Andrew Rendell
Forum Replies Created
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I like to think I use my skills for good occasionally. I picked up a paper the other day and read that Laszlo Csatary has been indicted for involvement in sending nearly 12,000 jews to nazi death camps during WW2. Coincidentally, or maybe not quite coincidentally, I cut a 30 minute doc basically accusing the Hungarian government of supporting nazis (modern neo-nazis as well as war criminals), including our attempt to doorstep Csatary, which was transmitted last month. I don’t suppose my rambling helps, except to show that there are other paths if your problem is languishing over not achieving anything meaningful in your life.
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Well, maybe… but I would point out that Sony has released several versions of XDCAM software: XDCAM EX Clip Browser, XDCAM Transfer, Log & Transfer plugin, Content Browser…. and some versions only work properly with certain OS & NLE versions (not showing thumbnails and/or not playing the clips is typical of an incompatibility between software versions).
Plus, XDCAM EX does allow for split files and split files across cards, in which case multiple files on the card can become one long clip when importing and that can be confusing until you get used to it.
TBH, I wonder if you’re actually on the right track, you just haven’t got the correct update of Clip Browser to match your OS yet (showing one clip is odd, if you had entirely wrong software I wouldn’t expect to see anything at all).
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Lossless and getting the size down are fundamentally incompatible aims. It’s only possible to reduce the data stream of a full quality video signal by about a half before you have to accept losses to go any further.
However, there are widely used codecs that are very clever at being a bit lossy without looking bad…. Shane has covered those above.
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I don’t know of any place that has everything together.
However, there is a lot in common between broadcasters, they’re all pretty much the same for Rec.709 video levels, camera codecs vary a bit (50MBPS is almost always fine, 35MBPS is frequently fine but sometimes not, anything less than 35MBPS might be ok but you can’t assume it will), and there are different ways of measuring audio levels (loudness or absolute levels).
Safe title areas are probably the most variable, some broadcasters specify narrower areas than others to account for the way they handle analogue SD transmissions or to avoid subtitles clashing with channel tickers/ idents (I know of one broadcaster which had an unusual safe title area requirement last year, this year they’re specifying no titles on the programme you supply, you need to supply a list and they’ll do the subtitling themselves).
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[Tim Wilson] “So it’s YOUR fault?!? We were wondering.”
Yeah, sorry about that. I also took some time out when my father in law died.
TBH, the Facebook groups I’m on (edit suite stories and edit jockeys) aren’t really doing the same thing as CC though.
There’s a bit of overlap in some of the LinkedIn groups, although I’ve already abandoned a couple which have been swamped with spam and/or pointless arguing over software (the never ending Avid-FCP-Adobe and FCP7-FCPX arguments which I find so incredibly tedious). IMO the LinkedIn groups aren’t anywhere near as well organised as the CC forum but they are associated with the professional networking/ keeping in touch with contacts thing that LinkedIn is quite good for so they get a bit of attention for that.
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There are a couple of UK-specific groups on Facebook (I’m in the UK) and a few groups on LinkedIn that I’m on, so I’ve spent less of my time on the Cow in recent months than I used to. So I guess that’s probably part of it going quiet.
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Something about that rings a bell…. there are a few things that use .MP4 wrappers, my first thought is XDCAM, if so you’ll need the XDCam Transfer software (whatever the latest version is that matches your OS).
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You have to choose the frame rate for the sequence and convert the file that’s different to match it.
So assuming that you want to stick to the broadcast frame rate in Sweden, that’s 25fps, you should use 25fps for the sequence setting and convert the 29.97fps recording to 25fps. You can do that conversion with Compressor before importing and editing with it, or you can import it without changing it and use a plugin effect like Nattress to convert within FCP.
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As I understand it, that dual jack connector has audio on the bigger side and 5V dc on the smaller side…
so I expect it could be converted to work with XLR and phantom power but I wouldn’t honestly recommend it as a diy project
OTOH, if it’s useless to you otherwise and you’re comfortable with a soldering iron you could do a bit of research about mic wiring and phantom power and have a go… what could go wrong?
😉
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I’m in the UK, so I can only speak for my territory, as it were. So having declared that, I’ve done stuff in the last few months for BBC, Channel 4, Discovery, National Geographic and Al Jazeera. All of those channels are still specifying for video levels and gamut, audio levels and title areas, also minimum bit rates for origination and post (typically cameras conforming to tier 2 or better of EBU R-118 and never dropping below 50Mbps/4:2:2 sampling during post).
I’ve done a few things over the years where there was an attitude of “don’t worry about it, it’s going through a legaliser anyway”, which was basically ITV and BBC News, but because I dislike the look of what clippers do the the picture, I’ve always done at least a basic level balance using the NLE’s built-in scopes anyway (unless it absolutely has to go to air NOW).
TBH, moving from tape to files has made some things more reliable, but the kinds of errors which put vision levels/gamut out of “legal” have been mainly camera issues (e.g., bad exposure) or compression artefacts rather than tape ones since we went over to using digital tape (digibeta, etc), so delivering as files rather than tape isn’t that big a deal for “broadcast safe”.