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Strange timecode mismatch on Premiere Pro 2019, Canon C300 Mk II
I’m an experienced Final Cut Pro editor, new to Premiere. I’m having a very good timecode situation on some footage from a Canon 300 Mk II (4K, 24fps):
The workflow was:
1. On-set, at the start of each take, the camera operator gave the AD the current timecode, which was recorded in a paper log.
2. I imported the footage at the end of the day off of the CFast cards, using Prelude.
3. I then ingested the footage into Premiere, creating proxies. All went well there, too.
4. Now, I’ve started to edit, and…The timecodes don’t match the log. And it’s not that they are off by a consistent amount, or a few seconds due to roll time… they start out reasonably close, and start diverging over the course of the shoot, as if the timecode in the log was ticking slower than the timecode in the media. The footage itself looks fine. But how could this happen? It seems crazy that the viewfinder timecode and the media timecode would be off that way.
Am I missing something fundamental?
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7 Replies
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You are missing something very fundamental, giving us more info.
Is it really 24 fps, or is it 23.976? The only ones who shoot true 24 are the top budget features and the very low end stuff made by the clueless.
How short is the first known drift at what TC, and how long is the last known drift at what TC?
Reason, 23.976 is a non-drop frame format, so the TC WILL drift from the time on the wall (the ‘real’ time)
running 0.1 % slower than the TC can display (it is rounded to frames), you’ll be off at the end of a day.
(Shooting day of 10 hours gives you 10 hours * 60 minutes * 60 seconds * 0.001 = 36 seconds difference.Does that match (a bit) with what you are seeing? Then you know where to start looking.
Premiere might read the files wrong, so check the TC in another app.
The display of the cam might be wrong, what does the cam say if you watch the footage on that?
I don’t think there is a reading error in the operators, it’s hard to make a constant mistake. But it is not hard to tell someone the wrong digits. Sadly, I don’t know the cam, so I can’t comment on that.Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com -
> Does that match (a bit) with what you are seeing?
No. The drift is *much* more than the difference between DF and NDF.
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Hi,
Your problem and your tools are over my head (I’m among the “low-end clueless,”) but I have noted over a few years many posts about issues with Premiere Pro and time code irregularities–which seem inherent errors in Premiere. Suggest doing some research into earlier posts and other Premiere discussions.
Best,
Robert-
Am I clueless because I use low-end tools? Or do I have to use low-end tools because I’m clueless? There’s a koan for you.Robert Withers
Independent/personal/avant-garde cinema, New York City
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Researching it a bit more, I must admit that while I am better informed, I’m none the wiser…
At the start of the shoot day, the timecodes in the paper log and in the media files in Premiere match (at least, they’re very close, within the limits of human error during a preroll). (I don’t have access to the raw media files on the CFast media, so I can’t compare them to the ones in Premiere.)
As the day goes on, they drift apart. Interestingly, they drift apart by pretty much 29.97/23.976 (1.25), with the media “ticking” faster than the paper log.
I have absolutely no explanation for this! Next time we shoot with this workflow, I’ll do a test shot and ingestion to see if I can figure out what is going on.
The footage itself is fine, and seems to be clocking properly, so the error is in what’s in the paper logs.
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[Robert Withers] “Am I clueless because I use low-end tools? Or do I have to use low-end tools because I’m clueless? There’s a koan for you.”
I don’t know what a koan is, I’m Dutch.
And I dont know if it is one or the other, but if you do not know why you use the tools you do, you are indeed clueless.
What I ment was that shooting 24 fps makes no sense whatsoever for 99% of the content produced.Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com -
The most logical cause to the problem then seems that there is a framecounter somewhere that shouts the current TC as frames and that is converted to time with the wrong FPS as base.
Now, the only problem is to find out what exact part of the production process it was.Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com
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