Preferences

The pages which follow are a comprehensive description of what each specific preference will do. It does not offer overall guidance on particular setups.

PictureReady is designed around QuickTime as its core engine, to be device independant. Hence some of its behaviour is determined by the video device and codecs you choose.

Video Input Latency.

Each QuickTime device has a different hardware latency when capturing picture. In order to correctly timestamp each frame with parallel data arriving from the Sound input or the serial port, it is essential to guage the offset required to properly match the 2 data streams. This preference allows you to fine tune this in milliseconds. Once you find the correct value for a given setup, it will remain constant. Capturing window burnt video during testing is the best way to determine the appropriate value for this preference.

Default Recording Duration.

The way in which PictureReady! allows the movie it is capturing to be opened and edited, during recording, is by preparing a QuickTime movie which points into empty space in a recording. Before you begin a recording, you can use this preference to indicate how long the capture will be, and this prepares a QuickTime movie pointing to that amount of time, ready to be recorded into. This preference will also automatically stop recording after the pre-determined period. You can over-estimate the time required if you like, and this will simply create an over-long movie which can be trimmed. Alternatively, there is a preference which will automatically trim the movie to size once a free-capture ends.

Fast/Slow/No Preview.

By default, during recording, Pictureready will display every frame you capture in the preview window on the Mac monitor which loads your CPU during decompression. However, in some cases your CPU may benefit from a reduced load during recording, and in these cases, you should check 'slow preview'. This reduces the preview to one frame per second, and can have a significant reduction on CPU usage during record, particularly for compressed HD video.

Machine Control Port.

When controlling a Video deck for a programmed capture, you must select a serial port to control the deck. Most serial ports are supported. You will also need an appropriate machine control cable, which you can order from the Gallery web store, if you do not have one.

Clean Up Movie.

This preference will perform a 'clean up' or end-trim of a movie when you have chosen to capture a specified time, but you have stopped the capture manually before the time has elapsed. This will trim the 'dead-air' from the end of the movie, which has not been recorded as planned. Note that this will update the movie _on-disk_. This will not update movies which have been read into memory by applications which opened the file whilst it was being recorded, until they re-open the movie from disk. In the case of Final Cut Pro, the movie being cleaned-up is detected by FCP and it will prompt the user to relink to the file. This may be undesireable, and so in this case you may choose to NOT clean up the end of the file. This will not cause any problems, and it just means that the end of the movie contains dead-air. Note that in FCP 5.1 and later, FCP will automatically relink the file if that pref is set in FCP, so this mode is ok to use.

ActionHilite prefs.

PictureReady! has the unique capability of creating XML subclips for Final Cut Pro on the fly as material is captured. These preferences determine the handles either side of the event time which are included by default in the clip. Note that ActionHility clips can be opened up to the full extent of the recorded material, so these prefs are simply to make manageable chunks by default. You can also create short QuickTime Reference movies as well as XML files which re ideal for passing highlight events to other systems such as Apple Compressor or Avid Media Composer systems. See the chapter on ActionHilites for more details.

Anamorphic - Sets the Anamorphic flag in Final Cut XML, and adjusts the Preview monitor aspect ratio.

Multichannel Audio Architecture - When checked, PictureReady will use the QuickTime 7 multichannel audio architecture instead of the traditional stereo audio. This allows you to control capture of up to 12 channels of audio. Audio is captured into a single multichannel quicktime audio track in the recorded movies, and the media is stored as a multichannel interleaved Sound Designer II file.

Add Timecode Text Track - Embeds a disabled timecode text track which some players can toggle on and off. It is recommended to disable this when the target player is Final Cut Pro.

Use Video Framerate for Timestamp - ignores timecode frame rate in favour of video framerate when timestamping.

Enable TCP/IP Remote - enables remote control of Pictureready via TCP/IP and activates the Bonjour system advertising this PictureReady machine to your LAN. Use the PictureReady remote application to control the system via a network.

Bypass Write Cache - By default, OSX has a very large Ram cache for disk writes. This causes it to make infrequent very large writes to storage, and this can affect the 'smooth' operation of a real time process like video capture with certain storage devices. In particular, writing across an Ethernet connection can be a little 'lumpy'. The Bypass write cache forces OSX to write each frame as it is captured rather than writing groups of frames infrequently. This can improve overall system smoothness, but may have side effects on some storage.

Pre-Allocate Disk - When PictureReady starts recording, it may be beneficial to pre-allocate the requested amount of disk space up front. If so, check this preference. Pre-allocating can avoid problems during recording as allocation of space will occur on each write to disk, which may have an overhead. However, Pre-allocating large files up front could cause a delay at the start of recording which might cause a frame drop.

Write Duplication Frames - PictureReady assumes that the storage and CPU you have chosen is capable of perfect operation, never dropping a video frame. If, however your storage is not behaving perfectly, PictureReady has some options to try and help. Write Duplication Frames will duplicate frames it considers 'dropped' on disk. This may help to keep audio and video in sync, but the best solution is to ensure that your system never drops frames to begin with. Dropping frames is NOT acceptable in a properly configured setup, so contact your storage provider if you have this problem.

Use Synchronous Writes - This determines whether PictureReady waits for writing to disk to complete before capturing the next video frame. Depending on the video card you are using and the storage infrastructure there may be a reason to turn this off.

Skip First Audio Frames - Using PictureReady's Advanced AV Sync should ensure that Audio and Video are in perfect sync in Pictureready recordings. However, some video card drivers may not work properly with this mode, and this optional pref allows a fixed offset truncating excess audio from the start of the recording.

Auto Break on TC Break - if the incoming timecode breaks during a capture this pref forces PictureReady to begin a fresh recording. Note that this rapid stop start may affect AVSync,so check that your system continues to show *AVSync Active* after the timecode break.

Show Alert on drV - if video frames are dropped on capture because of storage problems this pref will display a large red window to alert you to the problem. Dropped frames are not a feature of any properly configured setup, so this preference can be used as a safety to indicate subsequent failure in some part of a working setup.

MOS Gateway / ProxyPerfect Proxies - These sections apply to SIENNA PictureReady, Gallery's real time ingest product for live NEWS. see http://www.gallery.co.uk/sienna
Contact Gallery for advice on real time Proxies and MOS connectivity.

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