• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Creating Online… Drop Frames, Non-drop Frames, Clips being captured twice… ahhhhh!

  Posted by Andre James on January 21, 2008 at 4:35 am

  Hello,

  I’m an online editor having the same old problems with FCP and I want to find a solution as my next month will be packed with these same old problems.

  The TV show that I work for has videographers that go out and shoot footage on a Panasonic DVX-100a. The footage is brought to 8 different editors who edit the show in a FCP timeline with the settings set to NTSC Offline Jpeg or whatever. It is my job to online this timeline into 8 Bit Uncompressed.

  So my problems have always been like these:

  1. The most common problem I have is watching the same clip being imported twice. I hear that this could be a problem with sub-clips, but can anyone explain this to me so I can learn how to prevent this?

  2. How is it possible that the 1st editor edits these clips with the drop frame timecode and then when I am importing them, they change to non-drop frame? It is throwing some of the clips out of sync. I know that the Drop-frame Non-drop frame is something that only exists on the tape, but I hardly believe that the cameraman is switching this feature because he is the only camera operator using this camera, and most of the clips are drop frame. It doesn’t make sense that some of the footage has non-drop frames. Even if that was the case, why is the first editor able to edit these clips in the proper “drop frame” timecode.

  PLEASE HELP!!!

  Dan Riley replied 18 years, 3 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Dan Riley

  January 21, 2008 at 6:58 am

  If the stuff is shot DV, which it is if it’s that camera,
  the storage needed for DV is very low. Why do the “other” editors
  not capture and edit DV native? Then all you would do is literally import their
  captured files. Then no uprez or recapturing necessary.

  FCP is lousy with the uprez process. If you don’t need to go through it, don’t.
  Why do things the AVID way?

  As far as capturing the clips twice, many times this has to do with audio.
  And since FCP isn’t smart enough to know to turn off the video when all it needs
  is the audio, it captures the clip twice, because you needed a few seconds
  from the middle of it that you didn’t need during the actual video.

  The timecode thing is unusual.
  When the clips are being captured by the 8 other editors,
  how are they all doing that? Are they using the same deck,
  the same FCP workstation, the same capture card (if any)
  and the same settings and codec on capture?

  Dan

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