export EDL with speed change

[Bob Flood]

Hi

When the EDL was first developed there was no provision for variable speed, such as slow or fast motion (the VTR’s of that time did not have the capability, they only played picture in real time)

so each manufacturer of linear edit gear came up with their own way to remeber the motion effects per edit, usually a note attached to the entry in the EDL. the CMX EDL uses “M2” which I belive is actually expressed as Frames Per Second

example:

M2 001 045.0 01:07:50:21

which means i sped up that shot to 150% or 45 fps

When you load this EDL into a linear edit machine, like a SOny 900 or something antique like that, the edit will be preformed correctly

Where is gets dicey is with an NLE. you see, the Record in is right, the record out is right, and the source in is right. The source out is not the actually time, rather its based on the source tape playing at normale speed.

All that being said, what are you doing with the edl?

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[Mathieu Marano]

Sending it to a Smoke station for online.

The things is not that The Smoke can’t read it, it’s that FCP can’t write the right in/out for the clips te conform on Smoke. When digitizing, there will be some frames missing.

Mathieu Marano
online editor – motion graphics – Post-prod director
Directeur technique de post-production
Le Bureau de post production

Administrator of the Montreal Final Cut User Group
http://www.finalcutmtl.org

[Bob Flood]

Hi

Oh i am sure that Smoke can “read” the edl ie import it as a text file and such

but what may be happening is smoke is deriving the source footage from whats listed in the edl, which is wrong.

the source out time in an EDL event or events with varispeed is ignored by the linear editor. The linear editor uses the source in time, then plays the source at the speed the “speed trigger” or M2 states.

sooooo

when you bring the EDL into a Smoke or other NLE, the NLE will capture based on the Source in and Out, which are not accuratly reflecting the True source in and out for the necessary motion effect

THe best thing to do is to add a lot of “handle” onto the captures, so you will have media to
use. (of course, if your varispeed tricks are slow motion rather than speed ups and you are still missing captured footage then its a different problem) 🙂

I know there is a product called Automatic Duck that converts FCP projects to all different project formats, like After Effects. There may be one for Smoke. Its kinda pricey if you are just doing one show, but maybe someone here has a copy and can help you.

Hope this helps

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.