Can we perhaps hold the triumphalism …?

[Tim Wilson]

[Brett Sherman] “Of course Simon’s original post was a bit sardonic.”

I don’t think of sardonic as an attack either 🙂 but I was thinking more broadly, about a tendency toward “I don’t need it, so you probably don’t either,” or the feeling that feature requests only come from misunderstandings and generally holding it wrong.

[Bill Davis]

Jeremy,

I have trouble buying into this traditional logic for two reasons. First, it’s been obvious fir the history of “professional time ode” that its always been a massive (if very convenient) kludge. It was originally developed to follow AC line frequency – which is why it’s such a terrible “standard”. One cadence in the US, a different one in Europe? One For NTSC, not necessarily aligned to PAL or SECAM? And after color was further kludged on, they had to do fractional math to get it technically straight. 23.98 frames per second WTF?

Now we don’t have to depend on a dozen different flavors of AC. You can work in DC all day long. Yes we still map it to TC standards for convenience – I’m just asking why? Is it because it’s the best way to divide frames? Why? I deliver all the time in 24 for the web. Then map the same file to 29.97 for broadcast. The file nor the computer care.

24fps made scientific sense for persistence of vision. What’s the modern reason to keep the time code fetish that isn’t about entropy? I’m honestly asking. And who’s should win? US NTSC? Japan NTSC? PAL? SECAM? Which variant? Yes it’s important for broadcast. But what if in 15 years broadcast is WAY smaller a market than web files? Must we keep the old 1/30th drummer employed when the majority is dancing to a different cadence? And for how long? BTW, I don’t want to take it away from anybody. I just want to challenge the conventional wisdom that if you X the lack of REAL TC in X is all that big an issue. It smacks of the hue and cry that the Magnetic timeline was for noobs. And we all know how that turned out.

I’m just suggesting that hiring a new drummer that understands a simple reality – that time is a global agreed to constant that is accessible to all. AND it can serve everyone who needs to stick to 30fps right now. (Because neither X nor AVID nor Premiere Oro lacks the math chops to do so.

You guys just want it to hang onto what you’re used to as long as possible – and I don’t have a problem with that at ALL. I just also want to believe that there might be advantages to a simpler system going forward. Perhaps one where I don’t have to give chunks of money to Horita and SMPTE to maintain an alternate way to slice time IF that’s not what helps me do my job.

It used to for sure. But lately, less so.

And I don’t miss it when I can get usable 4K iPhone or drone footage as an option – and Apple thankfully doesn’t require me to mess with time code in order to easily integrate it.

That’s all.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Bill Davis]

[Tim Wilson] “I would have hoped that at this point in the evolution of X, and of this forum, that we could agree that a feature request by a mostly-happy, well-informed, professional customer could be understood as NOT an attack. “

Yeah, of course. Who would EVER mistake the use of a word like “triumphalism” as any type of attack on a professional position. Silly on it’s face.

From now on, when I post about feature requests, from my happy, well-informed place, I’m going to be more careful with my language.

Since obviously something like “Would X benefit from more timecode options?” is – well, just patently too foolish a header to generate much discussion. Huh?

Clearly Simon was correct. X can’t do timecode as he likes. So we must HOLD our happiness in check – since everyone knows X is still bad awful JuJu for REAL editors.

Got it.

coughcoughcoughcough.

; )

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[Bill Davis]

[Simon Ubsdell] “Let’s wait and see that (for instance) implemented before we start crowing too loudly just yet”

Simon,

I need to apologize.

I’m on a nasty series of deadlines on 3 projects and am facing one specific corporate project that defines Scope Creep that I have to shoot next week and I’m stressed.

I should have been more temperate.

Sorry.

Your use of the triumphalism dig hit me the wrong way. But thats neither here nor there.

You are right to feel that you want any software you consider to have similar features to ones you’ve come to depend upon.

