Raylight for Mac unleashed

I edit right now with FCP a short and i'm wandering if i have to re-capture with Raylight to be able to use raw MXF footage and have the best image quality compare to the quicktime file that FCP create when importing the P2...

thanks
 
mvb,

Using FCP 5.1.4 on Macbook Pro 2.33ghz, external LaCie fw 800, no pcmcia slot

1. I'm trying to rely on the external drives for all "data" ...which leaves the system drive to handle only apps...and not accumulate files that will be tedius to clean up later when I archive projects. I also do not want to fill up the system drive.

I have not yet purchased Raylight, but the Raylight setup described in the website seems to require it to use data files on the system disk. Can that be homed to the external drive as well?

2. My workflow dumps P2 through a PC laptop and onto a USB drive (Fat32). I then connect that to the Macbook pro to xfer the files to an external firewire drive.

How do you recommend I set up or change that workflow to get the best use of Raylight?

Thanks,
Indy
 
etiennecaron said:
I edit right now with FCP a short and i'm wandering if i have to re-capture with Raylight to be able to use raw MXF footage and have the best image quality compare to the quicktime file that FCP create when importing the P2...

thanks
Click to expand...
No. Image quality will be identical.
 
Are there any benfits of using Raylight over the p2 import function in FCP 5.1.4 or the log and transfer window in FCP 6? It seems that Apple has got up to speed and included the same features in their software.

You can preview and play the files from the P2 card (or a P2 Volume backed up on a harddrive) without import in Final Cut as well and it is pretty fast. You can also rename, make notes, take only portions of a clip, control audio channels and remove the additional frames in the Log and Transfer Window. It's instantaneous on my machine.

I see that Raylight supports meta data which Apple does not. What sort of meta data does it maintain and is it viewable only in QT player or does it translate into FCP as well.

Are there any other differences? Mac doesnt have alot of support for the bells and whistles of meta data and a few other P2 "enhancements", but Apple has nailed a really good all in one workflow for P2. It seems like throwing a 3rd party product into a refined workflow is only opening up the doors for potential issues down the road. I'm not saying that its not useful, I'm just wondering what benefits make it worth while. I would certainly be open to purchasing it and encorporating it into my own workflow if there was reasonable benfit to it.

thanks in advance for info!
 
Using Raylight is entirely different. Download it and try it.

Here's an example: go shoot a couple days' worth of footage, offloading to your computer. Maybe 64GB worth of data. When you get back to your Mac, you can either a) log, import, transfer and convert that 64GB of data, or b) start editing immediately, totally skipping step A.

You can edit six streams of HD straight from the card. No need for more hard disk space. No transferring of files. All that step just disappears. Download the demo and try it, and see what you think.
 
Is it really practical to edit off the card though? (unless you're doing ENG). I only have 3 cards so I dump as I shoot, its not practical for me to hold off on emptying the card.

It can't possibly get rid of the transferring of files step, you need to get them on a harddrive of somesort at somepoint, unless all your p2 cards are use once and you archive them as your masters (man that would get expensive fast!!)

It sounds sweet, hough I think my current workflow negates alot of this for me.

I shoot and dump the footage to a harddrive via a MBP using the Duel Apdapter. I can dump a 4gb card in under 2 minutes this way and my shooting is never interuppted by waiting for a fresh card. Once dumped these the files are either imported into FCP right away (depends on the client) or at the end of the shootday as we wrap equipment or on the drive home. The original dump of the P2 volumes serves as a backup and the QT imports are the working material. So when I get back to an edit station at the end of the day I've already got all my footage ready to edit and 1 archived backup of my masters.

I've done alot of field shooting for subaru where we cover a Rally Race over a 90 miles span - chasing the action from another vehicle. As soon as the race concludes we head to a hotel and edit segments that need to be posted that night. Its an incredibly fast turn around, but our footage is always ready to go before we even set foot on the elevator of the hotel.


all this being said. I'll download raylight and give it a try!
 
Here's an example of why Raylight is so useful:
I recently made a short film, shooting 140GB of P2 footage.

