Andrew Rendell
Forum Replies Created
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Effects wise, Avid is much better than FCP on the timeline (in my opinion) but not as flexible as Motion. The basic Avid effects are ok but a bit limited, so you really need to get a few plug ins (pretty much anything is available if you’re willing to pay). If you have the Production Suite you get Boris effects, which gives you loads of great things (I got that with “the deal”) and it’s rare that I find a need for anything more.
[N.B. my disagreeing with Shane about whether Avid or FCP is better for building effects on the timeline may be because I worked with Avid for a long time before moving to FCP, so I’m used to the way that Avid does some things, e.g., the ability of layering effects in filler clips on higher video layers as well as going effect over effect within the clip.]
TBH it wasn’t a difficult transition to go from Avid to FCP, so I’d expect it to be fairly easy to go the other way. Yes there’s a few things you have to learn (it’s different software, get over it), but really the things that bugged me at first were the things that are almost but not quite the same – the slider for zooming the timeline going in the opposite direction, razor blade tool (FCP is select tool-position cursor-click, Avid is position cursor-click tool), etc.
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There are two ways of doing this.
One is to shorten the gaps between words slightly. The difficulty of doing that on an Avid (or any other NLE designed for cutting pictures) is that you don’t have fine enough editing – you really need to cut at the sample level and video editing systems can only cut at points one frame apart, so you can do a fair amount that way but it’s a bit limited. I don’t know of any plugin for Avid for that kind of job, you really have to go into an audio editing system to do it properly.
The other way is to speed up the audio, using pitch correction to stop the voice going high pitched. There are plug-ins for that (look for “Time Compression Expansion” in your Audio Suite set, MC 5.5 should have come with it already included). The catch with that is that any more than a few percent speed up will sound obviously processed – the human ear really notices anything odd about the voice (more than most other sounds that we encounter).
I sometimes use the first technique (trimming out the gaps) when the difference is relatively small, but more often I’ll alter the picture cut to make room for the narration. If you really need the voice to match a cut picture sequence the way to go is to voice to playback, then you can tell at the time of recording whether you need to talk faster, change the script to reduce the number of words or alter the picture cut to get it in.
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Finding the cause of flickering video can be tricky. It’s not unheard of for interlacing to be involved (making it worse than it would be on a progressive scan), but it’s not usually the cause. More likely are things like filming under fluorescent lights or filming off a computer screen – juggling the shutter speed at the time can usually minimise it, but it’s tricky to fix if it’s recorded with flicker.
More technical details and a link to a clip of the problem material might generate more of a response here, without it you’re not going to get much more than guesses.
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Betacam SP is a standard definition format, as is Digi-Beta. You don’t get HD recordings on either, so if you have material on either of them that was originated in HD it must have been down-converted to SD (and that’s not reversible).
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Proper editing on the go… yeah, fabulous idea, but surely that’s gonna be only partly to do with kit and more to do with head space; the ability to think clearly without being distracted or interrupted whilst out of the office.
Anyway, the next big change I’d like to see would be to have a faster and more efficient way to make changes (both broad sweeps and delicate adjustments) than a mouse in one hand and a keyboard under the other.
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Just wondering, does the jump always happen where you’re going between an unrendered effect and an unmodified shot? If so, it might make a difference if you render the modified shot. Even if it doesn’t “need” to be rendered for playback, there might be something going on that glitches on real time playback (which wouldn’t be there when you output, because going to Compressor would render it all anyway).
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If you’re logged in, when you look down the list of threads your posts should have your name in red.
If you can’t remember which section you put your post in, you should be able to track it down by going through your own details or doing a search for your subject title.
If you go directly to your post (not using “show thread”) and it hasn’t been long since you posted and no one has answered you yet, you’ll see an “edit” button below your post, which will allow you to modify it.
Oh, and if you want to change an mp4 encoded clip, which FCP doesn’t like, into something that FCP will edit, you’ll need something like MPEG Streamclip to turn it into a Quicktime with an editable codec (say ProRes or DV).
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In principle, you need a preroll to sync one source with another, e.g., an edited timeline with a running deck.
When you digitise off tape the deck isn’t being driven into sync with anything (the timecode for the clip is being read off the tape, it’s not being made to match anything) so the only function that a preroll serves is to make sure that the playback is stable and running at the right speed, which generally takes 1 or 2 seconds (some decks can be stable in less than a second) and should happen whether the deck is being controlled or not (if it doesn’t you’ve got a fault somewhere). Assuming that the deck is running properly there is the question of how the editing system takes in the timecode. The deck can have a timecode feed that’s separate from the vision and sound and/or a timecode feed integrated with the vision signal; those feeds need to be read by a timecode reader that’s a separate piece of hardware to the NLE. Decks also embed timecode in some control protocols, such as RS422 and Firewire, so most editing suites nowadays don’t have separate timecode readers as they are controlling the deck by one of those methods (so you don’t need one).
Now, when you take the timecode via RS422 it’s coming through a different path to the pictures, so there is the possibility of the timecode arriving at a different time (so the NLE gets the relationship between the t/c and the pics wrong). To get around that, the NLE has an offset built in [details here – https://support.apple.com/kb/TA22142?viewlocale=en_US ]. That offset will depend on your hardware, but you should have an easy setup for your decklink card and once it’s been set the timecode on your clips will match the tape and you shouldn’t need to set it again unless you change your hardware setup in some way.
BTW there is a setting in user preferences for what happens when you digitise through a t/c break. It should be right by default (i.e., creating a new clip on each t/c break) but it’s worth checking.
(hope that’s more helpful than what I wrote on the basics thread – it’s the weekend so I’ve had a bit more time to compose my thoughts)
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[Rafael Amador] “[Andrew Rendell] “What hardware doesn’t take the source timecode when digitising from tape on a “capture now”?”
Is nothing about hardware, but about FC.
FC can’t take the TC embed in an SDI.
With an AJA you need RS-422 + the software I’ve mentioned.”Ah, yes, you’re pointing out that you only get source timecode when the deck is being controlled (RS422 or FW), reminding me that it is possible to digitise from a deck that isn’t under remote control even if it’s not within my personal experience….
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In a vision stream, the frame is the equivalent of a sample in an audio feed, so the question “can I cut somewhere within a frame” is exactly the same as “can I cut part of the way through an audio sample”. The answer is no, you can only cut from one whole sample to another whole sample.
On a slight tangent, you used to be able to cut on the wrong field with some decks/vision mixers, but TBH that ability to shift a cut by half a frame didn’t make any great difference to the edit and was likely to give you problems later.