[Andreas Kiel]

Finally the link is in FCP.
Menu: Final Cut Pro -> Provide Final Cut Pro Feedback.

Andreas

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

[Andreas Kiel]

Stephen,

If you have to create many Lower Thirds and those might have to be changed during the edit you shouldn’t use Boris. Changes there do cost a lot of time.
Better way is to create (or use) a simple Motion Template.
Another option is to use my free TextUp generator, though it’s more thought for use with subtitles.

Andreas

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

[Andreas Kiel]

As Neil said – you should have a common ref.

Another option which might be worth to try is to record video and audio to separate files onto different disks.
This normally doesn’t make sense with embedded audio, but it take off quite a burden from the system when handling really long clips.

Andreas

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

[Andreas Kiel]

Just saw the thread by chance.

Why not make a Motion template for that. Motion’s text box behavior is to write from the top to the bottom of the text area. So it would be a constant ‘Y behavior’ – both set by the box position and way of writing text inside.

You may also try my TextUp generators – though they won’t give you control for the kerning by character or special style control per letter or word.

Andreas

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

[Andreas Kiel]

Ariane, sorry my fault – I uploaded a 10.6x only version.
I did replace that .zip file by a 10.5x version.
So give it a try again.

Andreas

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

[Andreas Kiel]

Ariane,

Interesting results.

The thing I mentioned before is that you really have to know time scale and frame duration. Might be that there is some during copy, upload etc.

Sample 3 is the most funny one.

‘For your eyes only’ I made a little app which does a QT analyze of movies 🙂
You can get it here:
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools/someTimes/someTimes.zip

It might help you to figure out the numbers you need.
Just drop a movie file into the white table view or on the (bad) app’s icon.

If you can upload some examples, I also can have a look at them. It may take some time as my internet connection speed is kinda ancient currently.

Andreas

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

[Andreas Kiel]

What’s wrong with the text – it’s DVD, MPEG.
You may try to make the text outlined with a gray border which will help to anti-alias the text a bit before compression.

Andreas

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

[Andreas Kiel]

Ariane,

It’s mostly correct what you wrote.
May I’ll try to explain it in a different way:

If you got an integer frame rate, in theory you don’t need this ‘multiply factor’. For NTSC you need it. For example a more close to reality FPS for 30 NTSC is 29.97002997003 (actually the number is much longer and can cover a whole post). So for NTSC you need some thing to address a frame correctly covering the rounding errors.
The reason that there is time scale and frame duration (latter is the multiplyer) is more a playback/handling issue.
If you open a movie in any app you can hit at least play and stop. Play is easy as the will start display the content, Stop is a bit more difficult as there is a delay from hitting a key on the keyboard or pressing a button. Then the command has to be issued in the actual app. This all also depends on the actual used hardware.
So they decided to give an internal length to each frame to make that more save and hardware independent. While playing a movie, computer clock and QT time are compared. This means if you hit Stop the computer clock is at some time and the QT time is as well. Now QT searches in which range of the QT time of the movie the actual computer time is. If you got short QT frame durations the chance that it will stop on a wrong frame is much higher with short frame durations.

That’s why there are frame durations. Result is that you can stop in the middle of a frame in practice – though you obviously see the full frame and not a part of it. Sometimes you may experience that with some players if you hit Stop and go back one frame by keyboard or menu – the frame doesn’t change as it just stepped to the next full frame time which in case is the actual frame.
The logical result is that you should use frame durations above 10 at least, 100 is better, for NTSC 1000 is better, for ease of use the times are a power of 10.

My example again. As said, you have to figure out the frame duration, the timescale of the movie and the integer FPS. With FCP for a 23.976 movie these values are 1000, 23976 and 24.
The calculation for the time will be (0*24+0*24+20*24+5)*1000/23976 -> 20.22856189523
This time is based on the displayed timecode – it might be more complicated if your timecode is DF.
If got the total frames from either FCP or QT Player Pro the calc is easier 485*1000/23976 -> 20.22856189523

You also can go the other way round if you got a QT time. Let’s take 99985. Since you know the the frame duration is 1000 (in my example) you get 99985/1000 -> 99.985. As frames are always integers, you know now that you’re ‘inside’ frame 99 regardless of the timescale or FPS of this movie.
To get the real world time is 99985/23976 -> 4.17021187855

So for your Java app you just have to figure out the internal QT duration of the movie and the QT timescale, divide those, round down to three decimal digits and you’re done.
If you know the frame count of the movie it’s even easier: 485/23.976 -> 20.22856189523
I not really know what the intention of you Java app is, but you might use FCP’s XML export to figure out real world playing time. The frame count, the integer FPS(timebase) and the NTSC flag are given there. You don’t have to dive into the mystery of the QT programming world.

Another note on QT Player Pro.
You got the option to display time, TC or frames.
Depending on what option you have selected the display in the inspector window will change.
Let’s take again Ariane’s example:
With standard time Inspector will display a duration of 20.22 seconds
With TC or Frame display the duration will change to 00:00:20:05, but last frames timecode is 00:00:20:04, so be aware of this 1 frame. FCP behaves the same, though you can’t display time.

Hope that helps

Andreas

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

[Andreas Kiel]

I did hit the post button by chance a bit to early.

Here some additions.
To explain the 20.27 a bit more detailed. You got 485 frames (with this example. Frame count starts at 0, so frame time is 0*100, frame 485 is 485*100. If you go to the end of frame 485 the time is 486*100.

Also forgot to mention that 600 can be divided by 25 for PAL.

Andreas

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

[Andreas Kiel]

This is an interesting thread. Her my 2cents.

I think the first question from Ariane was a bit misleading as she mixed up 24 NTSC and 24.
Otherwise it’s very simple.
For NTSC time the calulation has to be ((20*24+5)/24)*(1001/1000) -> 20.22854166666. So the media info from the server is correct.
If there will be true 24, the calculation must be (20*24+5)/24) -> 20.20833333333

I’m not sure what Ariane meaned by “When I open it in QT…”. With QT Player Pro I get displayed 20.22 – which is rounded down, but more or less correct. But also 20.27 is correct it just depends on way how you look at it. This time takes the time of the frame after the last frame, so it includes one frame more to calculate with results in 20.27.

If you do it with QT code it will give you the same results.
To address a frame’s time for example the last (485 * 1000)/23976 -> 20.2285618952 this includes some rounding error as 23976 is rounded.

In this case 1000 is the internal frame duration of this special example QT movie. The values used apply to any QT file created with FCP — except the frame number.
For 29.97 the frame duration will be 100 and timebase is 2997, for PAL and other non NTSC movies frame duration is always 100 and timebase is 100*FPS – with FCP QT movies.

Other apps might use a different timebase. An old fashioned one is 600 as it can be divided by 12 and 15 for stop motion, by 24 for film and 30, 60 for NTSC non drop.
So to calculate time from an unknown movie you have to retrieve and verify timebase and frame duration.

Andreas

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