Offloading to dedicated dsp

[Mbazzy]

This might be a long-shot but this should be the place where i can get an answer ;-)

I'm in the process of setting up an update to my project studio and am incorporating on the Audio side dedicated dsp power (Sydec Mixtreme/Mixpander soundcard/ UAD-1 efx PCI card) to offload the computer cpu for certain (mastering) tasks .

As I've started doing regular A/V jobs (more " sound to imagery" ), I wondered if there existed something similar where it is possible to run the eg. mpg/avi playbacksw on a dedicated dsp card , sync'd by masterclock to the audio application, and with sync'd controls ( eg. scrolling back in audio , goes to that same timeframe on the video) ...

(I'm mainly using Ableton Live for such jobs, but I can't import video in there ... and I don't feel like buying Cubase/Logic only for the video part. As an in between solution I've been using VirtualDub , but unfortuantely this can't be sync'd to other sw ...)

Or are there external hw units that can do this.

needless to say I'm on a budget ...

[krokodril]

needless to say yes there are, i think you even know them and they are expensive

protools i'd say, because it is/was the most popular tool amongst filmstudio's, also digidesign and a few other had something like this
all used to sync old perfo tape machines to the (digitalized) soundtrack or the actual film

as far as i know the few studio's that did video to film mixing used pro tools as well

you might find one cheap, but its a long shot
second try would be older pinnacle (ouch bah!) machines, most of them have options to be controlled by scsi

[krokodril]

perhaps with a trick????


have an extra soundlayer on an extra output
instead of sound ofcourse just the sync signal
second computer picks it up, treats it as midi
(midiresponse is move up down)

but perhaps older protools midiman digidisign jotul is the way to go, otherwise, look into RCTC, VITC and other time(stamp)codes, most of these machines (all as i think of it) use rs232 or422 (serial/parallel) protocol.



I've send you a pm!!!

[Mbazzy]

Thanx for the insight ... haven't received the PM yet ... will check later ...

My curiosity was tickled byy the fact that the high end SoundScape system (of which I'm going to buy a cheaper sibling) supports this kind of functionality ... but you're right I already feared it would be expensive ...

[visualove]

You might look at the Sony Vegas line of sound/ video authoring software. They do both well.

In the video editing world, renderfarms aren't as popular as in audio or animation/fx. Usually real time playback and effects are done at lower resolution on the main CPU in video editing software. But increasingly the video card is being used as an accelerator for video rendering and effects because there is good bandwidth between the CPU and video card GPU.

The creative audio programs usually work against a reference video file that isn't final good quality, then are resynced to the video before mastering. That's the case for Protools.

The main software suppliers are trying to improve integration between video edit, color correction, animation/fx, soundtrack composition, audio mix and compression/DVD authoring, but there is still a ways to go.

[krokodril]

I must admit i've been helped also by this discussion, kept me awake for a sec.

rtct can be very usefull for a videoscratching setup (something i considered a waste of time to be honest)

and i realized i have been playing around with several freeware communication tools wich could be configured to listen to rtct, virtualdub i'm hardly a scientist on, but seeing all the scripting possibilities i can imagine that someone(brighter than me) could get those two to react to each other
(pretty damm sure)

same goes for time dependent freeframe settings

[Mbazzy]

Thanx so far ... how about on the sw side : Sequencers like Cubase/logic/ Protools have their own videoformats player that locks to transportcontrols in sync with the audio .
Ableton Live eg. (which happens to be my sequencer of choice) does not ... Is there any player sw that can sync to an external smpte signal and allow to eg. scrub through the video in sync with the audio

Krokodril : what's rtct ? (Btw, never got that PM - you can always contact me at mbazzy(at)gmail(dot)com