Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

Sound Devices PIX 240 ProRes/DNxHD Video Recorder with EPIC

Matt Mayer said:
We are planning on having a Red camera of some type. Not sure which model yet.

If we were going to demonstrate something, what would you like to see?
Click to expand...

Hey Matt,
thanks for asking. It would be great to see wide, medium and close shots of people both day and night, indoors and out. Something on a blue screen would be a great bonus.
I work on Alexa prores shows and would love to see how close a scarlet can get to fitting into that pipeline.
Thanks
sam
 
Sam Edwards said:
Hi Tom
Thanks for the reply. I hope you're right.
Cheers,
Sam
Click to expand...


just tested a scarlet a few hours ago. unfortunately the sdi still shows up at 12 fps. the timebase is set to 12 fps, and that is what you will be viewing it at. hd sdi does support that as a legit framerate, so no go on getting 1080 pro res recording with 5k FOV at 24p.

No cheating :)
 
Hi Matt,
a question in regard to the quicktime wrapped DNxHD media recorded on the Pix 240. To my understanding this will not be immediatelly playable in for example Avid DS due to the quicktime wrapping. It will have to be captured to be playable. This is naturally unfortunate. I would be greatful if you could explain why you didn´t choose a "more direct" route, or if this is an upcoming thing. For Avid users this would be a great advantage if possible.
Thanks
 
Andi Loor said:
Hi Matt,
a question in regard to the quicktime wrapped DNxHD media recorded on the Pix 240. To my understanding this will not be immediatelly playable in for example Avid DS due to the quicktime wrapping. It will have to be captured to be playable. This is naturally unfortunate. I would be greatful if you could explain why you didn´t choose a "more direct" route, or if this is an upcoming thing. For Avid users this would be a great advantage if possible.
Thanks
Click to expand...

Andi,

As I understand it, the MXF file spec is more complex and has more possible variations than the MOV spec.

It was decided to concentrate on the MOV wrapper to speed things for release.

AFAIK, if you use AMA import, Avid re-wraps the files almost as quickly as they are copied over.
 
Are you guys working on MXF capture with the Pix240?
AMA is buggy at best so its not a good way to work on an Avid system.
 
roryhinds said:
Are you guys working on MXF capture with the Pix240?
AMA is buggy at best so its not a good way to work on an Avid system.
Click to expand...

I am fairly certain it is on the road map, but not sure where it is in the queue.
 
Andi Loor said:
Hi Matt,
a question in regard to the quicktime wrapped DNxHD media recorded on the Pix 240. To my understanding this will not be immediatelly playable in for example Avid DS due to the quicktime wrapping. It will have to be captured to be playable. This is naturally unfortunate. I would be greatful if you could explain why you didn´t choose a "more direct" route, or if this is an upcoming thing. For Avid users this would be a great advantage if possible.
Thanks
Click to expand...

PIX240's QuickTime wrapped DNxHD files CAN be directly played back in AVID Media Composer. Let me explain in a little more detail how easy it is to use PIX DNxHD QuickTime files in an AVID workflow. I base these details on our tests with Media Composer 5.0, 5.5 and 6.

Fast Import: If you use the AVID import command to import a PIX DNxHD QuickTime file, AVID will automatically detect that it is a native DNxHD encoded file and perform a 'Fast Import' which simply involves de-interleaving/re-wrapping the QuickTime file into native MXF Op-Atom files. Avid by default puts the resulting Op-Atom files into the Avid MediaFiles folder. This process is very quick since no transcoding is necessary. The time taken to ‘Fast Import’ the PIX files direct from a PIX drive will only take a fraction longer than if you simply were to copy MXF files from an external drive direct to the Avid MediaFiles folder.

AMA-linking: The QuickTime AMA-plugin allows PIX files to be directly played back and edited from the PIX drive. This works well in MC5 and higher and is ideal for playback and simple edits, but there maybe a performance penalty if doing anything requiring heavy processing e.g. multiple streams, effects, rendering etc.

Obviously it is generally NOT good practice to work directly to the original recording drive – it is best to copy the data to the computer's local or network storage, not only because performance is more efficient but also because copying ensures you have a ready-made backup.

Overall, I would recommend using Fast Import with PIX files since it provides the best working practice in terms of performance and speed of workflow.

As far as supporting MXF, we are currently evaluating how it might benefit the PIX – AVID workflow.

Hope this clears up any misconceptions

best

Paul
Technical Development Manager
Sound Devices
 
Last edited:
Thanks both Matt and Paul,
unfortunately Avids high end online system and the system I mainly use, Avid DS, doesn't have AMA.
But thanks anyway
Andi
 
Has anyone else had any issues with corrupt frames (green flashes). I am currently troublshooting with SD, but I wanted to see if anyone else has seen this. When capturing from Epic at a 23.976 timebase/output, how are you having your PIX setup? I had mine on auto for signal/framerate (not the proper terminology since I don't have it next to me, but you should get the idea). Is that what others are using?
 
