Edit to Tape weirdness

[Gordon Gurley]

First off, thanks for all your input.

Typically, if I get a dropped frame error, I run it again from the top and it all goes fine. But I still think that 50% failure is not acceptable. This isn’t baseball. These are computers.

If I do the self contained export, don’t I take a hit in quality by running the codec twice? It has been suggested that I do this, but typically I’m limited by time and space.

BTW, I hardly ever get dropped frames in capture. Can’t remember the last time.

If it is something in my timeline, how can I figure out what the corrupting clip or file is?

I will make sure to select all during mixdown next time.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Gordon Gurley] “This isn’t baseball. These are computers. “

Since we are talking baseball: Ain’t that the truth, Ruth.

[Gordon Gurley] “I will make sure to select all during mixdown next time. “

I bet this will cure it.

[Gordon Gurley] “If I do the self contained export, don’t I take a hit in quality by running the codec twice? It has been suggested that I do this, but typically I’m limited by time and space. “

If you check ‘self contained’ and leave ‘recompress all frames’ UNchecked, you aren’t compressing the footage again, the OS is basically taking all of your media and concatenating it into one file (a digital copy, not a recompression).

Make sense?

[Gordon Gurley] “If it is something in my timeline, how can I figure out what the corrupting clip or file is? “

i don’t think you have a corrupt clip/timeline or else you would have totally repeatable problems at a certain point in the timeline. Some things to keep in mind:

FCP is not Avid. Avid has a way of taking everything you throw at it and converting into it’s own database/media. FCP will take whatever media you have and play it from wherever that media resides. If that means you have an audio track on a thumb-drive (for an extreme example) it will try and play that music from the thumb-drive and bring the whole operation to a halt. Organization is key. Put ALL your media and parts of your project (music/stills/quicktimes/animations/etc) on the fastest drive you have (in your case, your SAN). Shane Ross has a DVD on how to get organized in FCP:

https://store.creativecow.net/p/63/getting_organized_in_final_cut_pro

It’s worth it for you if you are used to Avid’s superior media management.

Audio mixdown is crucial, especially for long timelines. This process simply renders all audio down to one temporary file for easier playback. If you have four channels of audio (and not a stereo mix) FCP will honor this and designate the channels as you have set them up (i.e. FCP will play all the channels out to their respective outputs). Don’t worry. Audio mixdown is totally different from what Avid calls a mixdown.

And always render your final timeline, I don’t care what the manual says. Check all the options in the render preferences and hit option-r. Also, if you can afford the time, I like to delete the render files before output, and rerender just to assure that everything is going to be good. FCP can sometimes lose track of render files. This is a shortcoming for sure, but if you know this going in, it’s not that bad.

Hope this helps.

Jeremy

[Gordon Gurley]

[JeremyG] “If you check ‘self contained’ and leave ‘recompress all frames’ UNchecked, you aren’t compressing the footage again, the OS is basically taking all of your media and concatenating it into one file (a digital copy, not a recompression).
“

That’s great to know, thank you for that info.

[JeremyG] “Shane Ross has a DVD on how to get organized in FCP:
“
Actually. I have that DVD! But I’m too busy to watch it! I’ll get around to it ASAP!

Don’t get me wrong, FCP let’s me do way more, and much faster than Avid ever could (at least last time I used it). But when it comes crunch time and you need to hit Fedex, FCP falls short where Avid would come through.

I’m just trying to decrease my stress level!

Maybe I should switch to Sanka.