Compressor frame accurate?

[Erik Lundmark]

Hmm, I’m sure what you’re saying is good. I’m afraid I’m not really picturing it in my mind.
Here’s what we need to accomplish: capture HD source to DV 23.98, apply watermark to all clips, reconnect all clips to watermarked media instead of clean media, send it all off to a trailer house.
I can’t have any layers with watermarks floating around that the editor could remove.
This is all about having a visual “property of…” stamp on all video clips.

I tried to apply the watermark on the timeline in FCP, save out a new clip and reconnecting it to the offline clip, but that just strips out any timecode info regarding Media Start and End. It simply starts at 00:00:00:00.

try explaining again, thanks,
Erik

[Jeremy Garchow]

Ah, I get your dilemma now.

You need tc burn as well?

[Jeremy Garchow]

Alright. I just tried your proposed workflow with a few caveats:

I have 720p23.98 footage with me. I tried exporting to compressor, watermarking and timecoding the footage. I then reconnected the media to the original and the only thing that popped up as a warning of being different was the reel number. The timecode remained the same. So compressor understands 23.976.

Let’s try this. Try taking your ORIGINAL MEDIA after capture, process through cinema tools to 23.98, then try the watermark/timecode. See if that works for you. The combustion thing I told you about earlier was with dv media @ 23.98 as well.

[Erik Lundmark]

Really, that’s bizarre!
My error says Media Start and End is different, not the Reel.

I’ll try your idea of conforming the media once it’s captured tomorrow.

Thanks so far for your patience,
Erik

[Erik Lundmark]

Wow, wow, wow!
I tried your idea of conforming the newly captured clips before running them through compressor. It worked! I tried a handful of other clips to make sure I wasn’t just lucky and they all work. I went back to my old workflow to prove it and the old workflow without conforming in CT does indeed give me the wrong Media Start and End times.

Thank you so much. I would never have thought to do something so seemingly redundant.

I think this should be elevated to Apple’s FCP team. Anyone with direct connections please!

Best regards,
Erik Lundmark

[Jeremy Garchow]

Awesome, glad it’s working for you. I learned the solution here on the cow from dheidel, thanks for it dheidel!

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/961767#reply_box

It has to be a quicktime deal. Somehow, all the header or frame rate info is getting written wrong in Dv 23.98 material. Going through Cinema Tools rewrites it properly. You can send feedback to apple of you want, it is worth it. Also, perhaps a call to AJA is in order since you are doing the 23.98 down-conversion thorough the AJA. I am sure they will tell you it’s an FCP thing, but you never know.

Have fun!

Jeremy

[Erik Lundmark]

I’m actually using a Decklink card from BlackMagic, but I’ll send a link too.
Erik

[David Heidelberger]

Weird. What a strange thing. And it also solved the DVCPROHD exports needing to render bug before, as you so rightly pointed out, 6.0.2 took care of it. Cinema Tools conform seems to be worth a shot for almost any Quicktime problem.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[dheidel] “Cinema Tools conform seems to be worth a shot for almost any Quicktime problem. “

Boy, wouldn’t that be an easy fix.

[Chris Messineo]

Erik or Jeremy,

I was wondering if you could explain this “solution” in a little more detail.

I am having a similar problem (see the top of this page). I am trying to export a short film from FCP to Compressor. The sequence is DVCPro HD 720p with a Frame Rate of 23.976 Compressor keeps removing the last frames from my file when it exports as if it can’t handle the Frame Rate.

I saw this thread and wondered if Cinema Tools might be the answer, but I have no experience with Cinema Tools.

Any insight you might have would be greatly appreciated.