Timecode issues are HUGE!!

[Ray Tragesser]

Hello all,

I would like to make a couple final points here. You may not like them, but hopefully you can agree.

1) Tape is dying. You may be deliving content to networks on tape currently, but that wont last. I am delivering commercials daily via DG/Fast Channel to all the networks and I never hit tape.

2) Premiere Pro is solid when capturing from a professional broadcast deck via 9-pin RS-422 if your machine is setup properly. What it wont do is recognize TC breaks, it keeps on rolling. Keep your eyes on the TC window during capture and it wont be a problem. It takes longer…agreed.

3) Premiere Pro has the largest userbase in the world. It has more seats generating revenue in all niches than any other NLE period..undisputed. With that said…the majority of users are not at the high level requiring timecode 100% accuracy. Adobe will not put R&D into solving complicated issues for a very small percent of its userbase. I have been asking for OMF support for years..I have not seen it why?…in the big picture not many users are asking for it.

4)File based workflow is here now. It will get better. Once I have my footage captured…I have no need for the source tapes. Evrything gets backed up as data. Hard drive options are cheap and plenty. Tape drive backup or low performance drives are here..embrace it.

Remember this…Premiere Pro is only version 3. Most of this current version R&D was spent on cross platform Mac. Final Cut and Avid are many generations further. Hang out for a little while and see what happens.

Ray

[Litzwire]

I did check the deck and all settings, and made sure my captures were not crossing breaks, and still some clips are 1 frame off, some 2 frames, and some 4 frames off. I’m still early with using Premier though, so I’m sure I will make some discoveries that iron things out. I have to, now.

Actually, I agree with most or all of your points, and appreciate your optimism on the development of Premier, and on the tired debate concerning a tapeless world, I myself have been involved in shoots where P2 is used and to a larger extent XDCam. And I agree that the day will come for tapeless delivery. But, for example, when I asked ESPN if they considered allowing for hard-drive delivery, since the D5-HD delivery is so costly, their EXACT response was, “the engineers say no way in hell….not for a long time.” The same goes for VS and FOX Sports. Additionally, on shoots that I do for all of those networks, where there are up to 10 cameramen shooting 10 hours a day STRAIGHT, the ONLY options are TAPE and potentially XDCam….because it’s like a TAPE. Hell, FOX Sports is still accepting Beta for a master, good grief. So I do not subscribe to the excuse that accurate export to tape functions are not necessary because the world is moving away from that. That is bogus, IMO. Many will move that way, but almost EVERY major house that I work with or am aquainted with is dumping their broadcast masters to a tape of some sort. I personally am not averse to the rising tide of better technology – I’m delivering Blu-Rays, sharing with Clip Notes, composing nationally-televised music with absolutely NO outboard gear, and in about one month will be shooting with my own RED camera – but I do understand that the move away from tape is not moving as fast as some think in many circles (some national news cameramen still look at you funny if you don’t have a BetaCam….blugh), and the move away from timecode WILL NEVER HAPPEN. Timecode is the common language for ALL of us in the business, and it will always be. So it should ALWAYS be used correctly by all of us, including software makers. Hehe….I’m going to be like the Lou Dobbs of timecode.

[Baz Leffler]

[Ray] “Premiere Pro has the largest userbase in the world”

OK so thats what you are told – so here is a test for you; advertise for a FCP editor and advertise for a Premiere editor. I bet you get many more FCP applicants.

As mentioned earlier I have both Premiere AND FCP and I dry hire edit suites. It is a 10:1 ratio of people who want FCP over Premiere – now that is real world statistics to me.

