Every girl in my whole goddamn life...!"
-Henry,
from Goodfellas

[Alex]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by dogstarman:
SHIT! I hadn't thought about that! Euphoria is a bad thing.

OK, fuck... this is an AVID Xpress, like I said, and it's one of the big devils. Not the little, Mac-based $10,000 turn-key jobs: the $100,000 ones. (You knew that.)

So, um, how much AM I looking at, roughly, for drives? Any clue? I don't even know what kind these things take, fer chrissakes...

Couldn't I just dump everything onto a Beta SP tape at the end of each session? I mean, If I plan ahead (realistically) and say "OK, we can get through, say, 7-10 minutes a session..." couldn't I do it all in little chunks, export it out, and when it was all done, re-render it and do the transitions to connect all the 7-10 minute bits? Bad idea? Too much generation loss? What?

"Un-fucking-beleivable! Every girl in my whole goddamn life...!"
-Henry,
from Goodfellas

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


Your idea of doing a Beta-SP layback after every session is a good idea.

But there are some caveats...

If you are doing a lot of "layering" of audio and video, meaning video dissolves and audio dissolves, once you go to tape, they are forever layered!

A peanut butter and jelly sandwich that can never be undone!

One other issue that may pop up in relation to laying off your computer editing pieces back to Beta-Cam Sp.

Sometimes the operators don't know all the routing paths of the external audio mixing board and video decks that connect both in and out of the Non Linear Edit System.

They usually either know the innards of the computer.

Usually someone else at the company knows and understands how all the wires work that go up to the computer....

generally, very few if anyone knows both sides of the equation.

and usually, your editor may pretend to know how the room is wired, even if it means incorrectly and inefficiently laying down your edited footage onto the Betacam Sp Tape.

So what happens is, you start laying back stuff you edited from the computer to the Beta Cam SP deck not realizing that the audio output has been inadvertently, AND VERY UNNECESSARILY, been routed back through the audio mixer, and of course, the mixer is not in a pre-set default position, so you will radically messing up your audio,

.....only it will sound fine because the editor didn't reroute the speakers through the video recorder!

Instead, you are still hearing the sound coming from the computer!...which is pretty f'n irrelevant when laying back to a video deck...

....However all is not lost.

Because there exists a little green man who originally set up the external wiring of the room! He and only he knows the how the room is routed. He and only he can figure out in under 5 seconds how to re-route anything to anything external to the computer.

Be very nice to the little green man.

But be warned, the little green man only appears on paying gigs, and usually only during regular daylight business hours....

....and, perhaps after hours, but only if it's a paying gig!

So the little green man is paged, comes into the room, flicks a couple of knobs and switches and in under 10 seconds says, "now you can make your betacam sp copy".

Without this little green man coming to your aid, you will die a slow, miserable death.

But be careful, because in that moment of euphoria that ensues, you look to your editor, and to the screen, and then after just another moment, you turn to thank the little green man.....

But he is gone.

And he won't be back that night.

And it will turn ugly.

Because some very minor technical glitch has now emerged, that only the little green man can solve, and solve in two seconds.

And then you will panic because you HAVE to UNLOAD that hard drive right now because Steven Spielbergs distant cousin is coming in the morning to edit, and the drives need to be cleared!

So, if you can afford to buy the drives, do it, and just make sure your editor is comfortable with unplugging them as needed without it being a major ordeal.

I won't hazard a guess on the prices....but do stick with known hard drive brands that are actually approved for that editing system....a list of approved drives should be available.

Good luck!

-Alex



[This message has been edited by Alex (edited August 08, 2001).]

[dogstarman]

Actually, I think my guy might BE the little green man you speak of. He seems to be on top of his game. He could talk rings around me about compression rates and blah, blah, blah... but didn't know shit about film. That's how I know he's probably good: spends all his time focussing on his baby (the AVID), kept refering to 35mm as "32mm". Tech guys seem to be like that. I know guitar techs that could rip apart a Marshall stack, rewire the whole thing and replace every tube in it in ten minutes- couldn't tell you a THING about music theory or recording... weird...