[Alexander Serpico]

It was set to mastering on this machine (which it never was on my previous box). AJA responded with suggestions of adding an offset (which would not be a fix), and switching to editing in ETT.

Switching to Editing worked.

[Alexander Serpico]

>Everything works ok with Aja.
I get a non-consistent frame or two latency when laying down a sequence in the sheer codecs.
I have yet to figure out why.

[Alexander Serpico]

Thanks so much John for your post! It’s very comforting to know im not crazy, but also a real problem that this has not been figured out.

Just curious, but did the media you had problems with get imported via P2 Import or loaded off tape?

[Alexander Serpico]

LOL… every once in a while this happens for whatever reason (usually the client is gonna just make a quick change themselves and save money). This is why making a generic version at the time of your layoff is always good practice, and can often save you some hassle if things reappear that you don’t want to deal with.. Looking at their request, you could get away with simply media managing that cut with a few second handles. If they need more, you could say you blew out the drive. It’s an awkward position to be put in but in the end you need to determine what you are willing to give, on a scale which determines how doing this favor will affect you (in a positive or negative way).

>”Why was I editing in the first place?”
I don’t know your work, but why would you ask that and sell yourself short? In the commercial world now almost all advertising agencies have (or are in the process of installing) in-house FCP systems, they technically could do it all themselves. But it’s the talent of the editor that drives people to want to work with you (and the various amenities your company may provide does help too of course).

-Alex
Vfx/Finishing
“Advertising directed at your counter-culture.”
reel: https://www.crewcuts.com/talent/Digital_Compositing.html

[Alexander Serpico]

I media manage and re-digitize all the time from projects (and edls) that weren’t mine during in the offline edit, some people even do the media manage for me (i guess they think they are doing me a favor… but they somehow usually screw something up). Sometimes these projects que up the most bizarre clip durations that don’t make any sense. I have also experienced that reloading of the same clip twice, tho it was some weeks ago and i don’t exactly remember the outcome… My most frequent error when loading, is that FCP is not able to link the captured clip to the clip as it is used in a sequence. I have yet to bother and try to figure out why the hell the project is commanding FCP to not work correctly, because the following usually gets it all working (and this may have corrected the repetitive loading issue as well):

Export an edl of the offline sequence and import that back in, and/or you also can do another media manage to that sequence (setting it to delete unused media, etc). These two these two things seem to always do the trick in my experiences…

-Alex
“Advertising directed at your counter-culture.”
reel: https://www.crewcuts.com/talent/Digital_Compositing.html

[Alexander Serpico]

Just to add my experience, when downconverting either through the kona card or in FCP (ie. anamorphic to letterboxed 4×3), i always get a soft line doubled ghosted image also. I too have not yet figured a way around this. From my point of view this is not exactly a field issue, more of an interlacing issue (splitting hairs maybe). Trying to down convert with shake, just opens another pandora’s box of frame resizing issues due to interlacing. I assume the trade off of in having the kona card or fcp software do this conversion so quickly is the ghosting, verses shake or compressor (in its default or most basic of settings for conversion) getting the horizontal ripping. I would love to pin point a solid way of doing this, and i admit to not spending enough time trying to solve this issue with tweaked settings in shake or compressor. also i have not tried to do this in the latest version of fcp, which i heard has better resizing (or maybe i just hope that is the case).

[Alexander Serpico]

Bob wired up the systems where i am (@ Crew Cuts) years ago before he moved out west. They since have been rewired when we switched to FCP 3-4 years ago, i think by his former cohorts.

[Alexander Serpico]

-forgot to mention tho, last i tried Nattress does not work at 10-bit UC, so 8-bit is as high as you can set your sequence if u add that smoothing filter.

[Alexander Serpico]

I have performed onlines many times for low budget (political) commercials. I used to follow the train of thought of recapturing at uncompressed, but have found it is not necessary for the process but is a waste of time. You gain all the benefit of improved color space and graphics renders by just bumping your sequence codec to DV50, or Uncompressed, and rendering. Just remember if you want to go uncompressed, you must shift all footage up or down by 1. You could also add a chroma filter, like the one from Nattress (which if i remember correctly, reports to only work properly when applied to the source dv footage). There is no benefit to recapturing once picture is locked.

On a side note, I do a bump up recently from Uncompressed-10 bit to Sheer’s Uncompressed 10-bit for cleaner color when rendering in graphics.

[Alexander Serpico]

>Do I need blackburst for a digi-beta dub?
YES, absolutely yes.

>and how come a blackburst isn’t always needed?
it is always needed… unless you have 2 vhs decks connected with rca cables.