And as a footnote, earlier this year a local multimedia college asked me to help them resolve their Adobe Premiere Pro 2 problems. They had 10 desktop systems and 2 notebook systems.
I spent a lot of time there and their systems were fine; the software was too flakey for the students but I couldn’t help them. I recommended them to move to FCP but that was a huge cost so they replaced 4 of their desktop systems only with FCP.
They recently contacted me and said they spent the year with the students ALL on the 4 FCP systems and trashed the Adobe systems. For the new year they are getting another 6 FCP systems and 2 macbook FCP systems.
They are also setting up similar colleges in 2 other cities, all FCP.
What this means is that there will be more and more people with FCP experience than Adobe. I have a reputation here as an expert on Adobe Premiere and quite often get freelance Avid and FCP editors pay me to train them on Adobe so they can make themselves available if the opportunity arises. I have not had any go thru with it because of the inefficiencies that they find with the software and I am sick and tired of making excuses and defending Adobe. So now I tell them I am not interested in showing them Adobe but I still get lots of Avid people wanting me to show them FCP.

Baz

[Ray Tragesser]

Hey Baz,
I would have to say if you are comfortable with Final Cut, go with it.

It stands to reason that alot of freelancers gravitate to final cut the same as Avid for the sheer reason that the largest amount of freelance work comes from NY and LA. Most Premiere Pro users around the world are staff positions or independents. The is no disputing the userbase of Adobe Premiere Pro.

One other note. PC’s are more fragile than a MAC. That may be the reason the schools labs have such difficulty keeping them running smoothly. If you let windows install every tom dick and harry program and toolbar…all you have left is a mess.

[Videostream]

Remember this…Premiere Pro is only version 3.
Ray

hmmmm

On what revision of the Motor Car did they decide to include BRAKES? version 3?

Timecode is as fundemental to NLE as brakes are to a car.

I admire you for your loyalty, but it is not wise to defend the indefensible.

Premiere HAS TO be fixed. Timecode support is broken.

no excuses.

I know, because i just spent 3 days repairing a multicam conform job that would have taken me 3 hours on FCP. Only because timecode ingested from time-of-day tapes in Premiere is all wrong.

videostream

[Tim Kolb]

[BazinoZ] “What I find interesting is that many ‘respected’ people here defend Adobe and for the life of me I cannot understand other than for a financial benefit or maybe a free dinner every NAB.”

Aw come on Baz… Putting ‘respected’ in quotes is a nice passive-aggressive touch, but a little subtle for an Aussie in my experience.

I do think that a clarification is in order though…

I defend Adobe when someone says something about them “going under” due to some feature not being as they would like, or if they say that PPro is “unfit for anyone”…or when they say that Adobe’s development staff are “incompetent” or “stupid”. I work with a number of these people and they are none of the above.

BUT…I also have agreed that PPro’s TC handling and asset handling (somewhat better in CS3) haven’t been on par with Avid or FCP. If you are in an edit-for-hire situation or edit a television series, unfortunately I’d have to agree that PPro is not the best option.

I also tell people that if PPro doesn’t have what they need, they should get something else, and I say that without smugness, though on the web such subtleties are difficult to decode.

I work on spots and HD or 2K effects most often in my edit suite these days and I can work with PPro as a hub for AE and Photoshop. You may not do the same and you may find something else better for your needs. I don’t recall ever having a different mindset than that…

I know that Adobe does listen to these requests and they make a priority list based on what affects the most of their customers. I’ve wanted this taken care of for some time now, but maybe it just isn’t something that most users of PPro run into… Having the most units out in the world doesn’t mean they have the most units in broadcast production…and I would say that this workflow is PPro’s weak spot without a doubt. (Avid doesn’t seem to be papering the walls with currency for their historic superiority in this area…)

BTW, for those of you experiencing inaccurate capture, have you tried adjusting the preroll setting? Are you having issues with RS422? FireWire? Which cards?

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net

[Baz Leffler]

[Tim Kolb] “I defend Adobe when someone says something about them “going under” due to some feature not being as they would like, or if they say that PPro is “unfit for anyone”…or when they say that Adobe’s development staff are “incompetent” or “stupid”. I work with a number of these people and they are none of the above.”

