Fuse X is Funky
by Mike George
on
May 24, 2006 at 3:23:26 pm
The only way I can describe it :)
First off We're using a Fuse x card with a dual 2.0 g5, os 10.4.4, 3.5 gigs of ram, recording to an internal s-ata dedicated to video (not the system drive), with media grabber.
Here are the issues:
1. We are having problems with frames dropping on capture.
2. The preview window is super jerky on capture. I'd be surprised if we are seeing more then 1 frame per second.
3. Last and most concerning... It just looks bad. Yesterday a client sent us some video in DVCPRO 50 format. We imported it into pro tools and played back simultaneously thought the fuse X card and in a QT window on another monitor. Both monitors are identical make and model. The quality of the image playing on the Fuse X was bulrry, and noisy, while the QT looked pretty good. The image on the Fuse X seems to be off both in terms of color and what I would call artifacting (but I'm an audio guy so I'm not sure I've used the right term).
I know this is a whole lot but any help you folks could offer would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Mike George
One Destiny Productions
212-213-9420
Re: Fuse X is Funky by Ron Lindeboom on May 24, 2006 at 3:41:29 pm
Hi Mike,
Reading this, I suspect that this is much more related to drives and throughput than it is to the card.
First thing I'd do (and please excuse me if you already know this but I always start at the basics when debugging something) is to check how your capture settings are set and what drive(s) they are capturing to. It sounds to me like it is trying to capture to your start-up drive and with all the other software running -- along with the system, etc. -- it's choking and dropping frames.
I am sure the Aurora guys will show up and have more questions and suggestions but that is where I would start looking.
Re: Fuse X is Funky by Mike George on May 24, 2006 at 4:31:08 pm
Not at all... The beginning is always the place to start. In terms of the frame dropping issue we also suspected a drive issue. We are capturing to a dedicated Non-System drive (internal s-ata 7,200 rpm's). Assuming this is fixable be changing over the media... What do you think about the quality issue?
I had a video delivered by a client yesterday captured on his system (Kona 3 I believe). It was delivered in DVCPRO 50 format. The quality playing out of the Fuse card is MUCH lower then the quality playing internally in QT. I'm going directly composite out of the Fuse/Composite in of my monitor. I'm using the same monitor to view the QT as I am to view the output of the Fusex.
The color is way off, the images are blurry, the fonts become hard to read... This apples to apples comparison leads me to believe there is a setting issue at work or the card just doesn't look great.
Re: Fuse X is Funky by Aurora Support on May 26, 2006 at 11:50:08 am
Mike,
When you say the image from the FuseX doesn't look as good as the QT output on the same monitor, are you saying this particular monitor has a composite and DVI or VGA input, and you are switching back and forth? If so this is not an issue with the FuseX but with the two formats you are viewing. The DVI/VGA one is probably a very high res, non-interlaced RGB format, while composite video is 720X480 interlaced with fairly poor color rendition. A better test would be to drive the S-Video output from the FuseX card as this would help the image quality, but you still can not compare a video signal to a direct RGB connection.
