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daveoggy
19th October 2005, 18:18
Does anyone know of a program for the PC that will allow me to control my PC from my edit deck. I have a blackmagic card will RS422 connection.

Mug Funky
21st October 2005, 06:56
you mean slave the computer to the deck?

not much demand for a tool like that. any reason you can't just write to tape the regular way? i'd need to know what you're doing and see if there's a workaround (are you getting audio from one source and video from the computer and dubbing the lot onto 1 deck or something? in that case just capturing the audio and lining it up in the NLE then exporting would be the easiest way, but it's a little hard disk intensive).

[edit]

this would be totally useful for doing hardware encoding from an uncompressed source without writing to tape... it'd also be good for segment re-encodes, as Spruce only talks to the Spruce encoder card (MPX3000), and that only works with SDI and RS422 leads. to be able to have spruce on a PC do a segment re-encode from a timeline on a mac (or PC of course) would be teh awesome. only problem would be ensuring realtime playback or there'd be problems.

writing to tape is probably the safest, but any loss is bad loss, and digibeta is a lossy format after all.

daveoggy
24th October 2005, 16:52
In all honesty this request has come from one of the editors. I don't know exactly what he is planning to do with this functionality. When I see him again I will ask.

The Mac version of what I need can be found here http://www.virtualvtr.com/ but so far I still can't find a PC based alternative

Mug Funky
25th October 2005, 08:35
the blackmagic codecs work the same for PC and mac, so you could always just drop the decklink card into a mac and use that program... i do the opposite when i need uyvy avi files instead of 2vuy movs.

btw, thanks for the link. that could be incredibly useful for segment-re-encoding. big timesaver i think (though possibly not that big :))

as for a PC counterpart, a guy here just saw that site and said he knew a guy who wrote something like this years ago for the PC. apparently the major problem was with reconciling the timecode on the machine with an accurate frame in the media file on the computer. frame-accuracy can be more difficult than it looks i suppose.

i don't know what became of this project (the guy was in the UK and i can't find his site), but at least we know it's possible :)

daveoggy
25th October 2005, 16:36
Hmm if I had a penny for every site I didn't bookmark and wish I had etc etc.

Swapping the card out won't work in my case, as my RAID 0 drive will only work with the PC. That being the only drive large enough to hold the 6 hours of HD footage I'm expecting.

I won't hold out too much hope in you - or anyone else - remembering any more about the details of the project you mentioned, but please post if you do.

daveoggy
26th October 2005, 10:46
What I need can be found here:

http://www.pixelutionshop.co.uk/index.asp?function=DISPLAYPRODUCT&productid=44

I hate to see a thread uncompleted :cool: