Subclips losing unique timecode

[Tory Stewart]

To reiterate: the polywavs do not lose their timecode when I create subclips, the only clips that lose timecode are the stereo wavs from the zoom.

[Jerry Hofmann]

I think you’ve run into a bug or at least an unsupported “feature”… I hate to say it, FCP and wav files are hit and miss I think.

Are you having to mix both the stereo and poly files in the same clip always? could you add the stereo stuff later or?

Jerry

Apple Certified Trainer, Producer, Writer, Director Editor, Gun for Hire and other things. I ski. My Blog: https://blogs.creativecow.net/Jerry-Hofmann

Current DVD:
https://store.creativecow.net/p/81/jerry_hofmanns_final_cut_system_setup

8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO2 with MAX – Cinema Displays I have a 22″ that I paid 4k for still working. G4 with Kona SD card, and SCSI card.

[Tory Stewart]

Further tinkering has revealed that the problem does not seem to have to do with wavs vs. aiffs after all! The audio tracks only lose their timecode when made into subclips if they were not recorded with time of day timecode.

Example of what I might be looking at: Twenty video clips shot on DSLR with unusable audio and two very long wavs recorded on the Zoom H4n while camera was rolling, leaving me with tons of audio that has no matching video and no time of day timecode. I sync the video to the audio with Plural Eyes, delete the bad camera mic tracks, arrange the zoom tracks the way I’d like them to be (ie lav on track 1, shotgun on track 2) trim the edges of the clips, link the video to the audio, lasso the clips in the timeline and drag into a bin called “Merged Clips.”

Rather than work with the merged clips, which typically have a ton of excess audio hanging off the sides, I was advised to make subclips from those merged clips and work with those instead. Each time I make a subclip that includes audio from these tracks, the timecode of the Zoom tracks “zeroes out” at the head. For example, if I have an audio clip that starts at 00:00:00:00 and syncs up with video at 00:00:21:04, as soon as I subclip from the merged clip that track of audio lists 00:00:00:00 at the head of the clip instead of 00:00:21:04. If I option-command-F from the subclip, it does match me to 00:00:21:04 in the original audio file. If the zoom audio was recorded with time of day timecode, the tracks do not “zero out” at the head of subclips, whether those are wavs or aiffs. They retain their time of day timecode.

This whole issue doesn’t affect my editing process so much as it makes me concerned about whether it will lead to any trouble in the finishing process. When I export an EDL of sequences that include these “zeroed out” subclips, I get an error message saying that the sequence contains clips that don’t have timecode, and those clips always are listed as starting at 00:00:00:00 in the EDL. If I export EDLs that include footage from the merged clips, I get the same message but the “time code” for those clips is correct in that at least it lists the proper point in the wav file.

Is there any remedy for this? Should I work with the merged clips instead? I thought I had my workflow down with the merging and then subclipping but encountering these problematic audio files has thrown me for a loop.

Thank you!

Tory

[Jerry Hofmann]

Sure is weird..

I’d not worry about the problem if you’re going to finish it all on the same station without having to actually use the EDL’s. If you export to soundtrack pro for a finish is there a problem? likely not…

Jerry

Apple Certified Trainer, Producer, Writer, Director Editor, Gun for Hire and other things. I ski. My Blog: https://blogs.creativecow.net/Jerry-Hofmann

Current DVD:
https://store.creativecow.net/p/81/jerry_hofmanns_final_cut_system_setup

8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO2 with MAX – Cinema Displays I have a 22″ that I paid 4k for still working. G4 with Kona SD card, and SCSI card.