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Rave Frequently Asked QuestionsQ: Can Rave support both Linear and Log? A: Yes, As far as the DPX header is concerned, they are always flagged as linear. Since rave doesn't do anything to the data (unless you ask it to- ex: burn in LUT), the image data can be either linear or log (or anything else). It is a bit-for-bit copy of whatever is coming in.
Q: What LUTS does Rave support A: Rave currently reads 1024 level (10 bit) 1D or 2D Discreet style LUTS. Development for others can be done easily.
Q: Does the mirroring happen in hardware or is it software moving files around. Basically I want to know if we can have a 3TB array for playback/capture and a 20 TB array for serving files on the same system A: It is two separate 3TB RAID 0 arrays - mirroring is a matter of synchronizing the two filesystems. You shouldn't have any problem mounting your storage server on the Rave system.
Q: Do you use the AJA card's rs422 controls or is the rs422 driver completely your own implementation? A: It's all our own code.
Q: Is there any known problems with putting the system on a infiniband switch. Do you have any band with controls so that a play out won't framedrop if a user starts pulling data of the system. A: No known issues- though if the user is pulling the data from the playback/capture array during use, frames will be dropped.
Q: Checking the aja card information you state that the OEM 2 card does not have analog audio. Do we need external converters ? A: No- all our boxes ship with the AJA K-Box (breakout box) which contains a pair of analog audio outputs.
Q: Folder structure in edl conforming -The lustre system is quite sensitive regarding how you organize your material. A Lustre system will always expect /project name/footage/scene/
A: Like Lustre, we also have a strict folder structure when conforming.
Q: Are you able to superimpose time code/frame numberer's into the play out
A: Burn-in (yes)
Q: Are you able to play out a hd 1920x1080 4:4:4 stream, and at the same time play out a downscaled version on the cav output. Is there any delay between hd/sdi and cav.
A: Yes, we can- there is no delay.
Q: Are you able to generate/read a LTC code.
A: yes, we do.
Q: Vtr controlling / play out. Do you support crash out mode
A: Yes
Q: How do you deal with Frame dropping ? How do you handle framedrop's (if any) in a assemble out. How do you handle framedrop in insert mode ?
A: Frame dropping stops the current action. We do not currently retry or pick up where we left off however it is in the works to offer both.
Q: Can your system playback two 1400x1050 videos, 30 frames per second, instead of two 1920x1080 videos?
A: Since we only deal in video resolutions- a non video resolution would either need to be scaled or center cropped to a video resolution. The other solution is to play it out to a graphics board for viewing.
Q: Has anyone tested the Rave where Rave is the controlling master and a Thomson/GrassValley Spirit or Shadow telecine is the RS422 slave player?
A: If your telecine is able to speak the Sony P2 protocol over RS422, then yes, it is possible that we may be able to control it as a slave. To my
knowledge, this has never been tried. All of our current customers are using a TLC.
Q: Is there a way you could maybe write a way to export an EDL to a different syntax?
A: You could totally do this with a perl script - Just parse the XML and write your format.
http://builder.com.com/5100-6371-5363190.html
Q: Do you have any information regarding programming options and filesystem structure requirements.
A: Since we use standard frames on a standard filesystem, the programming options are quite extensive as you really don't have to do anything special to move
frames on/off the box.
As for controlling the DDR software, you talk to the software via a TCP port using XML.
Q: It was brought to my attention that Quicktime uncompressed using the standard old Apple codec does NOT support 4:4:4 (hence the reason AJA and Blackmagic made their own codecs). Can you verify this? If we capture 4:4:4 and then use your quicktime conversion tool, what is it outputting?
A: Yes- Apple has standard codecs for 8 and 10 bit Y'CbCr, but not RGB (at least in the 10bit world), so AJA has created their own. We convert to and from that.
Q: Split screen. Can you split the input coming in to the Rave with a frame on the hard drives. You would need to be able to wipe the split side to side, top to bottom.
A: Yes- this is a feature we have with the 2k card. We can put up video (or a single frame) on one side of the split and run input video on the other. The card can do both feathered and hard split (both horiz and vert).
Q: Frame grabs. Is there a way that I can just click 'GRAB' and Rave will save just the current frame to a file?
A: Yes- These can then be saved as any of the file formats Rave supports.
Q: Will Rave handle capturing a tape that has footage of different framerates on it?
A: Yes- Varicam capture mode records just the flagged frames regardless of their frame rate. So if the frame rate changes on the tape it doesn't matter to
Rave.
Q: Will Rave capture varicam footage shot at both 59.94hz and 60hz?
A: Yes- this is not a problem.
Q: Can you get VANC data from HDCAM-SR and put it into DPX header file on capture ?
A: We do currently support pulling DVITC timecode and writing it to the DPX header on capture. We also do the reverse of that and read it from the
DPX and write it to the DVITC.
Q: There are rumours that you guys are releasing your product open-source?
A: Although there has been talk to release RaveHD open source eventually, it is still some time off before this happens. What is happening, is that parts of RaveHD are beginning to make it's way into the open-source community.
Q: Can I tie in my existing database?
A: Rave utilizes a simple MSQL database for this very reason. It was decided early on to give studios the hooks to tie into the database functionality of Rave. We will work with you and provide the needed information to do this.
Q: Can I purchase direct or do I need to go thru a reseller?
A: With the exception of Japan, all purchases are direct from SpectSoft. By eliminating the middleman we not only can keep the product price down but we find that dealing with a studio direct gives us better insight, builds a stronger bond and eliminates the confusion of what the studio really needs.
