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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

FS: Quantel Pablo 4K + S3D with NEO PANEL

Marc Wielage said:
This is a fascinating story. While I'm sympathetic to Tim, I'd say if you gave Quantel one more chance to send some people over an analyze the problem, maybe there's a compromise that will work for you. I know of a bunch of companies all over the world using Pablo every day to create billable work, so the system can work.

My observation: it seems to me that network and pipeline issues are at the core of what's creating problems for you. For that, you've got to get the IT people to integrate everything and make sure it precisely follows the manufacturer's recommended configs. Coming up with a fast, efficient pipeline is probably the single most difficult hurdle for any modern post firm, and there aren't a lot of cheap, easy solutions for a big facility.

I can tell you in the old days of Complete Post in Hollywood, there were a few occasions where certain high-profile companies (no names) delivered some very buggy products -- scanners, effects systems, and color correctors. Our corporate guys generally paid 25% upfront for the gear, then had a contract which specified that the product had to function exactly as described, or else we wouldn't pay. Sometimes it took a year or two before our engineers were satisfied enough that we paid the rest of the bill. I know of another case where a major Glendale-based post company bought a high-end online editing system that never worked properly, and they took the manufacturer to court and won.

Before it gets that bad, I'd say give Quantel the opportunity to make things right or at least assess the install and see if they can come up with a fix. Are you talking to the guys in Toronto or in London?
Click to expand...

yeah that all sounds really good in THEORY... unfortunately only the salesman calls us anymore and that not until I posted this. The rest of the company has not responded to calls or emails... FOR MONTHS! Q Care is now suspended (LONDON) because we refuse to pay the bill and they truly could not give a shit. The CEO has <2 years left before retirement and will be gone with a huge severance... all he seems to care about is the bottom line. Hence my animosity.

We know exactly how to configure our network... but when the Pablo recognizes NO NEW DRIVES... its impossible to even get a project in to work on, or connect an INGEST SERVER... it wont see it. because the PC is completely EFFED UP..
and they are in DENIAL about the box... or just dont care.

Our experience is SO MUCH WORSE than the tempered version in this thread. The best part was when we sold our first box and Quantel held the cash for 7 months... until we agreed to buy another box!

We emailed the CEO as to what it would take to remedy... so far... SILENCE. So while I appreciate the thought... its FAR beyond that point. They could care less about our little company once we put the kool-aid down and started questioning what the hell it was we were being billed for.

THANK GOODNESS we dont depend on that kit for revenue or we would have gone BK!
 
This is an interesting thread Tim and it sounds like you've really been through the ringer but you are probably deterring any potential buyers as well.
 
Right but I assume while it may not be a revenue stream, you certainly don't want a $150k paperweight. Is it more valuable to you to cock block Qnautel sales or make a $150k? Just sayin' Good luck.
 
Excuse my ignorance, but is it that the qCare expired and that is why it is broken, or is it actually broken? So if someone bought this and then subscribed to qCare, theoretically it would be fixed? Is it something that Quantel has to authorize and say, "Yeah, we will totally service this machine." Because if they don't service it, then there is no way to fix it, right? Not an expert in Quantel and how they work, I think they make cool machines, but not 100% sure how the big guys do things. I keep seeing Mistika brought up, I have seen that system and it is very cool too, but have you ever seen the demo and asked someone to edit on it?? Its obviously not an editing system, but it has a very cool and powerful toolset, once you learn how to use it. Steep learning curve for sure. I think for high end Mistika has an edge, but for down and dirty editing and sound and laying off to tape, Quantel is definitely the winner. I can't afford either, but the original poster said, "Feel Free to Comment"

Good luck with the sale!
 
The system works FINE. So long as you use the existing footage on the Dylans :) - the problem is that the system no longer recognizes external drives - so you cant bring new projects in. (Unless they fit on a 4GB thumb drive. the ONLY drive it will read. Clearly caused by permission and registiry corruption. The system broke under Q Care... was not fixed and then Q Care expired. A dispute was born and Quantel basically now wants more $. after REFUSING TO RENISTALL THE SOFTWARE which is all that was left to do. SIMPLE STUFF> QUANTEL REFUSED.

