[quote="Bill D"]I didn't realize you can't do specific loads, kind of annoying. I had heard that 7.2 had some FM changes. Hopefully that is one of them (to do specific loads from the Hdrive) Some wishes for FM changes Bring able to put a fence on the record, so that if you have a animation that is lower 3rd or a bug or whatever, you can fence of that area and not record a full frame of video and key, when all you need is a small portion of the frame. Hard edits on the clips. Right now there are soft in and out points, in order to save space you need to go and delete the stills that are unneccesary. Be able to just build a user effect to recall and run the animation (or loop, etc) Right now little 'different' to build, 1st need to store a snapshot to recall (after setting attribute), be nice if it just saved what was loaded without having to go into another menu to say yes I want the clip already loaded to cue. So save effect, remembers clip, and be able to insert a keyframe to play. Not sure if this is best done in FM menu or add FM to device menu. Right now after building snapshot you need to make a macro to play the clip. Also in macro area, you have a choice to 'cue' FM, but only lets you put in timecode. In file load list for other devices, where you would load a clip, FM is not an option. It would be nice to be able to do it as an effect, or go to macro and be able to search through the clips (or stills in FM) to load them. These are not really complaints, just would like to see it work easier Otherwise having 1000 frames, and instant play back of short clips is very cool.[/quote] You can use a GPI loopback cable to let you run & Cue the FM with a timeline. Just set the GPI outputs to be triggered on GPI timeline, then set the GPI inputs to react and do the appropirate actions with the FMs. Not ideal, but unitl they finish not having FM clips on timelines, it's a realtively easy way around it. I also agree that I'd like destructive editing of a clip so it could automatically delete areas that are out of the in and out points. Overall, I am really happy with the Sony Frame memories. I am told that embedded audio will function on FM clips with v7.2. Sony's being very tight-lipped and won't say much about upcoming software features..... makes me wonder if there's something big they don't want the other guys to get wind of..... I love competition. Happy Thanksgiving! RE

I didn't realize you can't do specific loads, kind of annoying. I had heard that 7.2 had some FM changes. Hopefully that is one of them (to do specific loads from the Hdrive) Some wishes for FM changes Bring able to put a fence on the record, so that if you have a animation that is lower 3rd or a bug or whatever, you can fence of that area and not record a full frame of video and key, when all you need is a small portion of the frame. Hard edits on the clips. Right now there are soft in and out points, in order to save space you need to go and delete the stills that are unneccesary. Be able to just build a user effect to recall and run the animation (or loop, etc) Right now little 'different' to build, 1st need to store a snapshot to recall (after setting attribute), be nice if it just saved what was loaded without having to go into another menu to say yes I want the clip already loaded to cue. So save effect, remembers clip, and be able to insert a keyframe to play. Not sure if this is best done in FM menu or add FM to device menu. Right now after building snapshot you need to make a macro to play the clip. Also in macro area, you have a choice to 'cue' FM, but only lets you put in timecode. In file load list for other devices, where you would load a clip, FM is not an option. It would be nice to be able to do it as an effect, or go to macro and be able to search through the clips (or stills in FM) to load them. These are not really complaints, just would like to see it work easier Otherwise having 1000 frames, and instant play back of short clips is very cool.

Joe - To question #1 - you are correct...it's currently an all-or-nothing load. I understand that an upcoming version of software will remedy this, but on the version 6 that I am running, it does an all save or all load. To Question #2 - Your choices are BACKUP, which takes the full contents of the current Frame Mem & saves it to the delegated partition, and RESTORE, which automatically erases the current Frame Mem & loads the entire contents of the delegated partition. To Question #3 - To my understanding, 5 partitions is all you get. When you use the Frame Mem HDD menu & format the drive (as I had to do last week because of what looked like corrupted sectors) it erases the whole disk & re-partitions it into 5 areas.

