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Making a Realtime TC burn movie for Web
Though I would share a workflow, curious to see if there is anyone else it might help.
The problem: I made some last minute changes to the timing to a TV show that I have send off for a proof. My audio now needs a TC burn of new version within a few hours. This movie needs to be small enough to be placed on a server. So H264 is the codec of choice but even with my 8-core mc Pro it takes for ever to encode this type of movie. My sequence is a ProRes HQ 1080i.
The solution: I remember that QT Player can record a live stream in H264. I have two systems, A MacPro with a Kona 3 card and a MBP with a IoHD (but any Io would work here) So here was my work flow.
Added the TC Reader filter to all my clips (they are multicam but they are all collapsed for this process) I resize the numbers to make them smaller and reposition them to be lower. RT settings are Unlimited with Video quality on Dynamic and Framerate on FULL, this ensures everything frame is going to be captured. The Kona 3 set set to down-convert to 525/29.97 with the down convert set to keep the footage anamorphic. I then just hook up the SDI out to the SDI in and use embedded audio.
In QuickTime Pro I set the record preference to H264 and away we go. I now have my 48 min TC Burn as a H264 movie (220MB) ready to upload, well almost ready. I wanted to make sure that no frames where dropped in the process so I just laid the compressed movie on the timeline, reduced the size so I could also see the original’s TC along with it the new movie and I did find 2 duplicate frames, which I just deleted from the movie (in QT Player) and I had a perfect TC burn, total time just over an hour.
If the TC burn was just for a web review copy the double checking for dropped or duplicated frames would not have been necessary but I had to have a frame actuate movie for the conform.
This may not be as big of a deal as I think but it is cool when you can find a faster way to get the job done in a different way then what might be the traditional way.
The quality of the H264 was pretty good, even with FCP dropping the quality of the original sequence but the time it was down-converted it was sharp enough
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5 Replies
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With both a Kona 3 and a IO HD, you could also do the following:
1. Export a Reference Movie
2. Open the Reference Movie in AJA Kona TV
3. Change the Settings in the AJA control panel under Timecode to be “Use QT Timecode” and Timecode Burn-In “Timecode”.
4. Then play it out to from the Kona 3 to the IOHD. You might also want to down-convert it to SD using the Kona 3.If this works really depends on how long it takes to render out a ref movie of your footage.
-Russ
Russell Lasson
Kaleidoscope Pictures
Provo, UT -
Extra steps = a lot of extra time and the won’t that TC be from the sequence and not the clips?
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Michael,
Very “out of the box” way of approaching the work. Thanks for sharing.
We basically use “brute force” to accomplish the same thing. Compressor has the ability to create “clusters” of computer power, and for creating H.264’s, it’s perfect. By harnessing 30+ G5’s, we can do a one hour project in about 5-7 minutes.
Mark
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WOW! 30+ that is scary cool.
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You’re right. It would be the timecode from the sequence, not the clips. I didn’t get which timecode you needed. Hopefully in the future, there will be better timecode support in FCP.
-Russ
Russell Lasson
Kaleidoscope Pictures
Provo, UT
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