[Aynsley Baldwin]

I am having a similar problem to Bonsai, though maybe not exactly the same.

I have a dual monitor set up on my Mac, with both monitors connected through my video card. On then left screen, I have my project panel/bins. On the right screen, I have my timeline, source and program monitors. I want to be able to go in and out of full screen playback, but tell Premiere to do this on the left screen over my project panel. I am attempting to do this via Enable Mercury Transmit, but regardless of which monitor I have checked off, the full screen will always appear on the right monitor overtop of my timeline. I have heard that sometimes if one panel overlaps the other screen slightly, it will cause problems with Mercury Transmit, but that is not the case for me. Any other ideas? I had this problem once in the past and it took much frustration to finally come up with a solve, but unfortunately I can’t remember what that was.

Also, I’m not totally clear what the difference is between the Enable Transmit and Toggle Full Screen functions in Premiere. I haven’t been able to find a good answer anywhere. Anyone able to shed any light?

Thanks!

[Aynsley Baldwin]

With regard to the original post and this comment: “one thing though… it is a bit confusing that its called RGB 709. unless i’m terribly wrong its a mistake on Avid’s side. it should be called 4:4:4, or just RGB ”

I’ve always found the topic of RGB vs Rec709 vs YCbCr super confusing. Since this thread was created, Media Composer at least has changed the language in some parts of the software and made it a bit more intuitive. But one thing that’s also helped me decode some of the confusion is learning more about what all these and related terms actually mean. For those of you out there who have been equally confused, here’s a bit of a tangent… and please, folks, correct me if I’m wrong here.

As I understand it, the specific term “RGB” does not refer to a colour space, it refers to a colour model. That is to say it refers to a method of quantizing colour information that assigns a value to each of the R, G, and B channels. Each of these three values account for luminance. There are many colour spaces which use the RGB model, including sRGB, Adobe RGB and ACES as examples.

By comparison, as Hector explained, YCbCr is a colour space that uses a model which assigns one value for luminance that is separate from two chrominance values.

The origin of the term “Rec709” refers to a “Recommendation” made by the International Telecommunication Union on the “Parameter values for the HDTV standards for production and international programme exchange.” This is a list of allowable specifications for HD broadcast which include frame size, frequency, frame rate, colour, etc. It is important to note that Recommendation ITU-R BT.709 specifies values for encoding colour in either an RGB channel configuration, OR YCbCr, and 8 bit and 10 bit options for each.

As far as I understand it, this is why you can have RGB 709 and YCbCr 709.

The things that have confused me endlessly over the years are:

• RGB often seems to be used to mean sRGB, though there is an important difference between the two terms. sRGB is a colour space with a specific gamut and white and black points associated with it, while the simple term “RGB” refers more generally to a way we organize colour information. It’s like saying “software” when you mean “Media Composer.” Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like as a result the actual meaning of RGB when it IS used correctly is often misunderstood.

• YUV is often used to mean YCbCr. YCbCr, as I understand it, is a kind of derivation from YUV, but again, not the same. Even the latest version of Adobe Media Encoder refers to it YUV instead of YCbCr. Arg.

• My perception is that Rec. 709 is often thought to be a colour space, which technically speaking it is not. The HDTV broadcasting standard known as Rec. 709 includes specifications for allowable colour values and luminance values, and those are often referred to as “Rec. 709” (especially in Media Composer), clouding the fact that Rec. 709 actually represents a much wider array of specifications.

• Given that my introduction to all of these things was pretty much through early Media Composer import and export settings, my sense was always that sRGB (or at least what I now understand to be sRGB) and Rec. 709 were two entities equal in form, opposing in content. Not true! The sRGB colour space uses the primary colour values dictated by ITU-R BT.709 (Rec. 709) broadcasting standard. The white and black points, however, in sRGB colour space are outside those dictated by Rec. 709, and this was what Media Composer was always asking you to choose between on import and export. sRGB white and black points have digital values of 0 & 255, whereas Rec. 709 specifies values of 16 and 235. The new language used in the import settings, “do not modify, keep as legal” and “scale from full to legal” (legal implying Rec. 709 broadcast standard) is much clearer, but still not ideal IMHO.

Getting back to Aaron’s original question, YCbCr colour spaces vs RGB model colour spaces come up as options when setting up a project. Whereas I believe the options in the import/export settings (formerly asking one to choose between “601/709” and “RGB” or sRGB as I believe it should have been named) refer only to how you want to affect the luminance range on a specific import or export.

