Edius/procoder/hd work flow question

[RonnieMartin]

Edius/procoder/hd work flow question

For several years I toured all of the US and Canada lecturing for a major dental supply company at university graduate programs and trade shows. I built my lectures on the Canopus/edius time line then exported to DV tape. I used a small Sony mini DV VCR player and connected it to a projector via SVHS and sometimes firewire. The images were super and I was able to incorporate Digital Juice back grounds and sound effects in the lectures. The result was light years ahead of Power Point. Since it was all video I was able to incorporate clips from my Zeiss microscope that were stunning. The remote to the DV VCR controlled the stopping and starting of the images.

I now have a client (professor) that saw some of my lectures and wants to do the same thing but to use her computer as the play back mechanism. She wants it in HD.

I plan to shoot everything in HDV (1440x1080) or maybe HD (1920x1080) with a Sony EX-1 and build the lecture on the Edius 4.x BC (hopefully 4.6) time line. She will provide the script so that I can time the length of the images.

Her computer will have a DVI-I output and the projector a DVI-I input.

Two questions:

1. In what format do I export the time line so that it will play from her computer so that it will remain HD?

2. What soft ware will we need to play the file and have the ability to start and stop playback with the press of the space bar?

Sorry for the long post. However, this is probably the most important project I have landed in a long time. It more than likely will lead to a major grant for the conversion of many lectures to this method.

If it is not possible to do it in HD or HDV, I can always produce a 16X9 SD DVD and play it from the computer with something like Win DVD.

Thanks guys…..

Ronnie

[gdame]

Edius/procoder/hd work flow question

For several years I toured all of the US and Canada lecturing for a major dental supply company at university graduate programs and trade shows. I built my lectures on the Canopus/edius time line then exported to DV tape. I used a small Sony mini DV VCR player and connected it to a projector via SVHS and sometimes firewire. The images were super and I was able to incorporate Digital Juice back grounds and sound effects in the lectures. The result was light years ahead of Power Point. Since it was all video I was able to incorporate clips from my Zeiss microscope that were stunning. The remote to the DV VCR controlled the stopping and starting of the images.

I now have a client (professor) that saw some of my lectures and wants to do the same thing but to use her computer as the play back mechanism. She wants it in HD.

I plan to shoot everything in HDV (1440x1080) or maybe HD (1920x1080) with a Sony EX-1 and build the lecture on the Edius 4.x BC (hopefully 4.6) time line. She will provide the script so that I can time the length of the images.

Her computer will have a DVI-I output and the projector a DVI-I input.

Two questions:

1. In what format do I export the time line so that it will play from her computer so that it will remain HD?

2. What soft ware will we need to play the file and have the ability to start and stop playback with the press of the space bar?

Sorry for the long post. However, this is probably the most important project I have landed in a long time. It more than likely will lead to a major grant for the conversion of many lectures to this method.

If it is not possible to do it in HD or HDV, I can always produce a 16X9 SD DVD and play it from the computer with something like Win DVD.

Thanks guys…..

Ronnie

Ronnie, how about the free playback only codec from GV/Canopus. It lets you playback Canopus HQ, Lossless and DV files. Or if storage speed and capacity are an issue, how about a WMV-HD VC-1 file.

Either way the computer will need to be designed for the task. Not quite as simple as playing back a DV tape. If you do go the 16:9 SD-DVD route, then a low cost upconverting DVD player and a projector with HDMI input would be similer to the styly of DV tape playback with the benifit of chapter points. The creative authoring aspect of SD-DVD may also add to the overall effect of the presentation.

[RonnieMartin]

I don't know if this would work or not but I have a 1 TB external raid running raid 0. It has both fire wire and USB connections. If the computer would play the Canopus HQ lossless file and have the capability of starting and stopping the playback by pressing the space bar that would work. I agree with you that a 16x9 SD DVD at this point would work fine.

What I did for over 5 years was use the Sony DV playback deck. I gave the same or similar lectures so many times that I could judge how long a graphic or clip needed to play. If I wanted to stop I just pressed the pause button on the remote and the images would freeze with out jitter. If I talked long enough with it stopped it would time out and go to black which was fine. If the video got behind I would simply let it run for a few seconds before speaking again.