I had 140GB of raw MXF files, and I used P2 Viewer to choose which ones I wanted to import to quicktime to edit in FCP (same as what the new log and capture window does in FCP6).
After transferring all the takes I wanted into quicktime, those files took up an additional 100GB of disk space.

Had I used Raylight, I would've saved 100Gigs of disk space, and I would have avoided the time-consuming chore of transferring all those clips into quicktime.

On a larger feature project, I estimate Raylight could save me more than a Terabyte of disk space, and many hours of tedious capturing!
 
Been playing with Raylight. The instaneous availability without import is pretty sweet.

As far as saving space goes though - its only saving that amount of space if you dont have a backup.

You're working from the copied P2 Volumes, using the mxf files - which is great, but the only way you would save space is if you didnt have a backup. Once you make that back up you will be using the same amount of space.

edit ----

Looking at it it seems as where the only time/space saver comes in is if you dont have a backup of anything or need to work with it instantly. To be practical it still needs to be copied off the p2 card to a computer in order for the links to be referenced. So you're not saving that time. You can then instantly import it and start working from the copied volumes. Though if you were making a backup you would then have to copy those volumes somewhere which which take time and harddrive space, practically the same amount of time and harddrive space if you were to just use P2 import. Doing some tests with size and speed now and it hasnt become too advantageous yet.

Where i can see this being incredibly useful is when handing off footage to a client that has no NLE on hand to view the clips or on set to preview and check clips back on a mac or pc, expecially if its the clients or producers harddrive and they have no prosumer video apps or the machine can't handle them. I get calls all the time where acs are trying to load up footage for preview on set and they dont actually have the right tools. This would be great for that. All you would need is raylight and qt pro.

I would also add that Raylight is just creating a reference link, actually just a quicktime reference file of the clip, so there is no media, hence it being very fast, but it still needs to reference the media. If the location of the copied volumes move all the reference links become broken. Luckily quicktime will search for the footage and recconect to it if the footage is on a harddrive that is active and connected to the computer somewhere, but it does this for each clip and is tiem consuming as well.
 
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Just found another good use for Raylight. A user in another board has an earlier version of Final Cut that does not support P2 import but does support HD Editing and DVCPRO HD, so theoretically they should be able to use Raylight to make QT reference files and import them to Final Cut that way!
 
I am still looking for a p2 viewer and I wanted to go for HD Log Pro, but in principal you could use Raylight as well as sort of a p2 viewer, how do you guys see that?
 
I had one issue with Raylight trying to edit off the card after mounting using FW on a MacPro desktop.

First of all, DF when trying playback off the card.

Then, I experienced an error -49 with the following workflow.

Mount a 16 GB p2 card on a MacPro desktop with about eight minutes of 1080i/30.

Use Raylight, and drag the clips into a FCP6 timeline

Straight cuts and export current settings QT.

Consistently get an error -49 and export stops.

Copy the card to the desktop and edit from the copied card and no issue when exporting.

Any body else?
 
Niels Neeskens said:
I am still looking for a p2 viewer and I wanted to go for HD Log Pro, but in principal you could use Raylight as well as sort of a p2 viewer, how do you guys see that?
Click to expand...
It works fine in the demo, with Raylight the quicktime player becomes a P2 viewer.
Just double click any of the clips and they open in the QT player.
This is great for checking your clips, but it will be nice when the new version provides the metadata as well.
 
Raylight 1.05 is now released. The most important new features are:

1) Support added for DVCPRO50 (PAL. NTSC, 24PA).

2) You can now read the Metadata in the Quicktime player annotations.

3) Raylight creates an optional Metadata "slate" in the first frame of the clip, viewable in the FCP canvas, or FCP clip viewer, or QT player.

4) Raylight will automatically name the clip based on the "User Clip Name" Metadata item. This allows you to pre-log shots by getting the camera to automatically name the clips based on scene and take #. See http://dvxuser.com/jason/P2-Name-article/

5) Raylight will create a subfolder based on the "Program Name" Metadata item. This allows you to automatically group clips that were shot for different films, news stories, or scenes.