Now they want more $ to buy more Q care, which will not fix the box... and/or to REALLY fix the box, since the registry issue is a KNOWN WIN 64 problem (yes, they still use 2002 technology) then they simply want another $30K to UPGRADE THE PC to a QUAD CORE and WIndows 7 as well as V5.1 software. (Currently runs on V4) V5 was known to be very buggy. V5.1 is supposedly fixed a lot of those bugs.

QUANTEL STILL HAS MADE NO EFFORT TO REMEDY> Not with kindness and professionalism FIRST... nor with my obnoxious calling them on their shit online. THEY COULD GIVE A FUCK . SO now I hope to deter future sales... and while I would love to sell this paperweight... I will take just as much pleasure costing them future business if I can. Because this STORY IS TRUE... so there is no defamation. QUANTEL iclearly does not give a shit.

Yes, I am WAY impressed with Mistika... the learning curve is not that bad... their development speed is insanely fast and really its ERGONOMIC workflow stuff that needs ironing out.. not functionality. MISTIKA will soon rule the heavy iron world and definitely us a MUST own for S3D. Color needs the most work but as I said. Mistika develpps incredibly fast... small and nimble companies thrive with good support.

BLOATED old school companies that print money on the broadcast side could GIVE A FUCK.

OH LOOK, another one is for sale on EBAY... exactly the same as mine... but mine is $45K LESS>

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Quantel-Pab...deo_Cameras&hash=item19b7c01abf#ht_500wt_1156
 
Tim Whitcomb said:
The system works FINE. So long as you use the existing footage on the Dylans :) - the problem is that the system no longer recognizes external drives - so you cant bring new projects in. (Unless they fit on a 4GB thumb drive. the ONLY drive it will read. Clearly caused by permission and registiry corruption. The system broke under Q Care... was not fixed and then Q Care expired. A dispute was born and Quantel basically now wants more $. after REFUSING TO RENISTALL THE SOFTWARE which is all that was left to do. SIMPLE STUFF> QUANTEL REFUSED.

Now they want more $ to buy more Q care, which will not fix the box... and/or to REALLY fix the box, since the registry issue is a KNOWN WIN 64 problem (yes, they still use 2002 technology) then they simply want another $30K to UPGRADE THE PC to a QUAD CORE and WIndows 7 as well as V5.1 software. (Currently runs on V4) V5 was known to be very buggy. V5.1 is supposedly fixed a lot of those bugs.

QUANTEL STILL HAS MADE NO EFFORT TO REMEDY> Not with kindness and professionalism FIRST... nor with my obnoxious calling them on their shit online. THEY COULD GIVE A FUCK . SO now I hope to deter future sales... and while I would love to sell this paperweight... I will take just as much pleasure costing them future business if I can. Because this STORY IS TRUE... so there is no defamation. QUANTEL iclearly does not give a shit.

Yes, I am WAY impressed with Mistika... the learning curve is not that bad... their development speed is insanely fast and really its ERGONOMIC workflow stuff that needs ironing out.. not functionality. MISTIKA will soon rule the heavy iron world and definitely us a MUST own for S3D. Color needs the most work but as I said. Mistika develpps incredibly fast... small and nimble companies thrive with good support.

BLOATED old school companies that print money on the broadcast side could GIVE A FUCK.

OH LOOK, another one is for sale on EBAY... exactly the same as mine... but mine is $45K LESS>

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Quantel-Pab...deo_Cameras&hash=item19b7c01abf#ht_500wt_1156
Click to expand...

Hey Tim.
Just curious. Why does thumb drive works, but another drive with same file structure would not? Does it recognize ANY external drives, beside the thumb drive?
In either case, how about getting the stuff into Pablo through the network, like NFS? Or that too is hosed?
There has to be a way to make some money out of that system, rather, than just let it rust, no?
 
jake blackstone said:
Hey Tim.
Just curious. Why does thumb drive works, but another drive with same file structure would not? Does it recognize ANY external drives, beside the thumb drive?
In either case, how about getting the stuff into Pablo through the network, like NFS? Or that too is hosed?
There has to be a way to make some money out of that system, rather, than just let it rust, no?
Click to expand...

