Production Switchers

I have a Carbonite+ frame with the MediaStores in key/fill mode. I understand this leaves me with 4GB in the M2/M4 pair for MediaWipes and 4GB in M1/M3 as a still store. Is the file size on my USB drive (10 bit PNG with alpha) an accurate reflection of how much of he MediaStore is used, or does Carbonite have a way to tell me how much of the M1/M3 pair is used/available?

Jeff:

In the key/fill mode, you are not limited to using the the M1/M3 as a still store and the M2/M4 for the MediaWipes.. Thus, you can play animation sequence from either pair of media players. I try to put the small :01sec type of animated transitions on M1/M3 and M2/M4 I have the longer :05 sec and a few stills (watermarks) however, depending on the show, I mathematically figure out where I am putting the TGA files FIRST, so I can figure out how to use the available 4GB the best, then I start building my show.

Take a look at this past forum post: USB, Media Capacity and Management

USB, Media Capacity and Management

I have not used the PNG file type, however I have used the TGA file type and mathematically you can get 392 frames of HD video onto a media player. To figure it out we had to look at the size of one TGA file, then divide 4GB by the file size, thus giving us the maximum amount of frames that could be loaded onto a media player before it started to overwrite the RAM with different information. It depends on the file type and also if you are in a SD or HD state. You just have to remember you only have 4GB per pair of media players.

Too answer your question about the carbonite having a way to tell you how much is used / available.... The answer is NO

On a side note:



Les has some posted some helpful training videos.

video tutorials that demonstrate the basics of the Carbonite Switcher

#Carbonite

Thanks for the info Gordon. I know my way around a Vision, so I picked up the Carbonite fairly quickly. Just trying to adjust to not having a few Blackstorm servers on this smaller setup.

I considered checking the folder size with targa files, but everything I have is png, so I would have to batch them to targa. Even if I do that, but the changelog for 7.2 tells us that alpha channels now use half the bandwidth (probably dropped the chroma and kept the luma for M3/4 in key/fill mode) which makes things not quite as clear as just the targa file size. I guess HD is somewhere between 550 and 600 now, which gives me a ball park. Certainly useful to know that much.

#Carbonite

You can use the PNG files directly and do not need to convert them to TGA in order to use them

#Carbonite

Right. I was just saying targa conversion to see an uncompressed file size to compare against the 4GB cache.

#Carbonite