Pro Tools Video Output Options Compendium

Published on March 9, 2010 in tips. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

This is a reproduction of the first post of a thread on the Digidesign User Conference by the user “Nucelar” who decided to create a thread and outline the options, pros, cons, and costs of all the different options for displaying video with Pro Tools.

Pro Tools video Output options:

1. QuickTime to desktop monitor (1st or 2nd monitor port, with or without DVI-video adapter)
System requirements:
Any Mac or PC with a secondary DVI or equivalent monitor output
PROS: Cheapest solution. Low latency. Good quality when DVI or VGA is used. Handles most codecs Quicktime can play back.
CONS: You only have one monitor left for Pro Tools. Uses CPU for video decoding, thus less power available for other tasks (such as RTAS). Output only. Does not output a native video signal: may cause visible tearing due to refresh rate not equal to frame rate.
PRICE: Adapter 19 US$ from Apple + cable
for example here & here
Note: If you’re on a Mac Pro or G5, you could use a Matrox DualHead2Go on your primary DVI output to connect one more monitor, but it’s not approved by Digidesign.

2. Canopus converter (ADVC110 is the most popular and approved by Digidesign)
System requirements:
Any Mac with Firewire port (Firewire 400). FW 800 to FW 400 adapter cable may be needed. Should be used in a dedicated Firewire 400 bus, not in the same bus as interfaces or audio hard disks.
PROS: Cheap hardware. Controlled latency (about 18 quarter frames) . Captures SD analog video in DV format as a bonus (using third party application). Frees CPU from video decoding.
CONS: Mac only. Video must be available in DV format. SD only. Composite or S-Video output only. Irregular and unpredictable sync
PRICE: about 200 US$
WEB: ADVC family

3. Avid MOJO SDI
System requirements:
Any Mac or PC with Firewire port (Firewire 400). FW 800 to FW 400 adapter cable may be needed. Must be used in a dedicated Firewire 400 bus, not in the same bus as interfaces or audio hard disks.
PROS: Direct Compatibility with Avid video files (MXF). No latency with avid video. Captures video directly into Pro Tools session in sync. Frees CPU from video decoding.
CONS: Quite Expensive. SD only. Struggles with codecs other than Avid’s.
PRICE: 2500 US$
WEB: Avid Mojo SDI

4. Digidesign Video Satellite LE
System Requirements:
Main system must be Pro Tools HD. Needs a second computer dedicated exclusively to video output. Connects to the main PT system via Ethernet.
Secondary computer could be a Mac Mini, but then you’re stuck with the drawbacks of desktop video quality. For best performance, secondary computer should be a Mac Pro with a Decklink HD card. (see Post #2)
PROS: Dedicated, stable, scalable and flexible solution from Digidesign. Frees main CPU from video decoding.
CONS: Relatively Expensive, hassle of second computer
PRICE: Mac Mini+ Mbox micro + Video Satellite = aprox. 1200 US$
PRICE: Mac Pro + Decklink HD +Mbox Micro+ Video Satellite = aprox. 4200 US$
WEB: More info on the Video Satellite LE

5. Avid Video Satellite
WEB: More info on the Video Satellite

6. Chase video deck
System requirements:
Pro Tools System with Machine Control ability and of course a pro video deck.
PROS: You can use professional deck for direct playback and layback. No capture or conversion needed.
CONS: Very specific workflows. Tape-based, linear. Additional wear of deck heads. Downside when editing: forward-selecting to picture is not possible because PT only outputs positional info when selecting backwards.
PRICE: You don’t want to know the price of a digibeta deck.
Notes:The Rosendahl Bonsai Drive can be used as a standalone non-linear VTR, eliminating the drawbacks of tape-based decks. SD only.

7. Blackmagic PCI Card
System Requirements:
Any Mac Pro with a free PCI-e slot
PROS: Very good price/performance. Digi approved solution. Accepts all Quicktime-playable codecs. Very good video quality. Controlled latency.
CONS: It uses CPU Power for video decoding. Does not capture into Pro Tools or handle Avid video, unlike Mojo.
PRICE RANGE: from 200 US$ (Intensity) to 1000US$ (Decklink HD Extreme)
WEB: More info the Blackmagic web site

8.Virtual VTR
Third party software installed on a secondary Macintosh computer for dedicated video playback and recording.”Can be externally controlled via Midi, Sony 9-Pin protocols or TCP/IP, and can also synchronise playback, chasing timecode, even in multi-channel configurations.”
PROS: Basically the same as Video Satellite LE
CONS: Basically the same as Video Satellite LE, Mac Only
PRICE: Software is around 1000 US$
WEB: More info on Gallery web site

“Nucelar” has done an excellent job in producing this compendium and it provides an excellent resource to help all those who need to display video within Pro Tools sessions to choose the option that suits them best. I have gone for a Canopus ADVC 110.

