Ann Clark
Forum Replies Created
-
Joey (and everybody):
Seems like there are standards, and yet not standards. And then there are standards that make no sense. 😉
Recently a client, to whom I sent a broadcast-format spot electronically, wrote back to say the spot was “rejected” and they forwarded some specs that included a spot length of “450, 900, 1350, 1800, 2250, 2700, 3600 frames” — and mine apparently came in at 3541 frames, which included 15 seconds of black at the end.
This is the first time I’ve had a spot rejected, and I’ve been creating commercials for a number of years. The client finally admitted he was sending the spot to the dreaded Googgle for airing. Previously, I hadn’t had any difficulty with sending files that eventually ended up in their system.
Since I’m supposedly 59 frames off, I am wondering what they expect. There’s nothing mentioned about how long each part needs to be. Currently, the formula I use is 1 minute bars/tone, 10 second slate, 8 second countdown, 2-pop, 30-second ad, and then 15 seconds of black at the end.
I could change out the countdown to add 2 seconds, but hey, does this make any sense, anyway? Why not add 2 more seconds of black to the end – or for that matter, 2 seconds of bars/tone? Or, absurdly, why not add 2 seconds to the commercial itself?? 😉 How is it important to have this frame count, when there’s no spec for what is required for each piece? And what’s a 450-frame spot?
As someone else points out, many times, when the spot is ingested, the leader material is chopped off, leaving 1 black frame at the head of the spot.
(Mine was a :30 spot — how the heck would a 60-second or a 120-second long-form spot fit in this scenario?)
Anybody ever work with the Goog? What’s their thing?
MacPro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 14GB memory – OSX10.5.8 FCP6
-
You’ve hit upon a flaw in FCP, I think. I’ve always wondered if there was a more efficient way to move the keyframes in the Motion tab. I think this is why I’ve gravitated to Motion for some of the tricky stuff, because I find it easier (at least visually) to make adjustment like what you’re describing.
It does seem like an easy piece of code to write. Maybe you could go on the support.apple.com site and suggest it…! 🙂
MacPro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 14GB memory – OSX10.5.8 FCP6
-
The program resides on the main drive and all files are stored and accessed from a secondary internal drive. Everything about the system is pretty standard. The problem is unusual.
MacPro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 14GB memory – OSX10.5.8 FCP6
-
Just did a little experiment.
Put the VO on a timeline (it is 48k, created within FCP). I split the left and right channels, and the Left channel ONLY appears to be the one that slows down and gets out of sync with the Right channel. Playing the Right channel alone sounds fine. Then I added a stereo clip of some music – not underneath, but after the VO clip. Now, both clips sound bad, both channels sound bad, and the dreaded drop-frame warning showed up.
Poo – thought I found which channel was acting up. Seems like the real situation is that 1 playback is not too bad, but repeated playbacks make the problem worse.
Can Soundtrack Pro mess up your RAM for FCP? If so, how do I fix that?
MacPro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 14GB memory – OSX10.5.8 FCP6
-
It’s 48k.
The problem is occurring on all of my FCP projects, not just the current one.
MacPro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 14GB memory – OSX10.5.8 FCP6
-
Aaron, thanks for replying. Let me see if I can answer your questions.
The audio runs through a Sony HDV deck to a Eurorack and out to headphones. But this has been the case for 2 years without problems.
I rolled the sequence to a Quicktime, and played back via quicktime through the Mac’s front speaker. This Quicktime, created today, echoes out the front speaker, too. But this was, of course, created today from FCP during this problem.
iTunes works just fine. As do other clips played in Quicktime, which were created prior to this problem.
This is not isolated to one FCP project or sequence, nor does it seem to pertain to specific audio clips. It’s happening across the board when I open previously created projects that used to sound fine (which only now show echo problems).
To John — I’m doing everything the same as I always have (the audio files are 48k, as usual). The weirdest symptom is that one of the two tracks in one stereo audio clip seems to slow down during playback, getting more and more out of sync with the other track.
Rendering doesn’t help, either.
I should mention this all started when I got the dreaded Dropped Frames warning (and as usual, none of the suggested remedies applies here). Trashed prefs, ran Disk Utility, tried Safe RT, opened just one sequence, lowered real time audio to 4 tracks (was 8) and the system should be fast enough.
Is there something other than the usual software Roto-Rooter routines that I can look into?
MacPro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 14GB memory – OSX10.5.8 FCP6
-
Thanks. Actually, I was hoping that others would share their experience with vendors so that I would not have to make the rounds. If you don’t have a favorite vendor for these sets, or haven’t used them, that’s fine. Just wanted to cut to the chase.
-
Thanks everyone for the input.
At my company, we are all set for camera and lighting, and we have great keying software that we’ve used successfully for other projects.
Now, we are turning our focus to purchasing great-looking virtual sets to “up” the production value.
Again, my question is what, if any, company produces the best-looking virtual sets for the money – for the Mac?
Your help is appreciated.
-
Thank you.
Trashing the prefs fixed it for my Mac Pro machine, too.
For anyone else who runs into this problem, the file to trash is:
com.apple.motion.plist
in
Users/
/Library/Preferences folder. This may not work for everyone, but I’d recommend trying it if Motion won’t open some windows.
-
Great suggestion. Trashing the preferences seems to have brought back the missing windows. Whew – we’re saved!