GoPro Workflow problem

Avid Media Composer

GoPro Workflow problem

Posted by Micah Rix-hayes on October 11, 2013 at 8:26 am

Hi,

I’m wondering if anyone can help me out with an AVID GoPro workflow problem. We’re working on a reality series in which there are a significant amount of GoPro’s running constantly (10+ gopros running 12 hours a day). Most of the footage is discarded unless some action happens on them in which case they get clipped out on set by the field producer/PA using Quicktime7 (in and outs marked, save as self contained movie – maintaining gopro h264 QT’s). The problem is that this seems to screw with the header and I-frames in the file (maybe?) and sometimes (50/50) gives us weird FPS values (shooting 25p but it gives us 23.9, 22.6 or even weird 656fps) and loses our TOD timecode. AMA Transcoding any of these weird framerate clips gives us unusable interpolation artefacts, however regular importing the clip does not but TOD is still lost. Importing takes at least twice as long as AMA and with the amount of gopro’s we use it would be a huge time saver in post if we could AMA transcode somehow.

We managed last season with these limitations, but really pushing for a solution before the next season starts. However, time and budget limit us from the simple solution of hiring an extra person to transcode, log and clip the gopro’s properly in post, it has to be done on location. I’ve been testing out AME, Cineform, Compressor but nothing seems to be able to do the quick truncating of a clip that quicktime does, they all want to re-encode the clip which takes too long on location and we’d rather have AVID do our only transcoding.

So it’s a fairly unique workflow but has anyone encountered this with their gopro files? Are there any other workarounds? preferably software that doesn’t mess with the fps? or a workaround in Avid. Any help would be greatful.

thanks,

Micah

Running Media Composer 6.5.0.1 but should get updated to 6.5.4 before next season starts.

Note: FCP and Ae both see the weird frame rates too.

Matthew Skeris replied 12 years, 8 months ago 3 Members · 8 Replies
8 Replies

Matthew Skeris
October 12, 2013 at 1:17 am

I looked for and found a windows product that may help you– I am going to check out their trial. Here’s a link to their support forum:
https://www.fame-ring.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7308

Good luck.
John Pale
October 12, 2013 at 2:32 am

Use Adobe Media Encoder or Adobe Prelude instead of Quicktime Pro to make your selects.
Micah Rix-hayes
October 14, 2013 at 12:16 am

Thanks for the tip, unfortunately we in an all mac environment over here, but I will see if we could get a windows laptop for the field, might be worth it if that works. Would you mind getting back to me on how your trial went?

thanks, Micah
Micah Rix-hayes
October 14, 2013 at 12:38 am

Hi John,
Could you elaborate how I would clip out using AME or prelude? I can’t get it to not re-encode – AME needs an encoding setting just to select In and outs. Right now QT7 will clip out 5 minutes of an h264 in about 5 seconds, while AME will start rencoding the same selection taking just under 5 minutes.
I don’t have prelude installed anywhere is there really a way to clip out without encoding in Prelude? I thought it just sent things to AME and created logging metadata for Pr.
John Pale
October 14, 2013 at 2:30 am

I would view and make selects in Adobe Media Encoder or Prelude and encode to Avid DNX HD.

In Avid, AMA link to the DNX HD files you created in Adobe and Consolidate. Very fast.
Micah Rix-hayes
October 14, 2013 at 3:16 am

Thanks for the effort John but transcoding in the field is not an option for us due to time and space constraints.
John Pale
October 15, 2013 at 2:33 am

You might want to consider using another NLE that can work effectively with GoPro footage natively, with no transcoding, such as Premiere Pro or FCPX.

Unless you can get the software Matthew suggested to work for you in the field (maybe it works with Parallels on a Mac?), you are in for a world of hurt trying to make this work with Avid. I much prefer editing with Avid, but if transcoding is too much of a burden on your workflow, Avid might not be the best tool for this job.
Matthew Skeris
October 16, 2013 at 2:47 am

Hey Micah, No chance yet to seriously try it out– I did download
the GoPro Sample from that link and was able to use the program once, easily.

Based on their forum, revision notes, etc. it seems the support is there and they would be able to assist in troubleshooting if you
need it.

I would offer to try out your footage, but I am not using v6
at all- just v5.5 and v7.0 Good luck. I think for the price,
I might get it, just to have a way to remove GoCrap footage prior to
transcoding to DNxHD.

p.s. does that old MPEGStreamClip freeware program on the Mac/PC work on GoPro files? Maybe you can try that.

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