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A whole slew of issues…
I’m going to apologize upfront for the length of this post but I’m having some strange issues and I don’t want to leave anything out (I’m sure I will but I’ll at least put forth the effort). So here it goes.
The Project:
We are running FCP 7.0.1 on an iMac with Snow Leopard. We are currently working on a project that is mixing web footage that has been converted to DV/NTSC 29.97 as well as DVCPro HD 720p24. The project started purely as a mashup of web footage, and I have interns downloading the videos and converting to DV/NTSC with MPEG Streamclip since they do not have Final Cut and therefore no ProRes. They recently shot footage for it in DVCPro HD 720p24. They shot about 12 tapes worth of footage so I figured they were redoing it entirely. They aren’t. The sequence is still mostly comprised of DV/NTSC footage, and so the sequence is DV/NTSC in 29.97, with some of the DVCPro footage added (I’m sure this is at least partially contributing to the very strange problems that we just encountered). My first question is, what would you recommend for a workflow in a case like this? I was thinking that in these cases where most of the footage is in 29.97 that set up FCP to ignore the pulldown on the DVCPro material. Is this possible?The most strange and unusual problem(s):
Now we come to the actual problem(s). Last night some more DVCPro HD footage was captured to the internal HD (since the iMac’s only have one firewire port and I’d had trouble with dropped frames when set the capture scratch to an external drive connected via USB 2.0). This morning I moved the media over to the external drive with the media manager. Everything reconnected fine. However, very random things happened to the sequence (which hasn’t even incorporated this new footage).
Firstly, the sequence has a series of title cards stacked over both video and freeze frames with lots of cross-fades and dips to color. All of a sudden, wherever there was a transition, the media was showing up as offline, but only where there was a transition. The rest of the video played as normal. When I opened the clip in the viewer, everything was there.
Secondly, there were a number of issues with the audio tracks. When we opened the sequence, only tracks 1 and 2 were playing (the project has 8). Some of the DVCPro audio from the sequence has been nested into a stereo sequence and inserted into the cut. When I opened the sequence in the viewer, from the sequence, the audio wouldn’t play. However, when I went into the browser and loaded the audio sequence from there, it would play. I thought had something to do with the fact that the audio was nested, but the same thing happened with the music track which was not nested. Once again, when I double clicked it in the sequence, the audio wouldn’t play, but when I match-framed or opened it from the browser it would.
I went back and put everything back in and redid the video transitions so the sequence plays fine now. I am just very curious how these seemingly random problems occurred and what I can do to avoid them in the future. I know you will tell me not to:
a) use DV/NTSC because it’s just awful and I do think I am going to change the workflow so that I am converting it to ProRes (LT) rather than having the interns convert. However, since the majority of the footage we grab from the web is at 29.97 I plan on keeping that frame-rate.
b) Don’t mix formats/frame-rates in the timeline because the open format timeline kinda sorta sucks. If you have any suggestions on what to do when similar issues crop up (i.e. mixing web footage with DVCPro 720p24 footage) I am all ears.Thank you in advance for all of the help I’m sure you’ll give me.
Scott
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10 Replies
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[Scott Stolzar] “Last night some more DVCPro HD footage was captured to the internal HD (since the iMac’s only have one firewire port and I’d had trouble with dropped frames when set the capture scratch to an external drive connected via USB 2.0).”
You simply cannot use USB drives as media drives for FCP. They do not supply the sustained throughput necessary for video editing without dropping frames.
And, you can’t edit video from the system drive either for the same reason, because the operating system and running apps have that drive way too busy.
Get this rectified with a firewire 800 drive and perhaps your issues go away on their own.
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[Scott Stolzar] ” We are currently working on a project that is mixing web footage”
First off you cannot Just take footage off the web and use it for yourself. You need to contact the copyright owner and get permission to use the footage. So to put it bluntly you are breaking the law and asking all your interns to break the law also.
[Scott Stolzar] “I’d had trouble with dropped frames when set the capture scratch to an external drive connected via USB 2.0”
Yes thats because USB is NOT suitable for video editing. USB works in bursts of data therefore it cannot keep up with the constant data speeds needed for video editing.
**Hindsight is always 1080p**
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Sorry I was not clear about the drive. I captured the DVCPro footage to the Mac internal drive and then moved that with the media manager via firewire 800 onto an external 2 TB drive. No USB was involved in this process because I had learned from my last time.
As to the the web footage, this is purely for internal presentation purposes only. Nothing is being broadcast or distributed in any way, nor will it be used for profit. Again strictly internal. I was not clear in that regard.
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[Scott Stolzar] “As to the the web footage, this is purely for internal presentation purposes only. Nothing is being broadcast or distributed in any way, nor will it be used for profit. Again strictly internal. I was not clear in that regard.”
Even if it is being used for internal purposes, you still need to get permission from copyright owners. It does not matter where you are using it, it matters that you are using it.
**Hindsight is always 1080p**
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As for the actually having the DP’s shoot at 29.97, I’ve made the request before and I’ll keep pressing it, although the producers/DPs love their 24p. Also, for this project I assumed that since they were shooting so much that that would be the only footage that we used. Guess I was a victim of the classic saying.
Is it the mixed codecs/framerate that caused the weird issues that seemed to have no set pattern as I suspect or could there be some larger issue?
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I would also recommend upgrading to 7.0.3 The earlier versions of FCP7 had lots of little problems including drop frame issues.
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Aside from the overly complex mixing of formats…
I think you have a problem with missing render files.
It’s what I first thought of when I read your post.
I’d toggle the monitoring off and on for the video tracks ( make fcp ‘lose’ any renders ) and see if the offline problem keeps happening at the transitions.
Just my humble 2 cents.
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Thanks for the thoughts. That was my other thought for the video, although it’s weird to me that it would show up as offline for those frames as opposed to merely unrendered. I’ve cleaned out render files before with no problems, I just have to render it again.
One important piece about the audio, which was really the most confusing aspect, is that all of the audio showed up as online. The waveforms were all there, as were the levels. They just wouldn’t play from the timeline. I’m just thankful that I was able to rebuild it easily, just a very confusing error.
I’ll have to talk to IT about upgrading, although they’re hesitant enough to upgrade in general, but we’re a small FCP ghetto in an otherwise Avid world, and get treated as such.
Again thanks for the help. I think my main task now is to try to convince the the producers/DP to shoot in the correct frame rate for these projects.
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[Scott Stolzar] “I’ll have to talk to IT about upgrading, although they’re hesitant enough to upgrade in general,”
Is the FCP system online? If so then just click on software updates (via the apple logo in the top left corner), select Pro Apps (ignore Safari and itunes etc updates) and install. The IT department is doing you no favours if they won’t allow the early bug fix updates to be installed.
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I need the admin password to update/install anything on the machines. I will get on them about it though.
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