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horrible experience with nested items
Okay
So I believe that I have been close to getting fired this month twice due to a horrible experience with nested sequences.
Christ! I’m still getting shivers I swear I was about to faint.So this is what happened less than 20 minutes ago.
We are doing the Olympics, live at dawn and recaps at late afternoon, dusk. The live feed has many interruptions due to various events being covered simultaneously, but the recaps must go without interruptions so our department, that usually deals only with 30 second promos of our regular programs, is dealing with entire matches, baseball, football, soccer, basketball, athletics, swimming, etc.
So usually we only make a few cuts and then print to tape.
I’m a big nest items user, and print to video as well, my promos might have many layers, some I don’t even use, I just have beds where I can play with different edits, so when I finally finish editing, I nest my sequence just to tidy things up.
anyway sorry for the rant
So I made some edits in a baseball game a week ago, nested the whole thing and printed to tape.
of course all of this in a big hurry,
when the tape got to master, the technicians called saying that everything lost synchrony. I wasn’t there, but I got the story the day later.
TODAY
I was piecing together the Argentina Nigeria men’s football final and everything was going dandy, I had nested the sequence as I almost always do, and I checked the beginning while I printed to tape, I did some other things and when the first half was coming to a close I checked again and the sync of the action with the commentary was perfect.
I ate a late lunch
and then the dreaded call from master
horrible horrible synchrony, and this was 20 minutes before the air time.
so we sent the original cassettes with the original feed, to replace what I had edited.
Our boss didn’t hassle me much, but other colleagues have gotten fired for less than this.
I hope to God nothing horrible happens.
anyway long story short
Nested Items seem really keen on slipping synchrony on longer lengths
this doesn’t seem to be a problem with shorter lenghts.and even worst, while monitoring when laying to tape, everything fine, check the tape itself and you might be in for a horrible surprise.
This seems to be a problem specially when using the cmd+m function, print to video, because when only reproducing from the timeline, there are no worries, but when you make a print to video, it seems the render previous to the recording screws everything up.
really scary
I am never using nested sequences or print to tape ever again, never, never, never.
maybe only by exporting a self contained quick time in a timeline with no edits.
Please, any thoughts on this would be great.
Thanks for reading this
Luis Artigas
5 years using FCP
Caracas Venezuela -
24 Replies
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Luis,
Other than “tidying things up,” I can’t figure out why you are nesting. If it’s not essential, don’t do it… But, I guess I need’t tell you that now…David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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[Luis Artigas] “I’m a big nest items user, and print to video as well, my promos might have many layers, some I don’t even use, I just have beds where I can play with different edits, so when I finally finish editing, I nest my sequence just to tidy things up”
Absolutely ZERO reason to do this.
The only reason you use a Nest is when you are going to affect all the layers in one shot, such as taking 10 layers, creating a Nest and adding a single dissolve to the nest. Or for creating a lower third that has multiple elements so you can bring in the entire nest at once.
Nests are NOT for tidying up anything and nests never cause any sort of sync issues that I’ve ever seen. I use nests on a constant basis and love them, but I don’t quite understand what you have to tidy up and why.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!
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[Luis Artigas] “This seems to be a problem specially when using the cmd+m function, print to video, because when only reproducing from the timeline, there are no worries, but when you make a print to video, it seems the render previous to the recording screws everything up. “
Hi Luis.
This sounds to me like some monitoring issue.
You are editing out of sync, but this is compensated while playing from the time-line. When you print to video, the offset shows up.
Have a look the “Frame offset” in the Playback Control (System setting).
rafael -
Thanks for getting back to me
The reason I used a nested sequence was because I wanted to affect several clips. Specifically the audio. The audio I digitized was all panned left, so with the nested sequence selected, I press enter and in the audio on the viewer centered panned everything.I could have done this pasting attributes but, thought it would be faster this other way.
the timeline warned of no render, but when I cmd+m (print to tape) it effectively rendered something that screwed up my audio. The worst part was I monitored the beginning and end and things were fine…
When I checked my timeline after getting called by master, effectively the nested sequence had lost synchrony, but, this is the really irritating part, when i double clicked on the nested sequence to reveal the items in it…… everything was fine. So I feel it was a render that print to tape executed before recording that screwed things up
I used to really enjoy nesting and printing to tape but I’m terribly afraid of keeping this habit.
also I can remember one other instance when I saw this anomaly, a friend was printing to tape a concert, and suddenly it lost synchrony, again like 20 minutes before air time….
My main concern now that I’m adopting a no nesting no printing lifestyle is that I believe timeline playback is lower quality compared to print to tape playback,
If I put the timeline display in high quality all frames, would this be the same quality as printing to tape???
Just a side note, none of my colleagues use print to tape or nested sequences, so I look like the biggest fool. Everyone manually puts their vtrs to record and plays the timeline, and I thought they where the fools.
silly me
Thanks for everything
Luis Artigas
Caracas, Venezuela
FCS2 macpro quad 3.0 5 gigs ram, Tiger -
Thanks for the input
I will definitely have a look at this and get back to you.
Luis
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Hi
Probably you did this, but in a deadline rush its even more important…Mixdown all the audio in the Timeline.
Especially make sure the contents of the nest(s) is/are completely Mix(e)down,
then Mixdown the output Sequence. -
[Luis Artigas] “I believe timeline playback is lower quality compared to print to tape playback,”
That would be an incorrect belief. The quality would be exactly the same. Just make sure you are FULLY rendered…no green whatsoever. Fully purple or grey.
BTW, I think it is REALLY COOL to be talking to an editor of the Olympics.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
[Luis Artigas] “I could have done this pasting attributes but, thought it would be faster this other way. “
Select All > Pan to Center. You don’t need to Nest to Pan Audio.
[Luis Artigas] “Just a side note, none of my colleagues use print to tape or nested sequences, so I look like the biggest fool. Everyone manually puts their vtrs to record and plays the timeline, and I thought they where the fools. “
I never use Print to Tape, I only use Edit to Tape. The only time I manually roll the VTR is when I’m laying off a re-use tape.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!
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apple hasn’t fixed this yet?
are you going to also tell me changing speed of timeline clips throws your show out of sync?
that nest thing has never worked. its just for what walter said. video usually ok but audio either goes out of sync or goes unmixed.
solution: nest vid and mixdown audio to a new file
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Rick Dolishny
Discrete Editors COW Leader
http://www.thecreativeprocess.ca -
[Rick Dolishny] “are you going to also tell me changing speed of timeline clips throws your show out of sync? “
Of course it does, Apple has never fixed this. If you change the speed of a clip in the timeline it will move everything else in the timeline relative to what you’ve done.
Completely stupid way of working but a lot of folks on here seem to like the way Apple does speed changes. I hate it so we create our speed changes in a separate timeline.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!
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