Andy Mees
Forum Replies Created
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>MacBook Pro 17” has the advantage of having an eSata interface
Err … no it doesn’t Mio. Think maybe you mean the 17″ has an ExpressCard/34 port which can be used to add your choice or 3rd party eSATA adaptor, I/O device etc.
KryÅ¡tof, the very latest 15″ MBP with the Thunderbolt port will be an FCP workhorse. Yes, as noted you’ll absolutely need to add fast external storage, and no, USB 2 is not good enough. Via a future Thunderbolt adaptor you should be able to add eSATA drives and/or maybe USB 3 which will be ok … or go with Thunderbolt native storage when available. In the meantime you’ll need FW800 storage. These same new laptops may not be quick as amazing as they otherwise might with Adobe Premiere Pro though, as they don’t have the supported NVidia graphics chips that are needed to maximise the potential of Adobe’s Mercury Engine.
The older 15″ MBP is (IMHO) too limited to consider. Lacks any meaningful expansion options for good fast external storage (you’ll be limited to FW800) and similarly little option for adding proper external video monitoring, I/O etc. If you can get a previous generation 17″ MBP with the ExpressCard/34 port then that would be an option worth considering.
Hope it helps
Andy -
Hey Joritt
Is it 78 clips in all that won’t open, or only a few out of the 78? If only a few then you might just want to work around the problem by opening them in Premiere and exporting them out as Quicktime movies. Another option your editor may want to consider is Calibrated Software’s XDCAM EX MP4 component.
https://www.calibratedsoftware.com/MP4EXImport_Mac.asp It’s about 150 USD to buy but there’s a demo he can use to check that it can read those problem files ahead of time.
Cheers
Andy -
>Our latest footage that we need to send them ASAP (and it’s over 24 hours of footage) is shot at 720p60.
Are you producing this content primarily for ESPN Asia or are they a secondary client? If they are the primary client for this content then you really should be using the Tricaster to record directly to 1080i50 as per your delivery specs, or at least 720p50 … not recording 720p60. As you note, it’s going to be cost prohibitive to have all this and future content properly converted with quality hardware, but its going to be time (and quality) prohibitive now to have to convert it all in software.>The Tricaster’s native codec is mpeg2 (.mpg wrapper).
Perhaps you should be looking at recording the switched output directly into a KiPro, nanoFlash or similar ie recording direct to the target codec?>There are two realistic options to export it as .mov’s: photo jpeg and HDV – I figure taking the native is the best to work with – although audio is Muxed.
When you say “native” is best, are you inferring that the internal MPEG2 format used for recording is HDV? And thats what you are exporting? And when you say there are only two “realistic” export options for MOV, what’s the reasoning/constraints that make the other options unrealistic? What are the other options?
>So, here’s what I have done … I take the native 720p60 mpeg2 file and either use Compressor or MPEG Streamclip to upscale/frame change to the 1080i50 (the XDCAM HD422 looks better than the ProRes). But, both workflow results look the same to me.
What specific settings did you use? Try this. First off, create/save a short sample piece of your 720p60 footage to test with, 30 seconds should be enough, but make sure its representative of the kind of content and motion in the majority of the footage. Then, in Compressor, import the sample clip. Now, from the Target menu choose New Target with Setting… and choose Apple > Formats > Quicktime > Apple ProRes 422 (HQ). Now select that applied setting in the job window and switch to the Inspector window: In the Encoder tab click the Video : Settings… button and change the Frame Rate to 25 fps, click OK; In the Frame Controls tab, click the sprocket button to enable the menu and turn the Frame Controls to On, then set Output Fields to “Top First”; Then, in the Geometry tab, choose 1920×1080 from the Dimensions > Frame Size menu. You’ll probably want to click the Save As button at lower right of the Inspector window at this point and save these settings as a custom preset for later. Now press Submit. Check how long it takes to encode with these settings … if your source is 30 seconds then 24 hours of footage will mean you have to multiply however long that took by around 3000 to get an estimate of how long it’ll take to transcode the whole lot. When its finished encoding play the result back through appropriate hardware ie something that can properly play and display 1080i50 to see if the quality of the conversion is acceptable. If not, rinse and repeat, but maybe set the Frame Controls : Resize setting to Best (Statistical Prediction) … see if that improves the quality as needed, but also how that would affect the overall processing time.
Hope it helps
Andy -
Could it be that the problem you are having is with spanned clips?
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Difference here tho is our OP very specifically stated that they didn’t want to retime the movie, they just “change the timecode counter to make it look like its 30secs but it’s actually still 43 when played”.
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[Andy Mees] “option drag on the out point”
Don’t know where I got that from (Adobe Premiere maybe), anyway correct tool for slowing down would be the Speed Tool (sss).
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[Christine Heine] “OK. Serious people only please. “
Thats a more ridiculous comment than the original question, Christine! 🙂
“Seriously” tho. Why not just slow down a timecode generator? Stick a timecode generator on a slug track above your edit, crop it to display only the timecode, adjust its length to 30 seconds, nest it, and then stretch the duration of the nest to fit (option drag on the out point).(Btw, if you find all that too clumsy you can download and install my Timecode Generator plugin … then just slow that down as needed: http:/web.me.com/andymees)
[Christine Heine] “It’s hard to believe no one’s thought of doing this yet. “
No its not. Lol.
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It’s the clip analysis (for auto metadata creation eg cu, ms, ws, 2shot, pans etc) plus auto smoothcam, rolling shutter fix etc etc these are the things that will happen in the background … so yes, you have the instant ingest as you suggest should happen, but you also have background analysis going on.
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You probably need to clarify your question Steve lest folks go off on a tangent (we’re an excitable lot in here and we like a good tangent). I’m guessing your question is probably meant in the broadest sense ie Can I edit with AVCHD footage from my camera or do I need to transcode it or rewrap it or something first? Well in my In the demo presented to the Supermeet by Randy Ubilos he directly stated that AVCHD was natively supported in FCPS X, no transcode necessary.
“Final Cut Pro X allows you to mix and match content without having to do any sort of transcoding … so we can take in footage from your DSLR’s, we can take in AVCHD, we can take in stuff from a GoPro … and you can just edit it natively, all in the timeline … you can mix and match sizes, it doesn’t matter, it just takes care of it”
Hope it helps
Andy -
[Diego Andres Delfino] “I actually stepped out for a minute and came back to my Mac only to find out that there was nothing wrong “
Lol… sounds strangely familiar … one of my favorite troubleshooting steps 🙂