I have AXP and am considering adding DS Assist Station to my workflow.

I am working on a documentary that I hope will get picked up theatrically. (Realistic? Probably not, but there is enough of a chance that I have to plan for things like online finishing and film out.)

So my thinking is to cut and do some basic post work in AXP or MC, but then use DS to finish as much as I can. The result would be a DS project which (in theory) would have much of the finishing completed which I could then give to a post house. I am hoping the finishing would be significantly cheaper than if I gave an AXP or MC project.

I realize there is also the possiblity of using Boris Red or After Effects. But I imagine that any color correction or finishing done in AE would for my eyes only and DVD/tape out. Since I assume that while the AXP or MC project will be used by the post house the AE work would be wholely ignored. I'm not sure about Boris.

The highest band width I would be editing would be uncompressed 1080 X 1920 24P. But mostly a lot of HDV.

Does it make sense for someone to use a combination of AXP or MC to cut and DS Assist Staton to essentially pre-finish?

Thanks VERY MUCH for your insights!

 

P.S. I realize that DSAS would require a new, 64 bit computer.

I've seen a couple of DS users with this setup post on the DS-L. They seem to have had great success. The only question I would have,  is whether or not to put it on the same partition? The user who had the Assist on the same partition, was running Adrenaline. He stated he was able to have both softwares open at the same time. The user who had a seperate partition, had a Mojo SDI. Here's a link to a DSAS story on Dig Content Producer with someone grading films using DSAS. http://digitalcontentproducer.com/mil/hotware/video_avid_ds_assist_0101/

You can download a trial version of the DS Assist from here http://www.avid.com/forms/info.asp?iTrackingID=WEBDSASSIST and give it a try. With an AJA Xena LE card, you can even get monitor outputs. Here's the config sheet for DSAS

Dual-Processor *
-	Intel Pentium 4 Xeon
-	AMD Opteron dual-core
RAM
-	2 GB (Windows XP 32-bit)
-	4 GB or more (Windows XP 64-bit)
Graphics card *
-	Wildcat 6210
-	ATI FireGL X1
-	ATI FireGL X2
-	nVidia Quadro FX 3400
-	nVidia Quadro FX 3450
Monitor
-	SVGA supporting 1280 by 1024 display resolution (dual monitor suggested)
Network
-	Gigabit Ethernet adapter
Operating system
-	Windows XP Professional (x86)
-	Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (recommended for best performance) Qualified Laptop (New): - HP nw9440 Mobile Workstation with FX1500M graphics and 2 GB of RAM This laptop has been tested and can be used as a standalone Avid DS Assist Station to prepare effects work for other Avid DS Workgroup clients, or even other Avid editorial products. This laptop has not yet been tested for local storage, or shared storage solution such as Avid Unity ISIS.

You stated, "The highest band width I would be editing would be uncompressed 1080 X 1920 24P. But mostly a lot of HDV." My question would be, how are you capturing the uncompressed? Maybe rent time on an Adrenaline for that footage?


Write back with what you find out.

Michael

 Michael,

One question that I've gotten varying answerw too is "How much more color correction and sound editing does DS offer over MC?" I'm doing a documentary, so it won't be effects intensive.

That said I'd like to do as much of the "finishing" as I can.

I will be capturing uncompressed from a Canon XH-G1 out of its HD-SDI port into a in a pc with a BlackMagic card and RAID array.

Thanks very much for your input :).

DS has a much greater toolset than MC. Its color corrector is like the Symphony's. It has full control over many different areas. Highlights, Midtones,Shadows and RGB can be further broken down into Setup, Gamma, Saturation and Brightness/Contrast. Secondary Color control, Powerwindows with trackable, spline based shapes, per channel corrections and the ability to work in 8, 16 or 32 bit float are fantastic. It's very easy to open multiple reference windows and match colors between shots. Effects can be copied and pasted between clips or cuts or placed on floating/dockable toolbars. Also you can create source side effects that affect a whole tape at once.

Audio is decent, you can edit sample based much like Pro-Tools. It has effects such as reverb, dynamics gain and eq to name a few. You can use VST plugins and easily animate faders on the fly. The timeline can be made to loop as you animate levels or move clips around to synch them up. One of the nice features is that you only have to draw the waveform once. Once it's drawn and cached, you can zoom and pan without having to wait for a redraw.

Another nice feature for documentaries is the ability to link in large files and pan and zoom. Subtitles can be conformed with one button click. The last time I dealt with subtitles on a Symphony it was a 3 day process. On the DS the same job took 2 hours.

I think you've got a good idea here, to do some pre-finishing. I've done quite a few major features where we pre-grade the HD material and it is used as reference in the DaVinci suite. Kind of an offline grade. Your situation is even better if you use a DS for the final finish/output since all of the effects would conform between systems.