Rave is a fast moving product based on what the industry needs and development of the needed features require a tight relationship between user and developer.
Q: Will the Kona 2 card output both analog and dual link at the same time? In other words, we have analog going out to a Sony monitor but we also want it to display it on a DLP with dual link in. Can I do both?
A: Yes- the card can do that.
Q: I'm writing dpx support into our image libraries and I had a question about the dpx format. I noticed that the Imagemagick script you provide encodes the dpx image in a 10-bit linear format. Does this introduce the potential for banding when displaying images that have been converted from 16-bit on the Rave? Would there be any benefit to making 10-bit log images instead of linear? Would the rave be able to play them?
A:Encoding the images in 10bit log wouldn't be good as we would have to pass them through a LUT to linearize for display them anyways - this can potentially lead to increased banding.
To display properly, you should be running the images through a CRT transfer function (a sort of 2.4 gamma with a knee). It would be a good idea to do this in 16bit space as there is less chance for a rounding error.
This article covers the topic pretty well: http://www.techonline.com/community/ed_resource/feature_article/37487
Q: We are looking for 1080p24 4:4:4 10 bit RGB and in the future doing the 2048x1556 4:4:4 10bit RGB DPX (once the Vipercam goes 2K), can you do that?
A: The first format is handled by the AJA Dual Stream HD-SDI card right now (including proper DPX packing) and AJA supports the 2k formats with a new OEM board just announced. On top of that, the card does real-time 10bit RGB/Y'CrCb/3-Way CCLUT so you can do a log->lin on the viper footage to get an idea what it really looks like. Or you can use that same LUT to simulate different film stocks. It is worth noting that the HD cards do a colorspace conversion to and from 4:4:4 10bit RGB DPX, so that is a viable option for regular ol' HD, however with RGB comes increased datarates and that must be taken into account.
Q: We will need to be able to utilize the DPX data for timecode and some other metadata to be determined. Do you support for RP188 (SDI embedded timecode)?
A: We can embed this into the DPX header in addition to storing the metadata in a SQL database (with the rest of the asset info). We do RP188 (both in and out).
Q: What type of audio does this system support? How many channels and does it use? AES, embedded, or both?
A: The AJA I/O cards we use do support 8 channels of 24bit, 48KHz locked audio. They can be fed in/out via both AES/EBU (via a provided breakout cable) and/or embedded SDI (the software is able to route any audio pair to any embedded SDI group pair). We currently embed up to 8 channels of audio into the DPX header and can be written out into a separate wave or aiff.
Q: Are you able to use the 720p active frame [Varicam variable frame rate support] with VITC from the video, or did you have to resort to RS-422 machine requests?
A: Yes, we support RP188 so pulling out the active flagging was quite simple to implement. This feature was used quite a bit with the Starship Troopers 2 project as all the miniatures and elements were shot with the Varicam.
Q: So can you handle non-standard frame rates out 720p, like the Varicam?
A: Yes, the frame/field cadence is completely programmable, so for instance you can flip 2:3 frames to play back 720p24 as 720p60. A whole slew of off speed playback is possible by using the programmable cadence.
Q: Is there be a manual for operators?
A: Yes, we use an in-house Wiki that is added to on a daily basis. The Rave customer has full access to all of the information in this including a list of bugs and upcoming features. The manual can be found on the support page of the website.
Q: How do software updates work?
A: As long as you subscribe to the service plan, software updates will come free.
Q: How open are you guys to feature requests and user feedback?
A: Very. The whole point is building something our customers can use. Any feature requests and/or feedback can be sent directly to support-at-spectsoft.com. Features are added on a customer first basis and then others follow.
A: Well, since Rave is based on commodity hardware and open systems and methodology, we are in an interesting pickle when it comes to a viable business structure. We came up with the idea of a reference box or the systems that you see that we offer to give our customers real/known working options, without limiting them in terms of expandability, reconfigurability, or customization. The idea is modeled after a similar system used in the electronics industry.
Q: So, can I put my own box together and just buy the software?
A: The answer to this is certainly not NO, but configuring a system to do high definition video is not an easy task. There is plenty of hardware out there that won't play well, so it's not quite plug-and-play yet. At this point, we urge you to purchase a turnkey solution from us, simply because we are not able to support foreign setups. Our engineering crew (both here at SpectSoft and all of our hardware vendors) work very closely together to offer systems that are cutting edge, yet solid.
Q: What made you choose the Medea and Huge System arrays for your reference system?
A: It is really a toss up between Huge and Medea we have relationships with both companies (though the Medea does offer a bit more in the way of rack mounting and drive/power supply/controller swapping). They are both very inexpensive solutions that work very well for this sort of thing, so it was really just a good fit. However, we have worked with and certified quite a few different storage options (spanning the gamut of array technologies), so the configuration really becomes more about your needs/budget. This is why we call it a "Reference" box, in that we simply want to lay out a reference DDR design.
Q: Are the technologies used in Rave development opensource? Are the libraries of these technologies included with the package to make it possible to re-compile changes made in the sourcecode? If the libraries of these technologies are not included, where can they be obtained?
A:All of the libraries (except for Qt) used in RaveHD were developed inhouse, and are therefore covered under our own license. We do offer a few of our libraries and tools under a GPL license.
This said, we don't allow for redistribution of all our software/source code -or- any software/source code derived from our work.
Information can be found in the license section of the RaveHD manual.
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