What is the best QuickTime codecfor working with Pro Tools

Published on March 7, 2010 in tips. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Recently there have been two threads on the Digidesign User Conference on this subject.

One asking about the best codec to put the least strain on the host CPU

usastra asks

I have a session for a live concert with a quicktime movie using the H264 codec. When the movie is online it crashes very often, especially if I set the cursor to a new place in the timeline.
If the movie is offline PT is way more stable (though still with the occasional crash)..
I was wondering if the session could be made more stable if I render the movie with a different codec and which codec would be best so I would have the least CPU strain?

The other commenting on the load playing an mp4 file has on the host CPU.

Roger Stauss asked…

I’ve been using an Mp4 vid to ease the up/download time. The PT session runs with some latency. It’s very smooth with a QT DV. Is there a way to smooth out the session operation? (I run Video on separate drive)

I have compiled the best responses from both threads below…

Chief Technician advised simply…

Use the DV codec.

c.evans agreed…

Agreed. The DV codec works well on my system, but what really helped is adding the Canopus ADVC 110 and sending my video out to an external monitor. Also, it is very important that your video is playing from a separate drive than your audio. I even use the internal SATA buss for my video when using firewire for video. It also helps to have a third party PCI firewire card to add some beef and options to your system.

Craig F chipped in…

mp4 is a intraframe codec same as h264 hence heavy CPU usage.

José Luis Díaz explained…

Always choose intraframe codecs (DV, Motion JPEG-A, Photo JPEG, etc).
Always avoid interframe codecs (H264, Sorenson, etc).
Interframes codecs demand much more brute force from CPU than intraframe codecs.
Intraframe codecs only compress the data of one frame regardless any adjacent frame.
But to decode a simple interframe stream of frames (like H264) the CPU of your computer will dedicate a lot of its cycles just for that simple moving image because it must to compute differences and similarities between frames.
Check all this with Activity Monitor App.
Play a PT session with an interframe movie. Them the same with a intraframe movie.

Jon_Atkinson added….

Digidesign Technical Support have gone on record here a few times saying that H264 has been the root of many PT related QT problems. “A can of worms” was, I believe, the phrase used….

usastra responded…

Thanks for all the replies! For now, I have converted the videos to mjpegB and the session runs much smoother! I will experiment with other codec later.

philip888 asked….

What are you using to convert with?

usastra replied….

Quicktime Pro

Rick Sanchez confirmed….

A couple of solutions I found that worked well for me.

1. Once you’ve downloaded the video, use Quicktime Pro to transcode it to DV. If you have a fast computer, it’s pretty quick to do. Usually much quicker than the download time.

2. Tell the editors to send you Motion JPEG A video instead of MP4/H.264. It’s still very small and plays well with ProTools.

One of the falsehoods about H.264 is that it is not a frame accurate format. This is not really the case. It can have a variable frame rate, but that is a setting when you do the original encode/capture. What it is, is a long GOP (Group of Pictures) format. Much like Mpeg2. In the first frame, all of the pixels are captured. In between the first (key) frame the next (user selectable) key frame, the computer looks for differences between the the Key frame and the next frame and only encodes anything that has changed. If the pixels (say a non-moving background) stay the same from frame to frame, it just fills in the blank with already captured pixels. Then when the next Keyframe comes around again (I think the default is 24) it captures all of the pixels and starts over. It’s much like creating an audio ambiance fill track for a scene. You only need a few seconds of fill and then you loop it until there is the next change in ambiance.

I take no credit to the advice I have quoted here but do confirm it from my own experience.

Command Focus keyboard shortcut part 6

Published on March 5, 2010 in tips. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Timecode Commands (TDM Only)

These final two sets of commands relate to timecode features or the use of a stationary playhead are not available on Pro Tools LE.

Snap to timecode

Having ‘parked’ your machine at a suitable timecode position these 3 commands allow you to spot the highlighted region to the ‘parked’ timecode position. Protools will obviously need incoming timecode from a slaved machine for this to work.

Snap Start (of selected region) to timecode – Y

Snap sync point (of selected region) to timecode – U

Snap End (of selected region) to timecode – I

Snap to stationary Playhead

This group of commands allows you to snap your selected region to the playhead position.