I spent my whole career chasing timecode – and I have to say that I’m feeling freed when I realize that I no longer HAVE to manage that in order to do some select portions of my work – but as you say – workflows are individual.

So again, sorry.

Bill.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Bill Davis] ” So what does timecode really provide in the modern era that couldn’t be supplanted over time with video systems moving to GPS based clock time with local offsets applied? “

So your suggestion is basically to make everything Time of Day TC and using GPS as the ‘master clock’ that everything syncs to? What do you do when you can’t get/maintain a reliable GPS signal?

[Bill Davis] “Now we don’t have to depend on a dozen different flavors of AC. You can work in DC all day long. Yes we still map it to TC standards for convenience – I’m just asking why?”

I thought you’d get light flicker/roll if you shot 60Hz in a 50Hz country and vice versa.

[Bill Davis] “24fps made scientific sense for persistence of vision.”

24fps made sense because film was expensive, studios were cheap and 24fps was the slowest they could get away with. For a host of technical and aesthetic reasons I hope you aren’t suggesting that all cameras shoot at just 24fps.

[Bill Davis] “Yes it’s important for broadcast. But what if in 15 years broadcast is WAY smaller a market than web files?”

So X shouldn’t get a useful feature today because it might be a slightly less useful feature in 15yrs?

[Tim Wilson]

[Andrew Kimery] “24fps made sense because film was expensive, studios were cheap and 24fps was the slowest they could get away with. For a host of technical and aesthetic reasons I hope you aren’t suggesting that all cameras shoot at just 24fps.”

Yes, the persistence of vision, or any thought that any filmmaker originally found 24fps aesthetically pleasing is off base.

One may have subsequently fallen in love with 24fps in the intervening 75 years, but Thomas Edison for one was adamant that 46fps was the right number. He couldn’t get a studio to pay for it, but there was nothing sacred about 24. On the contrary, that choice was made for explicitly anti-artistic reasons, and was simply the most that early filmmakers could extract consent for.

Again acknowledging that subsequent generations may have found it appealing, I hate it with film. The name “flicks” was applied to movies because of, yes, the flickering. I’m doing better with digital, but I found film projected at 24fps to be as physically nauseating as some people find 3D.

iPhones and the GoPro Hero 3 certainly don’t feel wedded to 24fps. GoPro goes up to 120fps at 720, and iPhone can do 120fps at 1080, and 240fps at 720. HEVC (High Efficiency Video Encoding) already supports 300 fps at up to 8K, and first showed it at NAB 2013.

This may seem trivial or peripheral, but as it’s now my turn to tease an upcoming story. We’ve got a workflow story in the research stages for a Big Four US network that uses 22 different kinds of cameras per episode. Not 22 cameras. 22 KINDS of cameras, with more than one of quite a few of them, and they don’t all shoot the same frame rate, and all audio is second source, no scratch audio for sync, so no PluralEyes. Timecode is a MAJOR issue.

That may sound hideously primitive, but your opinion or mine about the suitability of their workflow to modern production is irrelevant to THEM. What they use now works. What you propose wouldn’t.

I know that your feeling is that well, god bless ’em, nobody’s making them use FCPX, but the point is that virtually every regular poster here DOES use X on a regular basis, and they DO have similar needs, and they’d like Apple to meet those needs, since indeed, Apple once did.

And it’s also not like anyone is insisting that Apple do it the same way they used to. The whole thread on roles-based mixing underscores the extent to which the most frequent posters here HAVE embraced Apple’s new paradigms. Their goal is simply for Apple to cover the bases that are demonstrably still at the core of workflows for vast swaths of the professional production landscape who’d rather be using X than not.