Green Glitches

Green Glitches

We had a couple of early shoots with green glitches that were sometimes completely filling the frame, sometimes an occasional hit. We were double recording RedMag and Pix so it was more of a test situation. SD told us that we should let the Epic fully boot before we boot the Pix. Something coming out of the Epic during boot somehow temporarally screwed up the Pix causing glitchy recording. After following this advice we had no more problems. They also suggested using the Pix as genlock source for the Epic. SD said doing either thing fixes the problem, but we bought the Red sync cable and have been doing both things, booting Epic first and having it lock to Pix sync out. Make sure you set the Pix sync out to match the proper frame rate. We have been rock solid since.
 
Mark Crabtree said:
We had a couple of early shoots with green glitches that were sometimes completely filling the frame, sometimes an occasional hit. We were double recording RedMag and Pix so it was more of a test situation. SD told us that we should let the Epic fully boot before we boot the Pix. Something coming out of the Epic during boot somehow temporarally screwed up the Pix causing glitchy recording. After following this advice we had no more problems. They also suggested using the Pix as genlock source for the Epic. SD said doing either thing fixes the problem, but we bought the Red sync cable and have been doing both things, booting Epic first and having it lock to Pix sync out. Make sure you set the Pix sync out to match the proper frame rate. We have been rock solid since.
Click to expand...

Mark, when you had those green hits, did you lose audio? Were you recording audio to it? Trying to figure out my best way to get audio to the unit (since my epic hates audio right now).
 
Mark Crabtree said:
We had a couple of early shoots with green glitches that were sometimes completely filling the frame, sometimes an occasional hit. We were double recording RedMag and Pix so it was more of a test situation. SD told us that we should let the Epic fully boot before we boot the Pix. Something coming out of the Epic during boot somehow temporarally screwed up the Pix causing glitchy recording. After following this advice we had no more problems. They also suggested using the Pix as genlock source for the Epic. SD said doing either thing fixes the problem, but we bought the Red sync cable and have been doing both things, booting Epic first and having it lock to Pix sync out. Make sure you set the Pix sync out to match the proper frame rate. We have been rock solid since.
Click to expand...

Mark,
are you using this cable? http://www.red.com/store/cables/product/3bnc-to-00-lemo-sync-cable. if so, do you only use the timecode and genlock cables.
Thanks,
Shane.
 
Mark Crabtree said:
We had a couple of early shoots with green glitches that were sometimes completely filling the frame, sometimes an occasional hit. We were double recording RedMag and Pix so it was more of a test situation. SD told us that we should let the Epic fully boot before we boot the Pix. Something coming out of the Epic during boot somehow temporarally screwed up the Pix causing glitchy recording. After following this advice we had no more problems. They also suggested using the Pix as genlock source for the Epic. SD said doing either thing fixes the problem, but we bought the Red sync cable and have been doing both things, booting Epic first and having it lock to Pix sync out. Make sure you set the Pix sync out to match the proper frame rate. We have been rock solid since.
Click to expand...


Good to hear some of these workarounds. I was working with the Epic/PIX combo on a feature and had a lot of problems with corrupt frames, and while SD did suggest genlocking using the pix, I don't think we were able to get it to eliminate the problem fully (though it's worth mentioning that we were very limited on crew and time, so we never had the opportunity to test extensively). There was a stream of firmware updates that seemed to address these issues, though even without the corrupt frames, we had timecode sync issues, which essentially killed our hopes of using the pix media as our offline files.

As frustrating as that was, we were still able to use the Pix files as a playback device, an extra monitor, and a way to sort through synced dailies and determine circled takes for selective transcoding.

All that said, it seemed odd to me that I was having so many issues while others have been reporting rock-solid performance (without genlocking and all these other workarounds). Either way, I'm looking forward to the Pix workflow functioning on all expected levels in the future, as I think it will be a powerful tool for those of us without a rocket...
 
kylebainter said:
Mark, when you had those green hits, did you lose audio? Were you recording audio to it? Trying to figure out my best way to get audio to the unit (since my epic hates audio right now).
Click to expand...

We occasionally lost audio sync if there was a large glitch, though for the most part (to the best of my recollection), audio stayed intact despite frame corruptions.
 
Has anyone had experience with it on an R1? Most of my work is broadcast. Thanks guys.
 
Mark Crabtree said:
We had a couple of early shoots with green glitches that were sometimes completely filling the frame, sometimes an occasional hit. We were double recording RedMag and Pix so it was more of a test situation. SD told us that we should let the Epic fully boot before we boot the Pix. Something coming out of the Epic during boot somehow temporarally screwed up the Pix causing glitchy recording. After following this advice we had no more problems. They also suggested using the Pix as genlock source for the Epic. SD said doing either thing fixes the problem, but we bought the Red sync cable and have been doing both things, booting Epic first and having it lock to Pix sync out. Make sure you set the Pix sync out to match the proper frame rate. We have been rock solid since.
Click to expand...


It's strange quoting myself, but this really works.
 
Rob Macey said:
Has anyone had experience with it on an R1? Most of my work is broadcast. Thanks guys.
Click to expand...

Same here, got a Red One and would like to know how functional this would be... waiting for Epic Stage 3 call, but if next job starts before delivery it would be great to offer this as an option to speed up post which was a major point for those in production that had used the Alexa on previous jobs -they see the easy option of no transcoding time, and time is money after all.

On another point, I understand the mov/mxf situation can be sorted with a quick import into the edit, however, standalone mxf would resolve all avid issues would it not?

I still think an on camera module would be the way to go.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top