July 6th, 2010
Found this on an avid forum:
I load the tape, select clips and hit batch capture. then a window pops up telling me that the wrong tape was inserted. it expected non drop and a drop frame was inserted…. I cant get past this, even if i try to shuttle around manualy on the deck, restart, etc.
Avid apparently has a serious engineering problem when it comes to Firewire.
I’ve never seen this problem using RS-422 deck control and SDI inputs.
Solution is to be playing the tape on the deck before you open the capture tool.
Then choose batch capture.
After each tape, close the capture tool, put in the new tape and be playing (make sure not to be in rogue TC)
This is actually a very normal behavior when capturing through FW. You have to play the tape for a little while before the AVID grabs the correct code.
Posted in Editing In AVID | No Comments »
June 24th, 2010
I
logic missing fader
I was working on a song with about 36 tracks, all audio, no midi, no virtual instruments. After working on it for months, when I opened it certrain tracks had no fader in the mixer and they wouldn’t play.
If I tried to add tracks I got the “No more tracks available” message.
Searched online if there was any track count limit; yes but it is 255.
There is also no difference in track count between Logic Pro and Express.
Finally found out that it has to do with the max tracks in the core audio preferences.
When you move the Max audio slider up to get more tracks and then refresh by un-checking the core audio checkbox you get the faders back.
Notice also the memory requirements go up with more tracks.
Tags: audio
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April 20th, 2010
From this article on Cinematography Mailing list
Unfortunately, there’s no way to fix this after the fact, and of course you can’t see it on LCD monitors which don’t have rasters. An expensive lesson, but you won’t ever do it again. I have shot in 30 countries that are 220/50hz (even some that are 100/50hz, like the eastern half of Japan) and have never had a problem: Whenever I see any non incandescent source, fluorescents, neon, mercury or sodium vapour, I set my shutter to 1/100th.
If you set the shutter speed at multiples of 1/50 of a second, you will not have a problem. Most NTSC cameras do not have a 1/50th setting, so you must use 1/100th.
Similarly, if you shoot a PAL camera in the US or other 60hz country, set the shutter to 1/60th. All PAL cameras have this capability.
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March 28th, 2010
First read this page on adobe.com
With acrobat pro 9 you can make a pdf with video embedded in the document.
The document will be cross platform compatible and it will play inside the document, but the user (windows or mac) has to update to reader 9.
I created a pdf with video and tested in windows and mac and it works fine.
It is also possible to create what adobe calls a “legacy” pdf, which is backwards compatible with readers back to version6.
The only thing is that if you create a document with video that can be opened by these older versions, the video plays in Quicktime player.
If you decide to embed, the best format for embedding is flash.
Flash encoding can be a little tricky, I tried a few different settings in adobe media encoder and my conclusion is to go for a setting similar to what I deliver to web designers 400×225 15fps, Audio 96kbps total about 400kbps data rate.
The thing with compressing video into flash is that you want to make it as small as possible while it still looks and sounds good.
So the question is: how big can the pdf be with the video included?
Another decision is layout, how much space can the video take up on the page?
and
Do you want it to play in place or in a floating window?
The great thing about the floating window option is that you can have a little postage stamp picture of the video somewhere in the text and when they click, it opens in the native size on top of the text.
As another test I made a pdf with a H264 HD file embedded and that pdf went from 158k to 600MB (the size of the embedded video)
I don’t think that will be compatible with any pc’s other than the latest ones.
The performance is also very slow compared to the smaller flash encoded file.
So it’s really up to you, depending on how big your pdf already is, decide how much you want to add to the pdf with video.
Then divide by the number of video’s that you want to add and you’ll know what the target size is for each video in flash.
For a PDF with external quicktime files:
1. Encode your video H264 to be cross platform compatible.
2. The user on the windows end will have to have quicktime installed.
3. In acrobat pro, choose the “create legacy multimedia content” option.
4. Delete the “play media option” (or else the video will play in place at the small size)
5. Choose the “open up a file” option.
6. Select the quicktime. (make sure Quicktimes are in same folder as PDF)
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January 16th, 2010
Workflow for multi format delivery to:
-Tape SD or HD
-Digital formats for Web & DVD
-Sources are a mix of 16×9 (HD or Anamorphic) and 4×3 SD.
With a mixture of 16×9 and 4×3 in a show, the best approach is to edit in the resolution and aspect ratio of your final output format.
Reformat footage on the timeline as needed.