Snap Start (of selected region) to playhead – H

Snap Sync point (of selected region) to playhead – J

Snap End (of selected region) to playhead – K

Conclusions from the ‘pain barrier’

For me the best parts of using the Keyboard Focus are being able to Zoom in and out both with the Preset zooms and the Zoom Out – R; and the Zoom in – T commands. These alone have made it worthwhile to have the Keyboard Focus on and the Track View toggle, Zoom toggle, Separate, and Nudge keys are serious bonuses. I still use the Smart Tool for the fades and the Trim tool but I am definitely declaring long live Keyboard Focus!

Links to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, part 4 & part 5.

Neyrinck Or Minnetonka for Dolby E Encoding/Decoding

Published on March 3, 2010 in comment and tip. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Found this thread on the Digidesign User Conference recently. Laki asked…

Looking at getting one of these and offloading my hardware boxes. Anybody care to weigh in on which to buy? The Neyrinck or Minnetonka version.

Mike Aiton posted…

Just a thought, but if you have the Dolby Audio Tool blue box, dont’t let go yet. The problem that I see with the software encode/decode solutions is that you can’t listen to your downmix with the metadata that you are encoding with. In the Uk on the Sky plaform, most viewers hear the downmixed 5.1 to 2.0 (as they don’t have a 5.1 decoder) so it is vital to be able to hear this. The network doesn’t transmit the LtRt that you sweated cobs over and loving put in your second programe audio on ch 7&8.. That said, I have passed this observation to Paul Neyrinck and he is “smarter than the average bear”, so I am sure a solution will be forth comming.

quadraphonics added…

I have tried both the Minnetonka and the Neyrinck software Dolby-E solutions, after using the hardware for a while and ended up purchasing the Neyrinck software. It was exceptionally easy to work with and the plug in (both encoder and decoder) worked just like the hardware – just faster. We have done well over 100 shows since we got this software. If you have any questions about how it performed in our workflow, I would be more than happy to help.

laki replied…

Thanks Randall! Tried both demos and came to the same conclusion.

Eventide announce their March Madness- their Reverb Plug-in at 70% Off!

Published on March 3, 2010 in announcement. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

From 3rd March to 31st March 2010 they are offering their Reverb plug-in for only $199!

One of the most highly regarded plug-ins in the Eventide Anthology II TDM bundle will be available for the month of March for only $199, a discount of over 70% off of its original retail price of $695.  Available for purchase as a download through Eventide plug-in dealers worldwide, or here, this full-featured, flexible, multi-effect plug-in born from Eventide’s flagship H8000 processor, the Eventide Reverb features nine room types, randomizing modulation, a Low-Fi effect, as well as a compressor, parametric EQ, and stereo delays.  This is a one-time-only promotion.  No extensions will be granted and, at the end of March, 2010, the Eventide Reverb will no longer be available as a separate plug-in.

For more details go to the special page on the Eventide web site.

Reports of increased occurences of 9019 & 9031 errors with Pro Tools 8.0.3

Published on March 2, 2010 in problem. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

There is a growing thread on the Digidesign User Conference on 9019 and 9031 errors on Pro Tools 8.0.3 It was started by Nathaniel Reichman asking…

Since moving from the various 8.0.1 releases to 8.0.3, I frequently get the message:
“DAE is having trouble keeping up. Your disk may be too slow…firewire, etc., etc. (-9019)” which is followed by a beachball and then: “DAE error -9031 was encountered.”
And this repeats until we quit the app and relaunch. Sometimes hours go by with no problem, sometimes we get this 3 times in an hour. We haven’t seen this in PTHD, only on the PTLE/CPTK system listed below. We tried trashing databases and volumes folder.

After some system and workflow checks Reichman confirmed…

Nothing has changed in my typical post workflow or drive usage since PT 7.3.
Thanks for posting, but I really doubt the non-contiguous file theory. If that were true, none of my projects would have worked with any version of Pro Tools. For now, I blame the .3.

“Garnoil” responded….

Ok, so it must be .3. I am on 8.03 and although I had one massive, annoying, problem (0922 too many files corruption), 8.03 *at least for me*, has been a great improvement. I run HD2 and push it to the limit, I mean 192 voices (160 tracks+) + full HD film at 2k resolution. So far, so good but of course there are lots of bugz to fix, some worse than others. Good luck!

Then Digi Tech Support weighed in…

I see you have an eSATA hotswap tower in there – is that what you’re using for playback/record? If so, have you tested with other drive types?

9019 is a drive error related to drive communication speed – we usually see it on PC’s where drives are not in DMA mode.

The 9031 error is usually related to having illegal characters in the drive, file or folder name – is that possibly the case here (keep in mind that previously fudged illegal character acceptance is no longer possible, so what may have ‘worked’ before no longer will)?