[Oliver Peters]

[Bill Davis] “I have trouble buying into this traditional logic for two reasons. First, it’s been obvious fir the history of “professional time ode” that its always been a massive (if very convenient) kludge. “

Bill, your whole premise is incorrect. You’re talking about TimeCode being a kludge is based on using TC as a means of counting real-time against a clock. Despite all the variations, 1 TC frame still equals 1 whole film or video frame or image in a sequence. Nothing kludgey or fractional about that. Therefore, as a means of counting consecutive frames in some accurate manner, there is no kludge. Plus, it’s a method that’s understandable to any human or machine in a very simple fashion. It’s no different than if you counted in a binary fashion versus base 10.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Jeremy Garchow]

I think we are having two separate conversations, Bill.

What Simon is saying, and what I and others agree with, is that fcpx should display multiple time code per each clip instead of having one timecode display for multiple sources. This would make certain matching and frame accurate replacements a lot easier as you could see multiple time stamps at once, instead of one at at time, or be able to check for sync on multiple sources at once.

I imagine that you’ve never needed to replace your current footage on your timeline with a new version, be it that version is now color corrected, visual effected, or otherwise? Well, imagine if you did, and since fcpx has no reconnect function to allow a force reconnect to other media, frame to frame matching by tc is the next logical way to do this and it’s a huge PIA with fcpx.

I use Pr or Resolve to do conforms and I wish I didn’t have to.

We aren’t taking about tc as an “antiquated” technology. Timecode, at its basic level, is just metadata. Fcpx does a decent job with metadata, but in this particular case, having multiple metadata displays of a certain parameter, fcpx fails.

I don’t feel like ‘us guys are hanging on’ to something unnecessary here, I’m simply asking for something that would help make my job easier within fcpx.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Tim Wilson] “I’m doing better with digital, but I found film projected at 24fps to be as physically nauseating as some people find 3D.”

Interesting. Projected film in a theater is usually projected at 48Hz (each film frame is flashed twice to help reduce flicker) but I’ve read that digital project is usually done at 72Hz (each frame is flashed three times) so I wonder if that increased refresh rate is what makes it easier on your eyes? Maybe the lack of gate weave in digital has something to do with it as well?

[Bill Davis]

Andrew,

Are you saying that modern timepieces lose accuracy if they aren’t hooked up to a reliable constant timing source? That’s not my experience at all. Drift seems to be down to very low effects at the device level. . Perhaps on location in the middle of nowhere. But even there, there are satellite radios and other mobile GPS readers that can grab a reset signal from a satellite, so I’m just not worried about it.

I leave my GoPros on a shelf for weeks, and when I go back to them – I don’t really have an issue with their clocks.

[Andrew Kimery] “I thought you’d get light flicker/roll if you shot 60Hz in a 50Hz country and vice versa.
“

Has nothing to do with frame identification for editing. If the clock time is right to GPS standards, Math can convert it into whatever division you’re working with. It’s pretty basic.

[Andrew Kimery] “I hope you aren’t suggesting that all cameras shoot at just 24fps.
“

Nope. Exactly the opposite. You do your timing based on a universal time hack – then let the computer convert it to whatever frame rate you want. It doesn’t restrict your ability to work with non-standard frame rates, it should enhance it.

[Andrew Kimery] “So X shouldn’t get a useful feature today because it might be a slightly less useful feature in 15yrs?
“

Now you’re just being silly. The current tech provides that for the people who need it. What I question is whether just because it was useful 15 years ago. And simply LESS useful today because the systems are changing and cameras have superb on-board timekeeping that’s cheap and widely available – that everyone HAS to keep thinking that timecode needs to continue to be dealt with like it was in 1979.

That doesn’t seem reasonable to me. But for some, it seems to be where they want to freeze things. Basically that Pro Time Code is DONE. The best we’ll ever have. Even if the fact that you shoot 4 cameras all set to 1:00:00:00 and have to futz with fixing that. If the industry is allowed to migrate to more robust GPS global time, there WILL need to be a dedicated device and/or time zone ID included or the whole system won’t work.

I’m ready to start moving toward that. Camera time management for the global, connected era.
Not just digital versions of the blips we wrote to audio tracks on our TAPES in 1979.

Cant we do any better than that?

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.