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I got a good one….
I’m was recently loaned a clarity.image “Varispeed” speed ramping unit. I plan on using it during a test this Monday. ( clarity website: https://www.clarityimage.com/ )
The instructions seems easy enough to figure out and create speed ramped footage. There are no instructions included on using the resulting footage within the FCP timeline. (or any NLE for that matter)
The web site for the company that builds the device is in Japanese and the Google translation is pretty wacky. ( https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=https://www.tec-s.jp/&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttps://www.tec-s.jp/%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den ) BTW: it’s not on thier site yet. It’s a new thingy.My question is this: can anyone smarter than me please have a look at the unit’s literature and see what you can make of it and tell me what you think FCP will do with the ramped footage once it’s been captured and placed in the timeline?
Thanks
Christopher Knell
FireLine Studios
Orlando, Florida -
13 Replies
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Well, I just found this:
https://www.panasonic.com/business/provideo/support/fcphd.asp
The Panasonic FRC plug-in for FCP.
Anyone ever use this? I’m wondering if it will work with ramped speed footage.
Christopher Knell
FireLine Studios
Orlando, Florida -
Apple / Panasonic FRC software for FInal Cut Pro is only good with single frame rates. It will not work with ramps. You must use a hardware based frame rate converter like:
Black Magic Card
AJA card
Pansonic Frame Rate Conveter BoxThere are several other high end edit systems which can read the flags in real time and would have no probelm with ramps.
Chris Bell
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I’m using a BM card. Do you have a link to anything that explains the process of converting ramped footage?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.Christopher Knell
FireLine Studios
Burbank, CA -
[FireLine Studios] “I’m using a BM card. Do you have a link to anything that explains the process of converting ramped footage?”
It is my understanding that the BMD cards do not support VFR capture over SDI. The BMD web site says their HD cards only support 24, 30 and 60 fps setups. If theta is the case you would follow the FCP instructions for the Software Frame rate converter available on the 1200a support page.
Gary Adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation
Chicago, IL USA -
In theory shouldn’t the ramped footage just be marked as flagged or dupe just like any other off speed shooting but with a different distribution of flagged frames as the ramp progresses? I would test to see whether the software convertor through firewire just throws away the dupe frames as it normally does resulting in a ramped clip on a 24FPS project.
Test it and let us all know!
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Chris,
Drop me an email and I will pass on the information for a guy over at Clarity.
Cheers,
Ramona at spectsoft dot com -
Chris,
The FCP FRC plugin will indeed work with ramped footage created with Clarity.
Bill Hogan who is the engineer who developed Clarity allowed me to use his Clarity Box and my test shots worked fine using the FCP FRC plugin. You just need to understand how the presets work and allow you to build different ramps with a start and ending duration as well as specific frame rates to start and end on. I successfully did ramps back and forth from 4 fps to 60 fps and in reverse within the same take. The FRC plugin had no problem dealing with such radical frame ramping.
There are some issues regarding black flash frames at the end of recording which appears to be an issue with the Varicam and ramped shots. The only solution is to always allow more post roll after each ramped shot so any black flash frame occur well after the take.
FYI The black flash frames are random.
Tony Salgado
Tony Salgado
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[Dale McCready] “In theory shouldn’t the ramped footage just be marked as flagged or dupe just like any other off speed shooting but with a different distribution of flagged frames as the ramp progresses?”
Correct, but it is that change in the cadence or sequence of the flagging of frames that can cause the errors. When the next flag in the seq is not where the computer expects it, based on how it has read the previous cadence of flagged frames, FCP will often rejects the capture, just as if the timebase of the footage changed from 24 to 30.
Do you have any idea how complicated the process is when the frame rate changes from 11 to 17 frames?
the cadence has to adapt on the fly in what the computer is simultaneously converting back to a 24p timebase. (which is ALWAYS 23.98 in the software FRC in Final Cut)My Kona cards operate in a similar fashion to Panasonic’s frame rate converter, the AJ-FRC27 as do the solutions from Rave HD (which use the Linux version of the Kona card) This type of hardware allows me to handle that footage as either DVCPROHD or as a uncompressed stream, and can actively capture the ramped speed change easily.
Gary Adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation
Chicago, IL USA -
Please watch your rhetoric, yes I have an idea how complicated the cadence shift is, and thank you for your response regarding capturing varispeed.
This just in from ClarityImage:
“And yes the footage gets converted in FCP or with the Panasonic FRC.”
Have you done tests of the software FRC and come up with this problem you talked about previously? Was the capture card you went for a solution to this for you?
I believe (but may well be wrong) that the software FRC is only concerned with either keeping or tossing out frames depending upon whether they are flagged in their user bits with a 1 or 0. once the frames marked as 1 are remaining they are then reassembled into a 23.98 clip. There’s not a lot of extra complication to this is there?
And so to put it out there again for dummies like me who may want to repeat your workflow, you are saying that your capture card can toss the dupe frames out on capture? Would you mind putting up a step by step of how you do this and what your sequence/clip settings become?
Does anyone know if the BlackMagic cards also do this?
I’m currently looking at the Clarity coontroller for a shoot involving a lot of stunts and action and would like to make sure that I don’t create any problems for post production.
Fore warned is fore armed!
Dale McCready
New Zealand -
Thanks Tony,
That makes sense to me. Is the information regarding the settings you talked about available with the Clarity when you use it?
Dale McCready
cinematographer
New Zealand
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