DC30 codec/Miro card for Protools

Does anyone out there have any experience with sending QTs to a protools suite using the DC30 card. Our mixer uses one and pointed us to the the third party driver made by the same folks that make the great MPEG Streamclip. It gives us a bunch of codec options but none of them seem to play back realtime on his system.
I've sent an email to the author but haven't heard back. We're working on tight deadlines so if we can save him a render or capturing the whole show it makes all our lives easier.

ak

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Hi,

I've got that configuration in one of my rigs, and it works just fine, so perhaps the data rate of the video you are trying to play is too high for the drive the video is on, or the codec is not friendly to the rig, for some reason.

The original MIRO driver was a proprietary codec, a motion jpeg A of some sort, and worked very well with PT using the 320x240 size at 29.97fps- it would play great on most Macs of the day(ten years ago!) and looked just fine for audio post work.

With the Squared5 driver you refer to (and a faster Mac), I've been able to use the stock Apple mjpegA, and also stock DV codecs. I'd stay away from Sorensen and .mp4, even though you might get them to show some video.
There is also a OS X control panel associated with the driver that has a variety of settings that may help- but you've probably already been down that road.

Another thing that comes to mind is that originally, the MIRO's were OS 9 (and PC) only- they never made the leap to OS X- in perusing the Squared5 web site, I recall seeing that certain revisions of the card were not supported-
Did/does this configuration ever work?

I've found it helpful to have seperate drives for the OS and app(the boot drive, of course), audio and session files, and reference video; YMMV.

I may be of more assitance if you tell me what the PT suite's rig contains.

Good luck.

tc

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tc
With the Squared5 driver you refer to (and a faster Mac), I've been able to use the stock Apple mjpegA, and also stock DV codecs. I'd stay away from Sorensen and .mp4, even though you might get them to show some video.

So the stock apple mjpegA and DV can play realtime through that card without a re-encode on his end? That would be better for quality in mix playback.

The OS X control panel didn't seem to have any effect on the codec renders out of FCP. We don't have the card on our edit systems so I can't tell if it does anything on this Dual 2.5 G5.

I think his rig is well tested but mostly with people giving him BetaSP that he captures through the card himself off an 1800. We're all XDCAM HD so we can't give him a tape source and have had to try delivering QTs.

We were finally able to get a test render to play realtime last night but the quality was low. I am going to see if the Apple mjpeg or DV codecs get us any improvement in time, quality, or file size.
Thanks TC. I've requested the stats on the PT rig for future reference.

ak

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Hey, there:

Andrew Kines Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So the stock apple mjpegA and DV can play realtime
> through that card without a re-encode on his end?

It does for me.

> We don't
> have the card on our edit systems so I can't tell
> if it does anything on this Dual 2.5 G5.

I don't think the card works on the G5's anyway...

> We were finally able to get a test render to play
> realtime last night but the quality was low. I am
> going to see if the Apple mjpeg or DV codecs get
> us any improvement in time, quality, or file
> size.

Well, that's good. Keep thinking lower data rates and 320x240 size...

> Thanks TC. I've requested the stats on the PT rig
> for future reference.
>
> ak

Happy to help.

tc