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Mastering 720P to BetaSP, running time out of sync
Hello all,
Just came across a interesting issue (gremlins at work)
Just finished editing a hour long, 720p @59.94 project. Everything was shot either Varicam or P2. Laid out the broadcast master timeline, times all matched (in at 1:00:00 and out at 1:58:30). The problem developed while mastering out to our PVW2800. About 42 mins in we noticed that upon returning from commercial black, the in time of segment 4 have slipped by almost a second and by the end of the show was to hit at 58:30, it was at 58:33. By the way, audio and video are in sync.
Now I’ve dumped the 720p @ 59.94 into a 720p @ 29.97 timeline (just about 2 hours to render out). But will the problem continue?
Here’s what I’ve got for a system:
G5 with 3TB XRaid
KonaLH, running v3.4 firmware
24 to 30 conversion set to 2:3:2:3
PVW2800 set to Drop FrameI know that if by some reason I was in Non Drop, I would have a issue, but I would be 3 or so seconds short, not long. Did I miss a setting in good old FCP? The sequence was set to 59.94, but the timeline menu kept nondrop checked, despite trying to set it to 60@30 fps.
Any ideas, thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.
Just for the record, I normally work with HDCam 1080i and haven’t had any issues laying off prior to this. And yes, I did search all of the previous postings. According to everything that I found, I’ve got everything set right, so what would cause a slippage of 3 to 4 seconds? Kind of reminds me of the good old 3/4″ days . . .
Ah yes, gremlins at play, right before a broadcast master has to be delivered. . . .
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6 Replies
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I know you are savy to the drop, non-drop thing, but see if this is makes sense.
If your time line is non-drop your actual program length would be longer than reported by the code.
So if your master tape is drop frame, you would be going long by one second twenty-four frames for every thirty minutes.
As I say, I know you understand these issues from your post, but I’ve had more than one DOH! moment in my career
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Tom,
Thanks for the input. Thought about the “DUH” (Or my wife will say “PUTZ”) moment, but the sequence was set to 59.94. Late last night, I took the time to laid it down onto a 29.97 sequence, sure enough, it was long, about 15 frames for every 5 minutes of program. But at the end it was more like 4 seconds heavy, not the typical 108 frames per hour. Also a number of clips were out of sync by 1 frame and in about 2 dozen places, clips were shortened by 1 frame.
I’m thinking it might be the QT update that I ran as a part of software update a couple of weeks ago. I’ve got FCP 6 in house, so I’m going to look at doing the update after the 1st.
Many thanks for the advice. Have a really good New Year!
Mike
Producer / DP / Editor / Really good Coffee Maker
Outdoor Channel’s Desert Racing Series
Airing this Friday on Outdoor Channel: The Nevada Rally Experience
Boy, do I miss the days of the old ABNER edit controller, a couple of VHS machines and a case of DIet Coke to get through an all night edit season . . . . . bring back QUAD! (HEHE!) -
Howdy, we have had this exact same problem with 720p 8bit uncompressed rendered out of Color and timed in a NDF timeline. There are gremlins somewhere. One answer a local post house suggested was that there could be longframes due to quicktime not keeping up while editing to tape. (or from the renders?) For example, one act of our show was one length in FCP but when we layed it back the duration changed. The act got longer!!! Very wierd. We were playing back of a fiber based X-san so I cannot fault our storage too much. For some reason 720p has been very wierd and does not act like 1080i. I know it has something to do with 59.94 frames vs fields and my brain is just mush from trying to reconcile the numerous posts on the cow. At this point are next shows are being conformed to 1080i for the online. That will circumvent the 720p debacle all together as well as match are final dilieverable. There are some major gotchas that we have not had time to figure out. Maybe I should have gone to school at panasonic University?
James
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James,
Thanks for the input. I’m going to work at reformatting the show to a 1080i time line (looks like I’ll have to repull everything)
I don’t think that it’s a Panasonic issue, more like Apple becoming more like a PC (buggy as all can be)
I wonder if this could be the lastest version of QT causing problems or if it’s just a 720p24 issue.
Many thanks for the input
Mike
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Did you by any chance run the numbers through a TC Calculator? We had all kinds of problems with 720p and the NDF issue where everything was slightly off but we could not figure out why. Running the TC Calculator actually showed that the DF timeline was perfectly matched to the NDF timeline when we converted the numbers through the calculator. What the SD tape was showing on TC was exactly what the Calculator said it should be showing for the original NDF TC.
59.94 720 NDF is not equal to 29.97 DF, never has and it’s been a major issue for us for over three years now.
Note that FCP 6.0.2 now runs 720p in DF so this issue is finally gone. We actually have been converting all of our 720p material to 1080i for the past year and a half just to avoid all the the TC issues, but I have tested FCP 6.0.2 and 720p DF does work correctly when laying off to a 720p DF master tape or cross-converting it to 1080i/29.97 via the Kona 3 during mastering.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR
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I have been following your posts Walter about this exact workflow. We too pounded out the math on a TC calculator and the numbers match. The layback however does not. It is very frustrating and should work. Fortunately we are done with the shows that were cut this way and will be onlining at 1080i from here out. I know that Shane Ross had reported having to retime some of his acts for a project of his that he wrote about. Especially to get things back into snyc. If only Broadcast masters could be “Frame acurateish”…. I took his original advice on timing out the show in a DF timeline and everything matches but for some reason it comes out messed up. Go figure.
Happy new year,
James Sullivan
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