HD
If you have to deliver the final show on HD-CAM, edit in your favorite HD resolution, 16×9.
-The 4×3 footage will be pillar-boxed
SD
For delivery on SD Digi-beta you have to make a choice between delivering anamorphic or letter-boxed. Decide based on how much 16×9 and 4×3 footage you have.
16×9
If you have more 16×9 footage (from HD sources), deliver anamorphic.
Make sure the Anamorphic box is checked in Sequence settings in FCP.
-4×3 footage will be pillar-boxed.
4×3
If you have more 4×3 footage, go for regular 4x3 and cut the HD footage in letter-boxed.
or centercut
In my opinion, because most TV sets are 16×9, anamorphic is preferred.
You gain about 1/3 resolution over letter-box.
TV’s, projectors and DVD players are very good at stretching Anamorphic to 16×9.
Anamorphic makes it easier to up-res the show to HD.
If you are making a tape for projection, label with clear instructions:
“This tape is 4×3 LETTERBOX” or “This tape is ANAMORPHIC, please stretch to 16×9″
For SD DVD export a 640×480 Anamorphic quicktime.
Always de-interlace 4×3 full frame for the web on export!
If your sequence is SD-anamorphic or HD, export interlaced for Blue-Ray DVD.
For Web delivery, de-interlace on export!
Notes on digital delivery:
-Make sure to add a few extra frames at the top and bottom to make the movie go to black and not hang on a ghost frame.
-Resize picture to 104% to get rid of closed captioning and fuzzy video edges.
-Always de-interlace coming out of your NLE, software like adobe’s media encoder assumes that you de-interlace, there is no option to de-interlace!
Posted in Editing in Final Cut Pro, Internet | No Comments »
December 27th, 2009
Progressive video is not really recorded progressive on modern video cameras.
Editing software extracts progressive frames from interlaced recording formats.
See wikipedia
If you accidentally shot 1080i24P on the HVX200 or HPX170 then Cinema tools is your friend. Do this:
-Use Log and Transfer to re-wrap as usual. (the Remove Advanced Pulldown checkbox doesn’t help because 1080i24P is NOT advanced pulldown)
-Footage comes in as 1080p30 29.97. It plays really shitty in FCP and you see interlacing artifacts.
-Start cinema tools
-FIle > Batch Reverse Telecine
-Use these settings:
It takes about the same time as re-wrapping
You end up with 1080p30 23.98 with all the fields removed.
Next time shoot 1080i24PA (Advanced pulldown), that way log and transfer can pull the fields and frames out while it re-wraps into Quicktime.
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December 14th, 2009
During a shoot always copy the “CONTENTS” and “LASTCLIP.TXT” to a drive to empty cards, never try to re-wrap files on location!
Best thing is to bring enough cards to make it through the day.
If you bring laptop, card reader & HD, make folders in advance; CARD 1, CARD 2 etc.
Lately I’ve seen FCP skip files or abort transfer in the log & transfer window.
You see a red stop sign with an exclamation point.
This is with a fast laptop 3.06 gHz with 8GB ram.
Only after many tries will it transfer certain files.
See this link on Apple
It is too much of a pain to have to troubleshoot and make sure you have all files on location.
Posted in Editing in Final Cut Pro | No Comments »
November 24th, 2009
If you shoot for American TV on a Panasonic camera (HVX-200, HPX-170)
set the camera to DVCPRO 60i
For European TV DVCPRO 50i (50Hz model)
Storage calculation 1GB/Min.
For the HMC-150 record DVCPRO 60i in PH-mode.
Storage calculation 3 hours on a 32GB SDHC card.
Do a test on the editing system if you shoot with the 150. The codec is AVCHD witch means more heavy lifting on your processors in editing. You’ll have to balance quality with efficiency if you’ve got a slower system. Otherwise, Panasonic offers a free utility that will convert the AVCHD files into the DVCPRO format. This will reduce the responsibilities of the processor, but will dramatically increase file size.
In FCP use the preset in log& Transfer to re-wrap to Pro-res 422.
If you shoot with the Sony PMW-EX3 shoot 1080 59.94i (50i for European TV)
Storage calculation 1GB/4 min. or 70min per 16GB SxS card in HQ mode.
List of Panasonic cameras
List of Canon cameras
List of Sony cameras
Sony XDCAM format
Posted in Editing in Final Cut Pro | No Comments »
November 17th, 2009
Posted in Internet | No Comments »
