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Timecode/Gain FCP Live Camera Feed
I’d just like to post this for feedback higher up the chain. I originally posted a message in March regarding producing a dvd overnight for an event in the day which we successfully completed last week.
Original post: https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/1026641
Followup after the job last week:
Hi,
Just to update everyone on the progress of this project, we successful completed this Wednesday into Thursday morning last week.
We went for a 3 camera setup into a PPU unit with each going down to individual DSR-2000 deck ISO. As well as this we had a live mixer who mixed the cameras down onto a separate DSR-2000 ISO which I digitized straight into FCP as an uncontrolled device. At the same time we had a logger (the client!) down with us backstage who logged the ins and outs of the key parts of the conference. We gave her a preview monitor with the mixed camera feed and timecode on for her reference.
During the 4 hour conference, we had a 20 min break halfway through which meant I could rush the first half upto the editor in the edit suite with logging notes for her to start work on.
Most of the graphics and project outlines had been compiled the day before so we managed to complete the whole edit in little over 12 hours. For the awards ceremony, we agreed to use only stills for this section but used prepared graphics to announce the short list and winners.
The total running length came to around 24 minutes which was 4 minutes over the 20 minutes we were aiming for but got by on that.
We completed the edit and signed off for around 4.30am and then delivered a mastered DVD to on site duplicators at 6am in the morning with them duplicating 450 copies for 9.30 am.
The main time consuming aspect of the whole project was the client deciding which bits to cut getting down from the 1 hour 10 minutes she originally logged to the 20 (24) minutes running time.
The main thing I have to admit which let me down on this project was Final Cut. Now I do love FCP. I’ve always used and will carry on using it but for the application working from live feeds, it really let me down. For one, it wouldn’t capture the live timecode coming from a TCG so time had to be spent syncing the footage with the timecode on the tapes which was time that really could have been used else where. Secondly, and more importantly I thought, FCP for some reason cranked the gain in the picture up by around 6dB. This wasn’t just because of the screen we were viewing it on as we had an experienced racks guy monitor the footage on a vector scope. To combat this we had to combine asking lighting to lower the light level by around 20%, getting the iris on the cameras lowered, fiddling with some bizarre settings in quicktime and using color correction on the footage and I am still positive I wasn’t getting the same signal on my timeline as I was seeing on the grade 1 preview monitor on the PPU.
In future when we do this job, I am going to have to look closely at other products such as Premiere Pro and maybe even Avid (budget permitting) as I can not justify paying close to £5000 on PPU’s and online color correction facilities if Final Cut can not process it correctly.
I’d love to hear comments on this.
kind regards,
Jon -
3 Replies
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Thanks for the wrap.
Perfect illustration why FCP is no good for live gigs. I would never even consider doing this if there’s money involved.
You leave a few unresolved issues that you are apparently satisfied to hang on FCP that do not seem to be reasonable. A boost in gain during live capture has to be a hardware issue. Some inputs that are not Firewire can be adjusted but if you’re coming in as FW, the file you get in FCP is the file you were sent along the wire. Capturing an uncontrolled device is always without timecode, no problem there except with your expectations, which were wrong.
Both of these could have easily been figured out and dealt with during a setup and test.And what’s a PPU? Regional colloquialism?
bogiesan
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You’re asking FCP to do something it’s not really designed to do – live production. However, I imagine there’s a way to capture an input from something like an IO-HD with timecode. I know it has LTC in and out. Maybe it can embed that in its feed.
As for the video gain being too hot, this sounds like an unterminated line or a capture card/box issue. I’ve never heard of FCP causing this kind of issue.
As for syncing without timecode, checkout PluralEyes. I’ve not used it, but it looks amazing. https://www.singularsoftware.com/autosync/
John
MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870
ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE Enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
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Final Cut Studio 2 (up to date)Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN
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Basically a PPU unit (correct me if I’m wrong) is a racks unit with a racks guy who basically has overall control on the cameras and is in constant contact (via Comms) with the camera men. He has control over zoom, focus, iris and then color correction for all the cameras using grade 1 preview monitors and vector scopes. This cost almost £3000 a day (inc the racks guy).
We came into FCP directly through the firewire out from the DSR-2000 deck. The crew assured me that the signal being sent to me was completely clean and exactly what was going into the decks. We tried via all the decks and I had the same problem off all of them indicating that the problem was definitely at my end. The crew couldn’t believe though that there wasn’t an overall gain control for the input into FCP.
FYI Adobes Premiere Pro does capture Timecode via that Firewire connection (and this was the original plan) but as I was using a G5 tower for the capture (rather than our MacPro which was on the edit) it wouldn’t support Premiere Pro CS3/4 which I stupidly, only found the day before the gig.
From the clients side, they were so happy they told me that we have now set the standard for future gigs and they intend to do this for all upcoming shows.
Cheers,
Jon
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