Hey jake. registry is really badly corrupted on the windows side. mainly Windows 64 creates "generic volume" as the name of every single drive. with over 100 of those generic volumes in the registry. its all but impossible to tell which is which... which in turn is causing cross talk issues and drives just cant be seen. on top of that is was the LA demo... and had multiple users and permissions and those also got corrupted and the admin is no longer admin. we also decided to delete every single generic volume and start over and it will now only read a single PC formatted drive (forget anything formatted on a MAC.... even with MAC DRIVE 8 - which ironically used to work fine before) and a thumb drive.

the funny thing is we bought an ingest server to deal with this issue... but it wont recognize that either! if we could just get that going, then the issue would be resolved.

We havent lost any jobs really... put Apple Color is such a LABORIOUS work flow for a feature. especially if you have speed changes and mix resolutions. With Resolve 8.1 and AVID RT supported and (hopefully) FCP round tripping is close behind... then that will make life much easier.

But there are certainly times... we wish it worked... but Quantel literally only has the salesman call and its always a song and dance about how much more $ we need to spend. $500K in 2 years on 2 boxes that were both sold to us weeks before the new
software REV came out... thats short sighted bad business... but they dont care about a small shop in Portland, OR... so for the salesman it was AWESOME busness. He got 3 commisions. 2 new and 1 used so far.
 
Tim Whitcomb said:
Hey jake. registry is really badly corrupted on the windows side. mainly Windows 64 creates "generic volume" as the name of every single drive. with over 100 of those generic volumes in the registry. its all but impossible to tell which is which... which in turn is causing cross talk issues and drives just cant be seen. on top of that is was the LA demo... and had multiple users and permissions and those also got corrupted and the admin is no longer admin. we also decided to delete every single generic volume and start over and it will now only read a single PC formatted drive (forget anything formatted on a MAC.... even with MAC DRIVE 8 - which ironically used to work fine before) and a thumb drive.

the funny thing is we bought an ingest server to deal with this issue... but it wont recognize that either! if we could just get that going, then the issue would be resolved.

We havent lost any jobs really... put Apple Color is such a LABORIOUS work flow for a feature. especially if you have speed changes and mix resolutions. With Resolve 8.1 and AVID RT supported and (hopefully) FCP round tripping is close behind... then that will make life much easier.

But there are certainly times... we wish it worked... but Quantel literally only has the salesman call and its always a song and dance about how much more $ we need to spend. $500K in 2 years on 2 boxes that were both sold to us weeks before the new
software REV came out... thats short sighted bad business... but they dont care about a small shop in Portland, OR... so for the salesman it was AWESOME busness. He got 3 commisions. 2 new and 1 used so far.
Click to expand...

Understood. I use XP64 and HFS+ support is questionable on that too. Don't ask me why I'm using XP64 and not Win7. It's a long story...Basically with XP 64 and with Paragon HFS+ FW400 and FW800 work, but not USB2. And it can only read those drives, but not write:-)
Anyway, I found, that using Gigabit ethernet for shuffling data between Mac and PC actually pretty usable. I see all shared drives on both computers, like they're local drives and I can, if needed, render to those network drives. The biggest issue I have on Windows side is drives letters, that needs to be assigned and keep track of them.
But if you can mount Mac drives over the network and access them this way, although it is not ideal, would that be a workable solution?
I'm not a fan of Pablo (proprietary hardware), but I hate to see you waisting such a great resource...
 
jake blackstone said:
Understood. I use XP64 and HFS+ support is questionable on that too. Don't ask me why I'm using XP64 and not Win7. It's a long story...Basically with XP 64 and with Paragon HFS+ FW400 and FW800 work, but not USB2. And it can only read those drives, but not write:-)
Anyway, I found, that using Gigabit ethernet for shuffling data between Mac and PC actually pretty usable. I see all shared drives on both computers, like they're local drives and I can, if needed, render to those network drives. The biggest issue I have on Windows side is drives letters, that needs to be assigned and keep track of them.
But if you can mount Mac drives over the network and access them this way, although it is not ideal, would that be a workable solution?
I'm not a fan of Pablo (proprietary hardware), but I hate to see you waisting such a great resource...
Click to expand...

Thanks jake... thankfully have a SALE PENDING
 
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