[opendtv] Re: Production Codecs
- From: "John Willkie" <johnwillkie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:15:24 -0700
Dan;
(offlist)
You pay for SMPTE membership - list me as your referrer, and I'll make a
copy of my raw SMPTE folders (public documents) and non-disclosure.
Not all the specifications, but many. Not necessarily the latest copy, and
many are in process or are the FCD (last step before publication). You can
decide which to buy (to make sure you have the bits right.)
And, you will truly enjoy the work, joining committees, learning and having
a say (when you exercise it) on new and modified standards.
And, you can't tell anybody I've done that, since SMPTE lives off document
sales.
So, you can get started for $135 for one year, or (like me) $325 for three
years. That renewal always seems to come up fast.
I do believe the fee is tax-deductible, but of course, only us self-employed
generally can take advantage of that .
John
_____
De: opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] En
nombre de dan.grimes@xxxxxxxx
Enviado el: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 9:06 AM
Para: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Asunto: [opendtv] Re: Production Codecs
Good to know, especially since Avid, and possibly Sony, products will be so
prevalent in our facility.
You are quite right that I need to join SMPTE. I also need the
specifications. Together they are major dollars and I am trying to save up
for them since the university will not pay for them.
Dan
"John Willkie" <johnwillkie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
07/16/2008 08:54 AM
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[opendtv] Re: Production Codecs
Dan;
MXF works just fine, between and among vendors. And, I suspect that you are
not going to engineer an MXF system from source documents.
There is a problem with the latest reworkings of the spec. It seems that
two major vendors (Avid and Sony) made some technically non-compliant
changes that didn't seem to affect anything until the new changes were
proposed, and ALL HELL BROKE OUT. Some of the changes were good, others
seemed to have been intended to cause chaos.
I have suggested to you time and time again to join SMPTE. The battle was
"fine fun" last fall. People who aren't on the WG email reflector only got
this in a small dribble, and EVERY article I've read about the controversy
was slanted, ill-informed or ignorant. Basically, customers like PBS, like
NBC, were doing the log-rolling for Avid and Sony, who never commented on
the reflector. At one point, the AAF acted like they should have a veto on
SMPTE specifications.
I have it on good authority that the changes wouldn't break much on the
Snell & Wilcox side, but that's not exactly by design. The intellectual
author of MXF is Bruce Devlin of Snell. At one time, they had a microsite
on MXF, but this is what they have now <http://www.snellwilcox.com/mxf/>
http://www.snellwilcox.com/mxf/. I wonder where my archive of the
applications formerly there are .
Before you ask someone hereabouts concerning something as technical as MXF,
it's important to ask how their employer supports MXF. In the case of
Harris, I believe that's about zero. Harris has been the big driver behind
BXF, but aside from a similar moniker, they are quite different and have
distinct domains within TV plants.
It's also important to ask about their personal experience with the
technology, not "what they've heard." MXF's major problem is
widely-deployed non-standard vendor-specific implementations, the inability
or lack of a desire for vendors to fess up on what they've done, and how
that will be dealt with in future upgrades. It's close to a nightmare.
What I wrote in the third paragraph above is actually news: you won't have
read it anywhere, at least anywhere I've seen. (Other than the original
posts to the SMPTE WG.)
John Willkie
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