Tim – You are a relatively ‘passive’ guy at most times anyhow! (there are those quotes again!). The “incompetent” / “stupid” comments are against forum rules and the “going under” etc is what many wish as they feel Adobe deserve it. I have been guilty of some of this from time to time. I remember I use to pay out on Edius when it first came out almost to the point of being banned from the Canopus forums (and having some of my posts edited) but in the end they invited me into the beta testing team where I refrained from my nastiness; why? because at last I knew they were listening to me and taking me seriously. They took many of my suggestions on board and made me feel more of a team player than a team slayer. I have since moved on to Blackmagic and share a similar demeanour.

What I have noticed from being an avid reader of these forums is that when a real bug/deficiency is discussed many of the mainliners stay away. In some cases its because they have nothing to contribute, in others it may because its a hot potato.

I suppose what I was alluding to in all my indirectness was this –
if ‘unknowns’ visit these forums and say something is wrong then it seems to me that the Adobe people would most probably ignore them assuming inexperience and time wasters; whereas the more ‘prominent’ contributers (including the ones that get free pictures) have gained the respect of Adobe and at least get a look in. Its this imbalance that concerns me.

Getting back on topic – yes I think all ‘timecode users’ do feel the pain with Adobe’s lack of knowledge on the subject and I also put it down to the way they have structured their plugin architecture but I am not here to make excuses as I no longer attend NAB and have never gotten a free dinner from Adobe (I got lots from Ampex, RCA and Sony back in the 80’s so I guess the floor space has changed a little since then).

But I have been thru the exact thing [videostream] experienced in an earlier post and while it can be fixed it is an unexpected delay when working to a deadline.

What I use to do as a workaround was to capture all my camera tapes in Sceneanalyser although it does not do a timecode recognition. Unfortunately I mostly work with digibeta in SD and HDCAM in HD and Sceneanalyser only works in DV so I off line in DV and for SD use a DAMAX (or MADRAS) to convert the SDI to DV which imbeds the timecode (using a Sony JH30 with the DV option would be a great benefit) and for HD work I have a Sony JH3 with the DV option. In a couple of weeks Colin will be releasing his new DVMP ‘Pro’ version which will be able to split captured DV files into their respective timecode breaks based on the DV metadata so I will finally get a true representation of each camera tape.

And finally in my workflow what I always do is render out a DV file of my final off line and use it as a reference in my on line. Once I have recaptured in full uncompressed resolution I place the off line DV file on top of the timeline with 50% opacity and scrub thru looking for irregularities. Call me anal but where I work people never remember your good jobs but they always remember your bad ones (not that I have ever done one – wink wink!)
Baz

[Tim Kolb]

[BazinoZ] “if ‘unknowns’ visit these forums and say something is wrong then it seems to me that the Adobe people would most probably ignore them assuming inexperience and time wasters; whereas the more ‘prominent’ contributers (including the ones that get free pictures) have gained the respect of Adobe and at least get a look in. Its this imbalance that concerns me.”

Well Baz…to a certain extent I suppose you are correct, but this issue is not the same as “I wish PPro worked like Edius/*edit/Vegas/whatever” in regard to a very subjective feature like the color of a window or whether or not a filter’s setting dialogue is set up a certain way…this is timecode. Plain ole’ everyday timecode. this is like having a razor tool that doesn’t work for many editors and I understand that.

I can tell you that it has been an issue active in development circles for some time…several versions. So the fact that it’s been posted by a new person, or a non-regular isn’t a mitigating factor at all in my mind.

I’m guessing the reasons it hasn’t been addressed to everyone’s satisfaction may be 1. It is exceptionally difficult and time consuming due to some core structure in the software (keep in mind that PPro is the only NLE that can edit/move audio in sub-frame increments of a sound sample…coincidence? I don’t know…), or 2. Adobe has decided, even in the face of what I see as multiple requests to deal with the issue, to shelve it. i don’t think it’s a great idea as I personally think that PPro making more inroads into some more television/broadcast workflows would be helpful for PPro itself…however, there IS more high end work going on PPro than most suspect so maybe it isn’t an issue in as wide a cross section of workflows as I think it is…

I’m not apologizing for, or “sticking up” for Adobe in this case…I simply don’t have a good answer for you.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net