I am curious about a couple of things with the frame memory external drive.... 1. I seem to remember in an earlier post by Bob Ennis, that the stills/animation are an all or nothing load. You cannot pick and choose specific stills to load or save from/to the external drive. Is this still the case? 2. If you have to load all, what happens to the existing stills/frame memories in the switcher. Do you manually delete "all" or does this happen automatically? For instance, if the drive is partitioned say into 5 parts, could partition 1 could be a "basic" load and Partitions 2-5 be specific to users? Partition 1 would be loaded all the time and I could then load Partition 3 for my specific stills? 3. Does the drive divide into only 5 partitions? Thanks for the info. I have enjoyed reading the forum for a while and have learned a great deal. Joe

Bill & Bob If you go into the FMHD Format menu and format the drive this will creat 5 directories called FMHDD1 - FMHDD5. If you are looking for a 500Gb drive then the Maxtor F30W500 is supported Phil

[quote="Bill D"]Bob, we are looking at getting a 300 gig (I was told that should be the max storage to use?). When you plug it in, does it automatically partition the drive, or is that something you do in the menu? thanks[/quote] I believe the partioning takes place when it is formatted. I did this procedure a few months back and don't remember doing any thing special besides the format. It works very nicely, too, BTW. A lot quicker. Chris Bade WTVF Nashville

Bill - You might want to check with SONY first to see if the drive that you want to use is on their approved list...the 1st drive that we tried (a 750 GB) didn't work as it wasn't supported. Besides, isn't the cost difference between a 300 GB & a 500 GB drive something like $75 nowadays? I'm almost sure that our menu shows a Maxtor 500 GB, but I'll defer to whatever SONY is telling you. From what I recall, our EIC did the partitioning, and I believe that he did it through the system manager - that was a long time ago, though, so I can't be sure. I do know that the Frame Mem menu / HDD has provisions for formatting - but I don't recall partitioning...the 5 partitions show up on mine as part of the software. It was one of those things that I let somebody else do when I wasn't in the studio. You might want to try & contact Stacy or one of the other Field Support folks to get a definitive answer on how to get it set up - I do remember that it took us a number of tries to get it right.

Bob, we are looking at getting a 300 gig (I was told that should be the max storage to use?). When you plug it in, does it automatically partition the drive, or is that something you do in the menu? thanks

My understanding is that files stored onto the Menu drive and then transferred into the frame need to go over the network, which shares its bandwidth with other functions, such as processing video (maybe if the switcher could suspend doing video during still store transfers, the speed of transfer might increase...but I personally want to keep switching while I am loading or saving stills) - not to mention the fact that HD stills take up a large amount of memory...just try e-mailing one & see how long your DSL, broadband, or T1 line takes to transfer it.. The external drive connects directly into the Frame Memory (which bypasses all of the other network traffic) via firewire (which transfers at a much faster rate than the network anyway). All I know is that there's a 7-to-10-fold difference in speed when using the firewire drive versus the menu drive. You can partition the Maxtor into 5 separate "folders", so you can use each drive for 5 separate shows.

Bob, We want to pick up at least 2 (1 for each 8000 we have). Just waiting on the boss's boss to let us "borrow" the credit card. Just out of curiosity, why is the internal drive so much slower than an external firewire one? Thanks, Allan

[quote="AJR"]I know the following two things probably aren't a software thing but I'll throw them out there anyway: Faster frame mem loading![/quote] Allan - Have you tried using the external Maxtor 500GB drive that connects to the frame via firewire? This has really sped up my loading process. On Jeopardy I have about 6-7 sec. worth of animations plus a bunch of stills - from the menu I'm looking at about 35-40 minutes to load. With the firewire drive it takes less than 7 minutes. On Wheel I have almost maxed out the available memory...using the menu it takes about 2 to 2 1/2 hours to load - with the firewire drive it takes about 20 minutes. I believe that the drive is portable enough to take it with you & use it on any "A" or "G" frame.

Hey Rick, When I was on a Kalypso regularly I thought the device menu had an option to select Louth. I could be wrong, I also never tried it, and if it needs something else to make it work, no idea. I have used AMP with Kalypso (which of course was an option we had to pay for). I thought the same thing about AMP being GVG's, etc, but at NAB I noticed the Kahuna has AMP as well as Odetics and Louth. Not sure if they took Odetics and just modified it to work with more then 8 characters and multiple folders, or if info is public, etc. And yes AMP is only one that will do ethernet, although the Kalypso can do odetics ethernet using some other software running on the switcher and DDR, Omnibus I think it was called. Either way adding odetics would be nice as well as some sort of playlist to take care of looping and 3 point looping for any DDR running those protocols. Good to hear EVS getting some added functionality atleast.