Reichman responded….

Yes. And I know it’s not officially approved, but it’s performed flawlessly every since PT 7.3 on a G5. I thought I cleaned out all of my illegal characters in the PT6-7 transition. Thank you for writing back so quickly. I’ll report back if I learn anything.

The “smpkeys” chipped in….

I just experienced this same problem. I’ve been on 8.0.3 for about 2 weeks and have not seen this, however , tonight I was using the playlist lanes view for the first time, and that’s when it occurred. All my drives are internal SATAs – 1 for OS, 1 for audio, 1 for samples. Not using any video in my session, and no illegal characters. Reichman – have you found a solution with your setup?

Reichman replied…

Haven’t found a solution yet, primarily because it is happening infrequently now. Occurred once yesterday when opening an AudioSuite plug-in window.
Every time it does happen, it will continue persistently until I save, quit and restart PT.
When I get out from under this mountain of work, I’ll try another drive type for a while and see if that helps.
For the record PT 8.0.3 is really stable. For PT8 doubters, now is the time to get on board (is Frank Kruse reading this? :) )

Digi Tech Support came back with a request…

Can you guys do something for me – after you experience the error, quit Pro Tools as soon as possible after it, then send me your LogFiles folder from inside your Pro Tools folder. Zip it up and send it to: vi [at] digidesign [dot] com. Put the thread number (265212) and ‘9031′ in the subject of the message.

“Sunzate” added…

I’m getting these errors right now with a midi-only session, controlling the PLAY EastWest orchestral plug-in. Never seen it before today. Recently updated to 8.0.3. Let me know how I can help.

Then “Oroz” asked…

I’m getting the DAE error -9031 a lot! Can you further explain what do you mean by illegal characters in the drive? How can I solve it?

Digi Tech Support replied…

Your Pro Tools Reference Guide has a list of unsupported characters. You should make sure that no drive, folder or file name contains any of those characters.

This error on Mac is also caused by incorrect drive format. I would recommend backing up your audio/video drives and erasing them using the Disk Utility, then copy the data back and test again.

Oroz asked…

Do you think that it may be because I’m recording to a partition (dedicated to audio) of the internal drive? If so, would a USB external drive be a solution? Since I’m on an iMac there’s only one Firewire 800 port. I have read successful stories from guys using USB drive as an alternative but I’m not sure.

Digi Tech Support replied…

Recording to a partition or to a USB drive is not recommended or supported and definitely could be a cause for these errors. Please see the General Troubleshooting thread for more details. With an iMac that has only one FW800 port, get a FW800 to FW400 cable to connect to your drives and interface.

smpkeys posted…

Just happened to me again on Saturday. This time when it happened, I was changing the output of a channel. Digi, I’ve zipped and sent my log file using the directions posted earlier.  One more thing – I had trashed prefs about 2 hrs before this crash.

So a couple of lessons from this thread. You cannot use USB drives for Pro Tools sessions. USB needs processor time to negotiate the data transfer on and off them and does it when it gets round to it. Where as Firewire has dedicated chips on the interface to manage the data transfer in a timely manner.

You must have correctly formatted drives irrespective of what platform you are running on. On the Mac platform that must be Mac OS Extended with journalling. I recommend you format your drives with Disk utility rather than any 3rd party formatting software.

Check the characters that are used for naming anything. Drives, folder, file names.

Waves special offers for March 2010

Published on March 1, 2010 in announcement. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Waves are offering 25% off their analog modeled plug-ins during March 2010

For more info on the SSL4000 bundle click here

For more info on the API collection click here

For more info on the V series collection click here

For more info on the Studio Classics collection click here

New version of Plug Tools announced with separate database service too.

Published on February 28, 2010 in announcement and update. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Mark has released a new version of this very interesting software package that is designed to check that a user has the latest version of plug-ins in your plug-in folder. Many Pro Tools instability problems end up being traced back to incompatible plug-ins and to make in more difficult the list on the Digidesign web site is incomplete and not always accurate which has led Mark to produce his own database. You can more info and a history on this software package Plug Tools on the Sticky thread at the Digidesign User Conference here. This is Mark’s new post…

I have made a new version of Plug Tools available that can automatically detect out of date plug-ins!

There is a small catch though…. I chose to create a database of plug-ins that Plug Tools can reference rather than using the Digidesign compatibility page. Digi’s page is incomplete, as users have mentioned in this thread, and the names it uses for the plug-ins doesn’t necessarily correlate to the actual names of the plug-ins as they appear on your hard drive. For example, sometimes it lists plug-in bundles without actually naming the plug-ins that make up that bundle… this posed problems for me when trying to parse the page to get meaningful data from it.

