[Andrew Saliga]

Kevin,

Thanks for the extremely thorough advice. Some of the potential causes of the problems I had tested, but others like checking the cadence and OpenGL, I had not.

Dan,

Thanks for your input as well. These renders were set up to be “Straight” renders. I never knew it could cause issues with alpha channel edges though, so I’ll look for that in the future.

After much testing we found the source of the problems.

This is a 16 minute long HD clip with Keylight and various other effects applied. Keylight was crashing the render every time, and they were also taking a long time. To remedy this I set up AE to purge frames (under the “secret” menu) and also enabled multiple processors. This improved render speeds and prevented crashing. There were also other miscellaneous tweaks I had made to the settings.

In order to figure it out I back-tracked with the the motion graphics guy here and reverted only one setting change at a time. The one that made a difference was enabling multiple processors! When we unchecked the box, thus disabling it, the renders looked great after coming out of AE. No idea how or why this happened, but it worked.

In the end we just rendered the AE timeline in segments and then cut it together in FCP.

Thanks again for all of your help.

-Andrew Saliga

Steelehouse Productions
http://www.steelehouse.com

[Andrew Saliga]

I still haven’t found a solution either. As I have stated, my problem is when I’m outputting to Digi-Beta via SDI. If I’m outputting to a DVCam deck via SDI, it’s fine. I guess the next step is for me to attempt to output to Digi-Beta via component.

-Andrew Saliga

Steelehouse Productions
http://www.steelehouse.com

[Andrew Saliga]

Sorry, this problem has kind of been pushed aside, and I just remembered one more thing. I mentioned it in an above post.

It isn’t the record head because I can record fine if I’m playing from the FCP timeline, but not if I use “Edit to Tape”. This is why the problem must be in FCP.

Any other ideas?

-Andrew Saliga

Steelehouse Productions
http://www.steelehouse.com

[Andrew Saliga]

I used the DVW-A500.

I guess you’re likely right about it being the record head. We don’t service our own decks here, but have a guy in town that handles it. Now that I think about it, last time we had it serviced, he found a piece of a cotton swab on the record head. I personally watched him remove it. We had rented the deck out, and someone had tried to clean the heads on their own. After removing the small threads of cotton didn’t fix it, I figured it wasn’t the root of the problem. I’m starting to think that there still may be some inside.

-Andrew Saliga

Steelehouse Productions
http://www.steelehouse.com

[Andrew Saliga]

Just trashed my FCP prefs. No fix.

Just to make sure it wasn’t an issue with the deck playing back tapes, I tried an old DigiBeta. It played back without any problems.

-Andrew Saliga

[Andrew Saliga]

Does anyone have any alternative suggestions? It’s not a sync or overmodulation issue, and not bad tape stock either.

The audio is getting to the deck fine, because when I monitor it through headphones it sounds perfect. It’s on playback of these tapes that the issue arises. Also, I checked a old DigibBeta to make sure it’s not an issue with the deck playing back tapes. Channel condition indicator light remained green, and the audio sounded great. I’ve tried trashing FCP prefs too.

-Andrew Saliga

[Andrew Saliga]

Interesting. I’ll have to try that out. I’ve heard other people mention it might be the user file becoming corrupted, but I’ve never heard of this particular method to have a new pref file at hand.

Thanks for all the help. As soon as I get a minute to test it out, I’ll post back.

-Andrew Saliga

[Andrew Saliga]

I still haven’t found a fix for this, only a workaround. My computer has been needing a clean install for awhile, so I’ll likely just start from scratch.

I will add though, that my issue wasn’t when outputting through FireWire. I was trying to output with my Kona LHe via SDI to DigiBeta deck.

-Andrew Saliga

[Andrew Saliga]

Any tips on framerate conversion through Compressor vs. AE? There are some effects shots that were made in AE at 29.97.

-Andrew Saliga

[Andrew Saliga]

I agree Daniel. There is no point in downconverting, only to upconvert again. Maybe I miscommunicated or perhaps the client’s odd request is confusing.

To clarify, two different video projects will be output. Different scripts, different visuals, etc.. One video is for a conference, and another for some other event. One is being requested in SD and the other HD. Both sequences have mixed content (SD/29.97 and HD/23.98), but each is currently set up to match the settings of the desired output.

To add to the confusion, I just learned that although we are doing the editing, the RED footage is going to be sent off for color correction. We will likely be shipping of a hard drive with a ProRes master of the edit along with the RED footage, and I’m not sure if we’ll receive the color corrected files on that same hard drive or if they’ll be sending a Digi-Beta master.

I realize that this added step may complicate matters to the extent of not having an answer unless the color correction house’s settings/output are known. If this is the case, how would you recommend doing the conversions, ignoring (for now) the fact that it’s going to be sent out for color correction?

Rich,
Thanks for the advice. I’m thinking that cutting both edits in some flavor of HD at 29.97 and then downconverting the one that will be output to SD would be a good approach. How would you handle the stock footage that is SD? Like Daniel was saying, I think HD masters would be the way to go, and would give me the highest level of quality possible when making the HD>SD downconversions, but I don’t want to uprez the stock footage only to downrez it on output.

-Andrew Saliga