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Problem with shifting of edit decisions in Video Track 1, when title cards are dropped into Video Track 2…
Hi,
Vast confusion. I’m working with edits in a timeline, created from video files that are “Avid Meridien Compressed” Quicktime Files. These are files that I exported from Avid. They are 24P files. The timeline has been set to 23.97, and everything in Video Track 1 makes sense, no problems, no render line because the project compression settings have been set to “Avid Meridien Compressed”.
Ok, so here’s the problem. I am creating title cards with the video generator in FCP, and trying to super them into my edits by placing them into Video Track 2. But the moment I drop a title card into Video Track 2, (over an edit I have made in Video Track 1), there is a SHIFT in the in and out points of the source video in the timeline. For example, let’s say an edit in my timeline has a source in of 02:02:30:17 and an out of 02:02:35:17. The moment I try and drop a title card over this edit in Video Track 2, the source video in Track 1 shifts, so it now begins at 02:02:31:29 and ends at 02:02:36:29.
It is as if the title cards refuse to conform to the 23.97 timeline, and are overriding the source video edit decisions in Video Track 1.
Does anyone have any thoughts on why this is occcuring? Does anyone have any suggestions for a remedy? BTW, I have also tried creating title cards in photoshop and dropping them in, but with the same result: it changes the source time code edits by shifting them later into the source video.
Thanks,
Mtbakerstu
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6 Replies
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Assuming you are not making some kind of editing error when you add the V2 clips (you aren’t are you?), then you should try trashing the FCP Preferences.
Click the following link for instructions.
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/trashing_fcp_prefs.html
A great way to do this is to use “FCP Rescue” a free Apple Script that will Trash the Preferences for you (and restore nearly all of your user settings afterward).
There are versions for FCP (Pro) & FCE (Express) and a new one for FCP 5.Download these free Apple Scripts at
https://fcprescue.andersholck.com/
or
https://pistolerapost2.com/fcprescue/This is one FCP tip that has helped in solving hundreds of “odd” problems.
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It sounds like you’re making an insert edit, which will shift everything in front of the new clip to the right. Use an overwrite instead, which will not move anything. Same as on Avid.
Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog -
Hmmmmmmmm,
Any thoughts anyone. Is it possible to influence the title card to give it a 23.98 frame rate, prior to bringing it into the timeline?
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Saw the above posts:
The flushing of prefs is not the issue, as we have several FCP workstations, and the problem is the same at all the work stations. (But we flushed the prefs anyway).
We are already doing insert edits, not overwrites, so this isn’t the issue either. The issue appears to be with the frame rate, as the offset grows exponentially as we move through the timeline.
mtbakerstu
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You’ve got me totally baffled and apparently no one else can help you either.
Debugging these things is always a long series of down and dirty binary experiments, change only one aspect of the situation at a time and keep notes.I have zero experience with Avid but I have seen lots of Meridien-based posts, try searching for the authors and drop them notes offline maybe.
When your edit location shifts, does the length of the clip stay the same? If so, it’s the timebase of the sequence that’s changing, not the clip reference. Not sure what that means,, tho. If the clip changes length, there is a disparity between the apparent sequence settings and the actual content of the clip’s media file.
Can you work with a couple of clips that can be set to give exact change-of-frame-rate results? That is, if you ahve a clip that is two seconds long and it starts wright at 00:02:00:00 and you place a 20 second title clip on top of it, will it move a distance that suggests a direct relationship to a frame rate problem?
Sorry not to have the least bit of good news for you.
You may need to cross-post over on the Avid forums. Please come back and tell us what they offer.
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”
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Bogiesan, thanks for your thoughts. Perhaps directing a question to someone who has previously had input on a “Meridien discussion” would be useful. While I didn’t find the purest solution to this issue, I did find a fix which I’ve also pasted to the Apple FCP forum. See below:
Update!
While I was never able to get the Vid Track 2 title cards to stop shifting the edit decisions in Vid Track 1 when using the preset that is in tandem with the actual source video files (Avid Meridien Quicktimes at 23.98), I did find that by changing the Sequence Setting to DV/DVCPRO50 NTSC at 23.98 that I could drop the titles into Vid Track 2 successfully without any skewing of edit decisons. You now have to render the timeline, but a quick test of an MPEG2 export showed that there’s no denigration in image quality with using this setting.
So that’s the scoop. It seems that there’s no pure solution to this issue. Perhaps if there’s a way to generate title cards out of Avid that are importable into FCP, that would do the trick, but I haven’t taken my research that far.
Stuart
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