Making my own database poses a problem of it’s own though – it needs to be maintained. What I would like to see eventually is for Plug Tools to be able to not only pull information from the database, but to be able to edit the database directly. Say, for example, if a user has a newer plug-in on their system than Plug Tools knows about, it would update the database with the new plug-in information. (It would be even cooler if plug-in developers would update the database themselves whenever they released a new version of one of their plug-ins…) But for now, though, I have to rely on myself and Plug Tools users to update the database manually.

At the moment, the database only has accurate information on the plug-ins I have on my own system. In order for Plug Tools to be useful, that database needs to be more complete, and the only way for that to happen at this point is for users to get involved.

I encourage everyone to checkout the new version of Plug Tools, and if they have a plug-in on their system that it doesn’t recognize, then to go ahead and add that plug-in to the database using the simple web form I have created. There is no authentication required, I’m using the honor system at this point, so there is nothing stopping anyone from deleting all the plug-ins if they wanted to. I didn’t want to bother with authenticating though as I see this as a temporary measure until I can get Plug Tools to read/write MySQL directly. Please be kind. This could turn out to be a disaster but I didn’t know of any other way to complete the database.

Download Plug Tools here.

View/edit the plug-in database here.
(Plug-ins that need to be updated do not have a “filename” listed. This is name of the plug-in as it appears on your drive and needs to include the “.dpm” file extension.)

What’s new in version 1.3:

• User can edit reference plugins. File stored locally.
• User can “update” reference plugins from the net, replacing local plugs with those from server.
• preference to “update” reference plugs on startup.
• If not internet enabled, will use local reference file instead of getting new.
• updated server backend to MySQL rather than a plain HTML table. Plugin page is now dynamically created.
• (for now) users can add/edit/delete plugins on server via web interface.
• Main window redesigned. Web page now shares a tab view with the reference plugins table.
• Plug Tools now downloads plug-in list from server.
• Plug Tools can mark out of date plug-ins automatically.
• No longer necessary to specify where Pro Tools is installed.
• No longer necessary to specify out of date plug in folder.
• Plug-In table is sortable.
• Plug-in table colum order, width is persistent.
• You can activate/deactivate plug-ins via a checkbox in the Plug-in Table (moves them to Unused folder)
• clickable links to download plug-ins appear in Plug-In Table

ProTools 8.0.3 and Canopus crash problem – update 2

Published on February 26, 2010 in bug. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Things have been a little quiet since I last posted about this one but “Mike the amzing guy” asked Digi if they had made any progress on this and Digi Tech Support came back and said…

All I can get at the minute is that engineering is deep in the investigation of this one. No conclusive cause at the moment, but there’s progress in that initial fix implementation seems to be working.
Until the investigation and fix are complete and verified, I won’t really have much more to tell…

So it looks like progress is being made and Canopus users might be able to upgrade from 8.0.1 at some point soonish.

Waves announce Update Plan fee cap

Published on February 25, 2010 in announcement. 0 Comments Tags: , .

I have just received this from Waves about their Update Plan fees…

Waves is pleased to introduce a new cap on Waves Update Plan fees!

All non-overlapping Waves products (e.g. Platinum & SSL or Gold & Restoration, etc.)
are now capped at $200 per account per year.

No matter how many non-overlapping products you own or how long their coverage has been inactive – you’ll never pay more than $200 per account per year.

To be eligible for the new cap, you will need to confirm that you use all selected products on one computer at a time.

Waves Update Plan coverage for overlapping products (e.g. Gold & Platinum or Diamond & Mercury, etc.) or identical products (e.g. two Gold bundles) is still capped at $200 per product per year, as usual.

Here’s how to take advantage of the new cap:

  1. Access your Waves account and click Buy Waves Update Plan.
  2. Click I Confirm to verify that you use all selected products on one computer at a time.
  3. Select the first product. Identical and overlapping products will become inactive.
  4. Select additional products for Update Plan coverage. You may de-select and re-select products until you have the best combination.
  5. Click Buy Waves Update Plan to continue.
  6. To get Waves Update Plan coverage for other products, return to your Waves account main menu and repeat the steps above.

Find out more about Waves Update Plan

Looks like a move in the right direction.

About Me

I am an audio dubbing editor & mixer and a Digidesign Pro Tools specialist with a growing experience in 5.1 surround. I work in radio, TV sound, and 'new media' and I am committed to high quality in all areas at an affordable price.

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