Re: what's better sdi or firewire?

[Bob Zelin] "The idea of constantly crawling on the floor and disconnecting cabling does seem pretty silly (unless you in fact have a Firewire patch bay) and you have your equipment centralized in a machine room, where you can run your multiple MAC G5 CPU's to a FW400 bay, and patch the single HD VTR (like the HD1200) into these VTR's"

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I can't find the part in either my posts or weevie's posts where we describe crawling around the floor to connect and disconnect cables. Again, maybe I'm missing something, but you seem to be responding to comments that aren't even in our posts. I would prefer you stick to the actual comments that are in everyone's posts (and I mean all threads, not just this one) and stop adding "assumptions" such as your comment above.


[Bob Zelin] "I can only assume that users like Walter own a Firewire 400 interface device, like an AJA I/O or I/O LA, and must disconnect the AJA box to hookup the HD1200 (or other FW400 devices) when he wants to use them."

Bob, you obviously don't know my facility so don't "assume" anything. But for the record, your assumption is wrong.


[Bob Zelin] "If you have 2 or more FCP HD systems, and are sharing a single HD1200, then you either have Gefen (for example) KVM extenders for your CPU's to keep the firewire legnth short for the HD VTR, or you pick up the deck each time, and bring it from room to room, recabling each time you want to use it."

So if I read you right, this is a completely unacceptable way to conduct business? Why? Sure it's not the ideal way to do this, but it's easy enough to have cables waiting at each location. And if you're doing the Firewire workflow, you're talking about 2 cables, power and firewire.

The 1200A is a very small device and essentially a portable deck. It's not an F500 HDCAM deck or even an old UVW-1800 which would be quite cumbersome to port around the re-cable each time.


[Bob Zelin] "Please don't give the misconception that you simply buy one TecNec $120 firewire patch bay, and you are done. Multi room use of equipment requires all kinds of stuff."

Actually it doesn't seem to require an inordinate about of equipment. I'm working with ProMax right now to improve our video / audio / control routing for our suites. Seems to be a pretty straight-forward solution if you work with the folks with the right know-how.







Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
http://www.biscardicreative.com

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