[Aynsley Baldwin]

Hi Paul,

Thanks so much for the reply!

The workflow I’ve been using already incorporates transcoding to offline media and cutting with that, but my problem was that some clips would give me that error as soon as I linked to them. So in some cases, I wasn’t able to transcode, and in the cases where I was, linking back to the original AMA to do an online still resulted in this error, sometimes to a degree that was completely prohibitive to completing the online.

It’s a really weird problem that my colleagues and I have managed to work around by going to older versions of MC instead of 8.3. So one theory is that there is some inherent issue with 8.3 and the use of the Canon XF AMA plug in, but I’ve also grown suspicious of the integrity of camera in this case. Not sure we’ll ever figure it out! In the meantime, I’m continuing to use 7.0.4 and so far haven’t had the same trouble as with 8.3.

Cheers,
Aynsley

[Aynsley Baldwin]

Thanks for the tip! Will do. We’re also investigating possible camera problems creating corrupt media, as there are other issues suggesting this could be a factor. Hopefully we will narrow down the cause.

Cheers,
Aynsley

[Aynsley Baldwin]

Hi Paul,

Did you ever manage to solve this? I am running into the same problem on MC 8.3. Previously I, and another editor who was having the same issue, downgraded to 7.0.4 and that seemed to help. But I’m wondering if there is an actual solution within 8.

Cheers,
Aynsley

[Aynsley Baldwin]

Hi Shane,

All I can say about the issues with MC 8.3 is that three out of three editors on this series ended up having to downgrade to work with the C300 footage. I’m pretty sure we all had been transcoding as opposed to consolidated so maybe that is a factor, but if I remember correctly, some clips/volumes wouldn’t even link in the bin correctly out of the gate before I could even think about consolidating or transcoding.

I am definitely interested in incorporating Resolve into the Avid AMA workflow, regardless of where we do or don’t grade.

[Aynsley Baldwin]

Thanks for the insights, Shane and Pat!

In the end, our needs changed a bit for the grading and we didn’t do it in Avid, or send the project to Premier. Partly because onlining itself, regardless of any consideration of colour, proved to be the biggest headache and time suck. This was due to a perfect storm of factors, some of which were user error during the system setup and original AMA linking process, but the big one that was out of our control was the fact that MC 8.3 doesn’t seem to like Canon XF footage. I found this out from a few editors after we were already underway, and proved it the hard way for myself.

We ended up having to move the project to another system with OS 10.8.5 and downgrade MC to 7.0.4. Then everything ceased being quite so terribly hellish. The workflow that we ended up using was the one that you suggested, Pat. I really preferred relinking only the referenced clips to relinking our entire library of dailies, as is recommended on so many of the online tutorials I came across.

After that, we did migrate the project in a very crude manner to FCP 7 to do the grading there. I tried using a Boris/Axle Transfer software to convert the Avid AAF to XML, and had insufficient success getting the media to relink in FCP 7 (I think again possibly due to some project setup issues). But it did provide us with a correctly constructed offline sequence in FCP at least.

So in addition to that, I exported a single ProRes HQ QT from our transcoded Avid sequence, lined it up to the offline sequence in FCP, and then relatively painlessly was able to insert cut points for all the shots, cut in our titles graphics etc, and have it ready to go for grading. Definitely not an elegant workflow, but it got the job done.

I would still like to find a “real” way to migrate a project from Avid into FCP 7 and or Premier. Partly because I am now a little distrustful of AMA relinking and am interested in finding a way to online outside of Avid altogether. Perhaps the subject for another thread 🙂

Cheers!
Aynsley

[Aynsley Baldwin]

Thanks for your help, Shane! If I remember, I’ll try to update with what we end up doing and how it goes 🙂

[Aynsley Baldwin]

I am having the same problem. Though I find that I don’t necessarily need to move the windows between displays, I just need to grab them and move them anywhere, however slightly, in order for the window to become useable. This is the case with bins as well as settings windows. Very much looking forward to a solution for this problem!

Cheers,
Aynsley

[Aynsley Baldwin]

Hi folks,

I am encountering the same problem here, but with media on an internal drive on my MacPro tower (separate from the system drive). It’s a 7200 RPM, and I swear I used to be able to edit ProRes with this system before, without stuttering. Not sure what the issue is now! Footage even stutters straight out of the viewer window. I am running FCP 7 on an 8 core MacPro4,1 with Snow Leopard. Any thoughts?

Thanks!
Aynsley