[quote="Bill D"]New features.. Hardware side, how about some new crosspoint modules where in between keyer rows we have a source display row. This way when the new feature of using a keyer bus as a utility bus or macro bus we can have a display dedicated to that feature. Top portion key 1 bus, bottom key 2 bus. Regular source displays can be left alone. This other one I have mentioned in the past on this site. Better machine control. There are other protocols out there for clip recall besides Louth. AMP, Odetics. Both competitors have all 3, as well as ethernet based machine control. More importantly most setups still need lance or other controllers for looping a clip or for 3 point looping. I should be able to make a playlist, so it calls up a clip or timecode, and then will continue playing seamlessly from one clip or timecode to another, then allowing you to indefinitly loop the last item, etc. Every external controller does this, how about allowing the switchers to do this so we can get rid of P-bus. Oh and why do menu macros take 15 frames to execute?[/quote] V7.10 has RECUE and LOOP, for EVS machines. I don't think it works on anyone else's though. Unless something changed in the last week, T/GVG products do not have Louth (VDCP) control directly without some kind of translator. AMP is a T/GVG protocol so you can guess (in the extremely low single digits) the precentage amount of cooperation Sony would get in trying to implement that protocol. In fact, it might have to be licensed -- then you could REALLY guess what the chances of that would be. As for Odetics, I just don't know. For Ethernet, as I understand it, AMP is the only one of those that uses direct Ethernet. Don't get me wrong... I agree with you. RE

WOW! Thanks for the info. I never knew that the Internal DME could be configured as External (of course nothing the company mentioned or would have asked us TD's about in advance of purchasing). I do know that they would not spend extra money on a true external DVE, so I guess I will talk to them about making the internal (everyone is correct with the internal, and we have 4 channels) an external. Also, I know I am getting off track with this thread, but there was also some talk of buying a tub for the "big" control room and sharing the frame with B control. What are the pros/cons to this. Obviously, there are 4 channels of DME and that is it, if one control room is using 3, the other only gets one, correct? What else? Thanks for all of the help. This is a great forum. I have learned a lot. Todd

New features.. Hardware side, how about some new crosspoint modules where in between keyer rows we have a source display row. This way when the new feature of using a keyer bus as a utility bus or macro bus we can have a display dedicated to that feature. Top portion key 1 bus, bottom key 2 bus. Regular source displays can be left alone. This other one I have mentioned in the past on this site. Better machine control. There are other protocols out there for clip recall besides Louth. AMP, Odetics. Both competitors have all 3, as well as ethernet based machine control. More importantly most setups still need lance or other controllers for looping a clip or for 3 point looping. I should be able to make a playlist, so it calls up a clip or timecode, and then will continue playing seamlessly from one clip or timecode to another, then allowing you to indefinitly loop the last item, etc. Every external controller does this, how about allowing the switchers to do this so we can get rid of P-bus. Oh and why do menu macros take 15 frames to execute?

[quote="Rick Edwards"]Of course, the down side, as with all external DMEs, is you lose inputs and outputs. However on the Sony, external DMEs can still do the things that internals can.... for example, DME background wipes, attach them to keyers, etc. But they also still show up as sources too. RE[/quote] Did you ever notice if you use a DME wipe and it grabs an external DME, it will not pass side flags. Kind of makes sense, since DME 5 or whatever external is, is set to 16x9. But with internal DME wipes side flags stay. Anyway be nice if it didn't do that, but always have the internal to use I guess.

My request (If this can be done, let me know): Let's say my M/E 2 snapshot flexipad is showing bank 1. I call up a SHOTBOX that calls up M/E 2 snapshot 43. M/E 2 Flexipad is still showing bank 1. I need to make a modification to that snapshot (different program source, for example.) Once I make that modification, I want to save back to snapshot 43 without having to hit BANK SEL, 4, (HOLD-DOWN) SNAP + 3. In other words, I want the ability to quickly store to the M/E snapshot that is called up back to the same spot with one key stroke no matter what the flexipad is showing. Thanks, Chris Bade WTVF