6) The timecode is now readable in FCP.
 
mvb said:
Raylight 1.05 is now released. The most important new features are:

1) Support added for DVCPRO50 (PAL. NTSC, 24PA).

2) You can now read the Metadata in the Quicktime player annotations.

3) Raylight creates an optional Metadata "slate" in the first frame of the clip, viewable in the FCP canvas, or FCP clip viewer, or QT player.

4) Raylight will automatically name the clip based on the "User Clip Name" Metadata item. This allows you to pre-log shots by getting the camera to automatically name the clips based on scene and take #. See http://dvxuser.com/jason/P2-Name-article/

5) Raylight will create a subfolder based on the "Program Name" Metadata item. This allows you to automatically group clips that were shot for different films, news stories, or scenes.

6) The timecode is now readable in FCP.
Click to expand...

The automatic naming is awesome. It's what we've been waiting for on the mac (with out spending an arm and a leg on HD log)
 
I've had raylight for a month and it worked great - huge change to workflow. Problem is Raylight for mac 1.02 is now only displaying a white clip and no sound after scan. It identifies the clip and duration but nothing. I downloaded 1.05 and it does what it is suppose to but only shows the slate and no audio. Again the durations and other details are currect but just can't get it to play. I have reloaded drivers for P2 but not for the Duel Adaptor.

I am testing a program under bootcamp which may be at the seat of the problems but want to be sure before I nix the duel boot concept.

The funny thing is that the old pointers from raylight 1.02 in reference to a current project are working fine.

Mac Book Pro (intel)
2.16
FCP 5.lates version
2 gig ram
Duel Adaptor
16gig P2 cards X 2
 
Hi all:

Same issues here as ppfeiffer. I am only getting white clips with no sound.

Raylight for Mac 1.05
Dual 2.3 GHz G5
3.5 GB RAM
FCP 5.1.4
QT 7.14
OSX 10.1.4

P2 files on a homemade 2.5 TB SATA RAID that is otherwise functioning perfectly.

I get the information slates so Raylight obviously can see the files, all of the file information seems correct. The only issue is that I am getting no sound or picture, just white clips. This is with the demo version of Raylight for Mac, not the full version. I am holding off on purchasing until I get the demo version to work.

What am I doing wrong?

Dan
 
Usually this means that the Mac cannot find the MXF files after the links were made.

1) Make sure you don't have any non-English or punctuation characters in the volume name or folder names containing the MXF files.

2) delete the links and rescan the MXF files if they have been moved or the folders renamed.

If that does not fix the problem send the text in the diagnostic window
to DVFilm support
http://dvfilm.com/supportForm.htm
 
Thanks for your support MVB!! My problem was with my Duel Adaptor Drivers. I had incorrecly assumed they were working as the scan took place and the clips seemed to come up in the correct location. What I did notice is that the same info and white screen/slate came up even when the P2 card was not connected i.e. there was no media to point to.

Puredrifting - Clearly pay attention to MVB's recomendations outside of that I would duplicate your P2 card onto your internal HD and rerun the scan on that location. If it works than there is a problem with your link to the external HD. Could be a simple Driver fix like mine. If it does not work and you still have the same problem I would contact MVB through the support link at DVFilm and send him some screen shots of the clips.

Good Luck

Ppfeiffer
 
I've just installed Raylight 1.5 and it looks very promising. One oddity though, all of my clips show up with double the duration when playing in Quicktime player. So a 2 second clip loads with a duration of 4 seconds. When I play the clip, it correctly plays for 2 seconds followed by 2 seconds of White. FCP loads correctly. Odd.

Otherwise seems to work great.

Running on a G5 with QT 7.1.6 and FCP 5.1.4
 
Raylight for Mac 1.06 is available now at http://dvfilm.com/update

New features include automatic clip folder creation by Card or Disk Drive name, the ability to put the MetaData slate on Frame 2 (so you can see the video instead of the slate in FCP thumbnails), and the ability to co-locate the link files with the MXF files if they're already on your hard drive (per a request from this thread I believe).

Also for new users there is a quickstart guide to get you going on P2 workflow.

The demo version is here: http://dvfilm.com/raylight/mac
 
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