Good luck with your doc.

Michael

If you want to PM me, I can send you a VPN link to my system for a demo.

Michael

Hey BobbyMercerFan;

Just saw this, thanks for the mention Michael! 

And thought i might add that at the CSC (Canada's version of the ASC) awards on March 29 i did the DI on two of the three nominations for theatrical feature on DS, including the gradeing, titleing, dustbusting, VFX inserting, right through to Film & HD deliverables.

And one of those films was also nominated for a Genie Award (Canada's Oscar's) in cinematagraphy as well.

Ain't bad given that at least two Scratch, six Luster's and five BaseLight's  that i know of were all my compitition.

Whooo Hooooo for me.... at least there's some validation for my workflow.. the camera guys don't care how the images got there, just that they look really reeeeaaaaallllly good.

You can do a complete film DI with the assist station it, and do it really well... i mean if i can anyone can right?

Good luck!

d.

That's GREAT, WTG !

BTW, what monitor were you using? I wanted to get away with an EIZO CG241W http://www.eizo.com/products/graphics/cg241w/index.asp but I've been told it really isn't suitable for grading.

Another thought is the eCinema FX http://www.ecinemasystems.com/products/fx/intro.html.

But I'd love here any thoughts on monitors. Thanks much to all.

I use a Qualia Projector, an older Mitsu 21" CRT and a Sony LMD230W

The majority of non-gradeing work is done with the 230, the majority of gradeing is done with the Mitsu, and for the finals, and producer-director-dop screenings  the projector is turned on.

Although the room is well set up for gradeing, and enviroment is controled, the price is payed in HVAC, and the room turns into a convection oven much too quickly with the Qualia on.. it throws out alot of heat from the rear... too much to leave it on all day unless it's really needed

And the Mitsu is dead accurate if done correctly (and you can buy them on craigslist for $50 all day long)...

For feature films size counts..... esp for scope releases, so doing final tweaks on it is really a good thing.

Ta,

d.

 

Dermot: I have a Mitsubishi Diamond Plus120u CRT in the garage - can I connect this (for grading) to my MC/Mojo?

Ronn;

With DS Assist i had the same 21" Mitsu as you have in you garage  

I attached it on the second DVI port, and had a generic lcd on the first port, i ran the Spider3 to callibrate the Mitsu, opened a viewer on the second side (unused in colortiming mode) attached to a timeline effect that was bypassed, and off to the races we go... all your tools on the main screen, and the Mitsu as your gradeing mon with the piccies

Biggest advantage came when working in RGB 4.4.4, i also fed the DVI port through a splitter to the DVI in of the Qualia proj to see the 4.4.4, there is some scaling artifacts, but that is not a issue when gradeing.

TEST THIS BEFORE TRUSTING IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Really......

Works far, far better than it should, but like i mentioned.. we tested it, and tested it again before going with it.

It was all less scarry to me as i had just finished a feature in a Baselight, and that scaled to 1K, and mapped the 1K through the DVI port to the projector for gradeing.

If Baselight can do it.. why not me i asked my self ;-)

So i did it.

and it works

Currently i have one Assist Station set up as above (but without the Qualia) with dual 19" Lcd's and  the old trusty Mitsu 21" (normaly turned off)

The other Assist Station has a new 30" Lcd, the Sony LMD230W, and the Qualia (and a spare 21" Mitsu on a splitter, normaly turned off, but ready to use if needed)

Sweet & workable set-up, but not very pretty and the client "wow" factor is quite low.. but i mainly work on features, so no glass, chrome & sushi for us anyhoo....

Ta,

d.

Hi

Assist works great on the same partition as MC Adrenaline on an XW8200.

Do you know of anyone running DS Assist with an AJA card on XP 32-bit? 

MC 3 supposedly runs on Vista, but how about DS Assist + AJA? 

I believe MC3 will also run on xp pro.

Jef

 Do you know of anyone running DS Assist with an AJA card on XP 32-bit?

Unfortunately no.  For performance reasons, we do not support 32-bit with the AJA option, only 64-bit.

MC 3 supposedly runs on Vista, but how about DS Assist + AJA?

True for MC 3 but not yet for the DS product.

I was interesting in doing the same thing.  Was going to download the Demo but will it work on my very basic MC3 machine or do you specifically need an HP workstation or at least a dual Xeon-built machine?

The version 7.6 Training Edition will work on pretty much any machine... with the following caveats:

1) It will run on XP SP2 only, not SP3.

2) You can't have security update KB908531 installed.

Avid said they will soon release a Training Edition of v10. It will run on XP SP3.

The faster the better, but DS is not nearly as machine dependent as MC and AXP are.

HTH. :)