[quote="todd2"]...At my station, we do a lot of effects that are tape to tape, tape to still, etc., that don't need to be keyed. It would be so much easier to be able to just take the DME on line and run the effect, not tying up any keyers, and worse yet and ME. Todd[/quote] Todd, Have you tried building User Programmable DME wipes? I've done a couple that we use in every show and the sources are punched on the program/preview bus of the M/E and not up in the keyers. If I understood the issue correctly, I think this would get you what you need. Chris Bade WTVF

[quote="todd2"]I know that this may seem odd to some out there, but in a news setting, especially at my station, it would be great to have the DME as an actual source on the switcher (not just the monitor source). Also, to that end, it would be great to be able to route the DME through and AUX, or even in the key delegation panel, but so that it isn't tied to a key, it is stand alone. Then, the input assigns could be tied to the effect register in the master. At my station, we do a lot of effects that are tape to tape, tape to still, etc., that don't need to be keyed. It would be so much easier to be able to just take the DME on line and run the effect, not tying up any keyers, and worse yet and ME. I understand in a truck setting that the DME is often keyed over ME 3 for replays, but in news, not the case. We got an 8000a for our small control room/to train on, and there is a new switcher coming for the main control room next year. There are certain things about the Sony that may preclude us from getting it in the main control room, and this issue is a HUGE hang-up for the TD's. Thoughts on this from others/Sony. Todd[/quote] Todd, Sony has always had the ability to do what you're asking for. What you're really asking for is a true external DVE. When your DME was purchased, they gave your company the option of purchasing it as internal or external. Yours was obviously configured and purchased as internal. With a simple option card change in the DME and some re-programming on the switcher you can have the channels truly external. Each one has its own key signal when combined, etc. Of course, the down side, as with all external DMEs, is you lose inputs and outputs. However on the Sony, external DMEs can still do the things that internals can.... for example, DME background wipes, attach them to keyers, etc. But they also still show up as sources too. RE

Todd, Do you have internal DME channels, external DME channels, or both? From the sounds of it, you only have internal channels. If you have external channels, you can bring each channel in on its own button or through the combiner option, you can bring multiple channels in on one button. The down side is that you have to burn aux's to feed the DME channels (but that's what you said you want to do). It seems like external DME's would solve most of your problems... -Allan

I know that this may seem odd to some out there, but in a news setting, especially at my station, it would be great to have the DME as an actual source on the switcher (not just the monitor source). Also, to that end, it would be great to be able to route the DME through and AUX, or even in the key delegation panel, but so that it isn't tied to a key, it is stand alone. Then, the input assigns could be tied to the effect register in the master. At my station, we do a lot of effects that are tape to tape, tape to still, etc., that don't need to be keyed. It would be so much easier to be able to just take the DME on line and run the effect, not tying up any keyers, and worse yet and ME. I understand in a truck setting that the DME is often keyed over ME 3 for replays, but in news, not the case. We got an 8000a for our small control room/to train on, and there is a new switcher coming for the main control room next year. There are certain things about the Sony that may preclude us from getting it in the main control room, and this issue is a HUGE hang-up for the TD's. Thoughts on this from others/Sony. Todd

When I'm sitting on a 0 pause within a macro, I want to be able to get out of that macro just by calling up another macro. I don't want to have to hit the take button to finish the macro or to hit the same macro again to abort out of it. If that can't be done, when I call up a macro using the key2/4 shotbox option and I'm sitting on a 0 pause, I want that macro button on the key2/4 row to stay lit. That way, I hit the button that's lit (the one I'm stuck on), and I can get out of it. 999 Macros and 999 PBus effects I want menu macros to be faster. If you only have to do one thing with a menu macro, it's no problem. If you need a menu macro to hit several things, it takes several seconds. There's a 10-15 frame delay between each event in a menu macro. I'd like to see this sped up. Be able to do some of the offline menu macro editing functions directly from the panel (disk file load comes to mind). Macros in timelines I know the following two things probably aren't a software thing but I'll throw them out there anyway: Faster frame mem loading! Have the option to be able to send certain properties of a keyer to a resizer/dme or send things pre and post resizer/dme process. For example, I want to be able to move a resizer/internal dme around within a crop and not have to burn 2 keyers to fake it. I'm sure there's more stuff I'll come up with... -Allan