[Andreas Kiel]

Just for the records.

QT is not really messing up the things.
It’s about the never ending story of signal transmission and this in mind mixing the analog versus digital formats.
The standard is/was to have vertical blanking for each video line (how much is also a point of discussion).
The digital non square 720 from PAL will we corrected to 768 square.
With blanking an often used value is 2.5% so you will get 768*1,025 which results in 787.2.

Anyway the file is okay.

Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Andreas Kiel]

You may use my TCRPlus

Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Andreas Kiel]

Use the PluralEyes app – third party.

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Andreas Kiel]

Nobody here can say what will really happen – either it’s a guess or (s)he is not allowed.

Problem is that there is a lot of unsureness even at the developers of third party stuff. Wes as well doesn’t have any insight. So it will take some time for everybody to catch up.
What’s pretty clear: FCP X will take some of the features currently implemented in iMovie. Some of this stuff is difficult to be transferred or mapped from the ‘old’ structure to the ‘new’ structure. Maybe something is not working at all.

So for all of us it will be a situation where we have to run both apps in parallel, at least for a while.
That’s not a problem I think – many people do run CS5 and FCP in parallel right now or use an AVID on the same machine. You even can run FCP 6 and FCP 7 in parallel right now – though they share some prefs, plugins and the serial number.

Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Andreas Kiel]

Jeremy,

Google for the Satimage XMLLib OSAX to handle XMLs with AppleScript. It’s free, well documented, very fast and powerful.
To learn a bit about XML go to https://www.w3schools.com

So you can do something like this with AppleScript (for a single file)

property theFPS : 25
property frameOffset : 500

set filePath to (choose file without invisibles)

set theXML to XMLOpen filePath with bypassing namespace
set theRoot to XMLRoot theXML
set startTC to (XMLGetText (XMLXPath theRoot with "//StartTimecode")) as string
set text item delimiters to ":"
set {HH, MM, SS, FF} to every text item of startTC

set sourceFrames to (HH * 3600 * theFPS) + (MM * 60 * theFPS) + (SS * theFPS) + FF
set newFrames to sourceFrames + frameOffset

set HH to newFrames div (3600 * theFPS)
set newFrames to newFrames mod (3600 * theFPS)
set MM to newFrames div (60 * theFPS)
set newFrames to newFrames mod (60 * theFPS)
set SS to newFrames div (theFPS)
set FF to newFrames mod (theFPS)

set newTC to {HH, MM, SS, FF} as string
set text item delimiters to ""

XMLSetText (XMLXPath theRoot with "//StartTimecode") to newTC as string
XMLSave theXML
XMLClose theXML

You have to change ‘theFPS’ and ‘frameOffset’ to those values you need. With some changes you also can create a batch process and/or droplet with the above code.
The code will only work for NDF.
Finally – as always – I’m not responsible for any damage this code can cause 🙂

Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Andreas Kiel]

Jeremy,

This is a funny constellation. I do know a lot about P2 and XML, but I never use L&T as I work with the native files. The native files do contain an embedded TC which is interleaved with the video. Mostly that is fine, but sometimes it can drive you crazy – in those cases similar to yours.

To batch change things in an XML is not that difficult, more difficult is to make TC calculations as you are probably on the NTSC side of the world where video clocks don’t work real time ;-).
I did a short test with a card and wow – you’re right. FCP takes/overwrites the TC of the file with that one given within the XML when using L&T. Very interesting feature – at least for the current version of FCP.

If you do know a bit about AppleScript and if your footage is NDF TC, you should be able to read the XMLs, find the TCs at ”, convert them to frames, subtract or add the TC difference (also in frames) then convert back to TC and replace the value in the XML.
You might even do that in Excel or FileMaker.

I know that’s not a real help, but might give you a start.

-Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Andreas Kiel]

Yes if you got common sound PluralEyes probably is the best way to go.

Otherwise you may use my free sequenceLiner to lay down each camera’s clips in a sequence by their timecode (hopefully you’ve used TOD).
Once you have found two clips with a reference you can move all clips of a track by typing +/- and enter the amount of the frame offset. From there you can go to make either a huge multiclip by exporting each track as ref movie or go step by step to create single clip multiclips. You may use the Modify Timecode menu then to add add an AUX1 TC to each clip. Copy the TC from the sequence at the current time, select the clip and add/paste this TC to the current frame in AUX1. This will give you a save way of handling – but it’s time consuming.

One last thing for the understanding of P2: the XMLs on the card allow to read metadata easily, even to add or to change things for some entries. But changing timecode or format or anything which is written directly into the video or audio movie/clip will be ignored, it might even lead to a disaster. So as long as you don’t know exactly what might be caused by changes, better don’t touch the XMLs.

Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Andreas Kiel]

Hi Sara,

More memory will help, but won’t fix it (or maybe it will, depending on the amount of subtitles you got)
You additionally may set the playback quality to a lower value. This will require less memory per frame.

Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Andreas Kiel]

Joe,

Beside using Alex’s excellent generator you can do it in Motion as you obviously did.
Some nice option you have with Motion is to create Motion Templates. With this option handling of titles is way ahead of Boris or the Premiere titling stuff since you do have the possibility to change titles globally.
Some years ago I did a rough tutorial how to work with Motion Templates. Might give you some additional ideas.

Andreas

https://www.spherico.com/filmtools/TitleExchange/m_template.mov

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

[Andreas Kiel]

That’s a normal thing if you got a lot of subtitles and not enough of memory.
Even if FCP can’t address more than 2G it still has to share the memory installed with all other apps and processes.
You might change the still cache in the FCP preferences to a higher value.

Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools