On the Air Video
by Andrew Freiband
on
Mar 10, 2008 at 11:49:30 pm
What great timing for this forum- I'm looking at On the Air Video as a playout solution for a projected exhibition. I'm going to be using last year's intelMac with ample RAM and processing (the numbers are away from me at the moment) with an Aja Kona LHe card. I'd like to be able to play out uncompressed Quicktimes as a playlist. Unfortunately the demo of OTAV is significantly disabled and I can't get a sense of whether this will be possible. What are my chances; or, what's the highest grade Quicktime I can get to run through the program? When OTAVdemo tells me a file is not a 'proper' file, is that a demo function or is that how the program responds to anything that isn't one of the tested codecs?
Re: On the Air Video by Mike Skibra on Mar 11, 2008 at 12:16:36 am
Most likely the file that you are using has some temporal compression or no audio. Either that or HDV. SMS crrently does not support HDV but they are working on it. What OTAV is looking for is - files that are not time compressed, so uncompressed, MPEG4, MPEG2IMX, M-JPEG, DV, ProRes, DVCPro25, 50 or 100 (HD) - just so that there is no time compression AND has an audio file - it will work with the demo. The rreason for the audio file - it wants to make sure that you are not missing audio when you are broadcasting - keeping in mind that a number of stations are completely remote. So it skips over the file if there is no audio. (The audio file can be "emtpy" bu there has to be an audio track.)
The only limit on quality that you will have is when running two HD cards and doing uncompressed HD output from the same machine. But AJA currently doesn't support that - they will in the future. The LHe is fine for a single stream of all the above formats. You can check for some more information on a resource site I put together http://softron.desktopvideo.info.
Re: On the Air Video by Andrew Freiband on Mar 11, 2008 at 3:17:30 am
Interesting - I had indeed tried to run through a couple Photo-Jpeg compressed files without audio, so that would explain it. I'm also just looking at the ins and outs of the application here on my laptop, which doesn't have any additional video accelerators, so the demo doesn't have a lot to show me right now; soon I'll get to test drive it on the Kona-equipped machines. I'll let you know how we do... Thanks for the quick response!
Re: On the Air Video by Andrew Freiband on Mar 12, 2008 at 4:19:45 pm
Ok- We got video playing out through our Kona LHe card, and made sense of the prefs and output methods. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to bring in a 10-bit Uncompressed 4:2:2 Quicktime move with audio - OTAV told me again this was not an allowed file type. I went out and resaved these using 'None' compression and they played back OK. Should OTAV accept the 10-bit Uncompresseds? Am I missing something? Hopefully - otherwise I've got a huge batch of re-saves to do, and then I'll have two sets of projects - the Uncompresseds for the archive and compatibility, and the 'None'-compresseds for playout and exhibition. It's a significant amount of additional storage if so. How to go about it? And, while I feel like I've got a pretty good grasp on things generally, I would love someone to step up and explain just how 'None' compression differs from the QT Uncompresseds. I get that it allows you to alter bit depth without affecting the media, but why then is it shied away from as a storable, playable file type and used mainly as an intermediary?
I've read a lot here about the SheerVideo codec - has anyone tried this out on OTAV? Will using it mean I can only play files pack on systems that also have this codec installed?
Also, unrelated - is there any function in OTAv that would allow some lag between clips, a two or three second 'break' before the chain continues? Or should that be cut into the files themselves?
There are a lot of questions here. Thanks for taking on what you can-
Re: On the Air Video by Mike Skibra on Mar 12, 2008 at 4:46:12 pm
Not really sure why there are any problems with the 10 bit uncompressed files you have. Since I am not CG artist, I usually rely on industry contacts to provide me with some of their great work and most of that is 10 bit uncompressed. When I capture my own clips using MovieRecorder, I usually capture 8 bit just to save space. I suggest downloading the demo version of MovieRecorder and capturing it at 10 bpp and seeing if that works - it should. Let me know what happens.
Never tried the Sheer Codecs - but I assume that you will have to have the codec installed on all the machines you want to play it back on. That is the way it is with all codecs that are not installed as part of the OS. Like ProRes, IMX, etc.
Re: On the Air Video by Andrew Freiband on Mar 13, 2008 at 4:15:09 pm
Tried and tried again, and still haven't gotten OTAV to allow a 10-bit file in. It keeps telling me it's not a correct file type.
BUT... I CAN get an 8-bit Uncompressed file in, just as you had said. I can't figure out why that would be, and I image it would be an education in the subtleties between the two types. Any idea why 8-bit and not 10-bit? At least this would be usable, if I just tell all my content producers to come to me with 8-bit files - these would be OK for both exhibition and archiving. Still, the technicalities interest me.
Re: On the Air Video by Andrew Freiband on Mar 13, 2008 at 7:13:40 pm
I am using files generated both by AfterEffects renders and Final Cut exports, as well as conversions done in QT Pro. While I'm away from the card-accelerated system I can't get content through Movie Recorder - though I'm not sure how those files would be any different, if they're encoded with the same codec. But with FCP, AE, and QTPro, no 10-bit allowed, only 8-bit.
Re: On the Air Video by Mike Skibra on Mar 13, 2008 at 7:51:14 pm
Which codec are you outputting to? When you bring up your QT outputs,what are the 10 bit options. Reason for my asking - I use the BMD codecs - just wondering if there is an issue with another 10 bit codec. I cannot try the AJA ones right now as sent my card back to AJA - but other Softron folks have AJA cards for exactly this type of testing and if I can confirm what you are exporting to, I will ahve them check it out.
Re: On the Air Video by Andrew Freiband on Mar 13, 2008 at 9:53:27 pm
I am just using the Quicktime codecs, as haven't got on my testing machine here any proprietary hardware. Just plain vanilla 10-bit Uncompressed 4:2:2, out of QT, AE, and FCP.
Re: On the Air Video by Mike Skibra on Mar 13, 2008 at 10:17:07 pm
Send me you email address and I will send you a link to upload me your file as well as to send you the results of a Get Info of one of the 10 bit clips I use.
Just to be sure though - you are outputting 10 bit 4:2:2 with stereo audio.
Re: On the Air Video, Update by Andrew Freiband on Apr 30, 2008 at 9:11:47 pm
Regarding the playback of 10-bit uncompressed video - we got it working after much great help from Mike - thanks! Indeed, on the one machine we chose to use for rendering our content, the 10-bit Uncompressed codec was FCP's proprietary 10-bit, and didn't exist in the same version on the machine we were using to playback. Once we made sure the render/playback codec was exactly the same version, flavor, and orientation, OTAV worked fine.
