X-MJ_Wise
Imported Account
May 23, 2001, 2:07 AM
Post #7 of 11
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Well, I actually got to see how the AVIO mangled the senior video Monday morning, and it would have been more amusing if it hadn't happened at such a bad time. Basically, during many of the clips, the video would freeze and the audio would get stuck in a 3 second or so loop. The effect was really quite funny, in one interview a senior was asked what she remembered most of our school, and the Avio froze in a loop with her saying "cafeteria food....prom....cafeteria food...prom." over and over ad infinitum. This led to such a severe lock the only thing left to do was unplug it. I wish I would have shot video of the avio doing this. The AVIO choked on several clips in that project in the same manner. I never did figure out WHY exactly, but removing the offending clips cleared things up, although it chopped the presentation in half. Heck, I wish I had shot video of all the times it messed up. Then I could digitize and put it on the internet to show how the supposedly faultless avio continually blew chunks for us. The worst ever was the unfixable jitter that it developed so that we had to send it back to draco, a total software reinstall could not fix it. Wonderfully enough, it developed this jitter exactly 10 minutes before we went live on air with our broadcast. Everything we tried to record onto it jittered, from any video source in any format. What caused it? All that I know is that I recorded some audio onto it from a CD player, and then everything played back on it jittered. If anything told me the Avio has a few inherent weaknesses, that was it
To address others' concerns:
The source video in question was on a continuously recorded stretch of SVHS tape with no apparent flaws, and the AVIO actually had little trouble with the tape. The audio was far from hot. (it probably needed a boost if anything.) And yes, I did know what I was doing. This was a mere 4-minute project, god knows what would happen should I have attempted anything longer.
Exactly one other person than myself had access to the machine so it's not like somebody was coming in and screwing with it. It's so easy to write off bad user experiences as, well, the problem of a BAD user, given that the Avio has by far given us the most trouble this year is telling. It managed to out-glitch a perennially unreliable Videonics MXPro, and as any disgruntled Videonics user will tell you, their products are not known for their reliability.
David: I don't care to share the school name on this board, and it's really unimportant, as I graduate saturday. If they feel it necessary to contact you, they will. Frankly, I don't give a darn anymore. Oh, and one more thing, stop buying surplus trackballs and ship the good ones right to start with to your customers. Don't wait for them to call you on it.
Also, last year, our editing was done 'out of house' (on a PC) by a kind friend of ours, and he never complained about audio that it was too hot or video with unsteady or unreliable sync. I've digitized videos on my own computer with club footage, and my computer doesn't choke on it with a plain jane vanilla TV card.
I really, really wish the Avio could have been a dream, and considering how well-recommended it was to us by many, many video 'pros', it's a shame it turned out to be such a disappointment. Most of the 'pros' recommended it because they had good experience with the original cassie, and probably thought the next generation would be even better. Well, for us, it wasn't. I admittedly was quite angry when I submitted my original message, but after the continual troubles we've had with it throughout the year, from its do-nothing VGA port (which I am aware is supposed to do nothing, please don't tell me that) to its crappy trackball, I had really had it with an unreliable and unpredictable machine. While the AVIO is not totally junk, it's certainly not the spotless machine it was and is made out to be.
Caveat emptor.
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