All in all, lecturing with video had so many more possibilities than a plain PP presentation even though PP is much better now. Lecturing with video is great. However, it still needs audio. We captured all the sound from the operatory and the lectures were a hit.

The main advantage was the ability to record clips through the microscope and show actual treatment from the doctors view point. Most of what we had used in the past was digital stills from a spectators viewpoint. This was confusing because the students (doctors) were accustomed to viewing their work upside down and in a mirror.

Edius always came to my rescue especially with multicam. I go way back to Rex Edit 1.0 and back then we used two cameras plus the camera on the microscope. We put a PIP filter on two of the clips and had a three camera edit. Worked better than any thing else on the market.

I am in debt to Canopus/grassvalley/edius, hardware and software along with all the folks on this forum for the success of our little company.

Thanks

Ronnie
Kato Video Productions

https://www.dirtracingvideo.com

[Philip]

Just an idea. Not sure if it will be the best solution but here goes.

I recently did a presentation and a videographers conference. I used the latest version of PowerPoint on a Dell laptop. The new version of PowerPoint is much better than older versions I tried in the past. I knew you could load Videos into a PowerPoint slide so I decided to encode all my video clips at 1mps wmv video files like I would put on my website. I embedded them into a PowerPoint slide and told it to play immediately. Whenever I clicked "next" on my controller the video kicked off and played fine. For some reason there was a quick flash as the projector got ready for a video file but it was not that annoying.

I wonder how well it would work if you encoded those HD files as WMV_HD files like someone else recommended and embedded them into a PowerPoint presentation. They may play fine and may not. You do need a capable computer to to seamlessly playback WMV_HD files but it may be a flexible solution that would make "free flow" of the presentation much easier. The only drawback is that once a video starts playing there are now VCR controls to pause the video but you can take your time through the power point presentation and go at your pace instead of a predetermined "programmed" pace.

Just a thought...I haven't tested this but it worked great for my presentation recently. I figure since the video files are wmv they may play with Powerpoint better than an AVI file would.

Just an idea.

[pjsssss]

Ronnie, another option if you go the HDV output route and she will use a deck, you can buy a HDV deck and work just as you did in the past. A few months ago I had to get a new deck and bought one of the Sony HDV decks. Cost was not too bad and it works just like DV.

[rsn108]

I would suggest exporting as HD Windows Media, either 1280x720 or 1920x1080, depending on the resolution of the projector, and playing it from the computer using Windows Media Player. The only problem will be that using the space bar will not pause the video in Media Player. You have to use the mouse to click on the pause icon at the bottom of the screen. Any reasonably modern computer can play WMV HD files.

[gdame]

I would suggest exporting as HD Windows Media, either 1280x720 or 1920x1080, depending on the resolution of the projector, and playing it from the computer using Windows Media Player. The only problem will be that using the space bar will not pause the video in Media Player. You have to use the mouse to click on the pause icon at the bottom of the screen. Any reasonably modern computer can play WMV HD files.

While I agree on the format and ease of playback, I bet this pause/play procedure is a HUGE factor!

Get a keyboard with multimedia functions. The Pause/Play button will do this at one touch with an HD wmv file. I just tried it on my Edius keyboard. :)

[RonnieMartin]

Thanks guys for all your suggestions.... the multimedia key board solution sounds great. Only problem is that for portability (air travel) the source will be a high end laptop. When I traveled several years ago I used one of the small Sony DVD decks. I had a real problem going through some small airports where the TSA were not trained well and on one occasion almost lost my deck. The inspector kept telling me it was a laptop and I kept explaining it was a VCR. She told me to "make it play" and I explained that it needed 110 AC and she didn't know what that was. So I finally asked for her supervisor and he realized what it was and let me through. Things are supposed to be better now. At least most everybody knows what a laptop is. (Hopefully)

Thanks again for all your help.

Ronnie

[gdame]

Most high end laptops have these multimedia keys built-in. There are also very compact wireless key boards specifically for laptops and portability.