[Ben Insler]

it’s Bruce. You’ll grow to love him.

-Ben

[Ben Insler]

You’re right. I was thinking Editing Timebase in the Sequence Settings -> General Tab. The timebase can’t be changed, but drop frame timecode display can be. Great catch. My apologies.

-Ben

[Ben Insler]

Interesting. Are you talking about FCP 6?

[Ben Insler]

Ackerman,

There are all kinda of things that can cause signal delays. Down-converting is just one of them. Basically your video is not playing off or out of sync (you said it looks right when you play it back..it’s actually right on the tape too). The problem is that when you output to tape, FCP syncs up with your deck, playing video out in sync with the in points you’ve designated. The problem is that FCP is sending the signal at the appropriate time, but the downconvert is causing the signal to be delayed by 1 frame (if you were going out DVCPRO HD to an HD1400A or HDCAM deck, you’d have no problem, because no downconvert is needed).

You need to set the playback offset in the device control preset that you’re outputting with in your A/V settings (copy your expsting preset and edit the new copy – rename it something you’ll remember for future use). You should do a test with a few different offsets to make sure you’re using the right one, but when we downconvert with Kona 3 from HD to DigiBeta, we use an offset of +1 frame.

Hope that helps.

Ben

[Ben Insler]

Agreed, Walter. I was really looking forward to getting away from working in the filters tab and in a real Grading environment. It all looked so great from the demos.

You recommend colorista over FCP’s CC options? And since you mention broadcast safe, have you found a nice…or I should say smooth way to use the saturation section of the braodcast safe filter so that you don’t get terrible flat spots? Up until this point I’ve been designing limited CC 3 Ways to do this, but it requires a stack of filters to de-saturate and re-saturate because FCP’s CC filters don’t always grab supersaturated areas when limit effects are added into the mix.

Thanks,

Ben

[Ben Insler]

Not quite. You can’t change the timebase of a sequence once footage has been added to it. So, the workflow really goes:

1. Get show to time.
2. Make a new sequence with all the same settings, except non drop.
3. Copy and paste all footage from your drop sequence to your non drop.
4. Send the non drop to Color
5. Grade your sequence and send it back to Final Cut.
6. Copy your final media from your graded non-drop sequence back to your drop sequence.

Yes, you can output to a drop-frame tape from step 5 and your show will be to time on the tape, but what if you need to make changes later? I’d want to get everything set back to what it’s supposed to be before I save and close the project for a while, rather than trying to remember that I left the sequence in non-drop. Still doable…but I think the question is just “Why, Apple, Why?” For anyone that used the software when it was still Final Touch… did these problems exist, or were they created when Apple tried to work them into the Studio integrated workflow?

-Ben

[Ben Insler]

Ah. Understood, and what you’ve quoted down there is just not good. Thanks for the info.

Best,

Ben

[Ben Insler]

Try just exporting with the native settings (not through compressor) and letting DVDSP encode your media for DVD. Not the best workflow that I’d recommend, but at least you can narrow down the problem, or maybe just get it working nicely.

-Ben

[Ben Insler]

None of this sounds very good. I was really looking forward to Color (well, I guess I still am). Nonetheless, re:

[JeremyG] “…and outputs illegal values”

That’s not the worst thing. It means that you can grade for formats other than broadcast video (like film, which can have luma values higher than 100… although whether that’s supported in Color may be a totally different issue).

Thanks for posting the release notes though!

-Ben

[Ben Insler]

P.F.

You’re right. I was typing that last post on my phone and clearly not thinking all to clearly as I tried to navigate the tiny Moto Q keyboard. Anyway, even though we were talking about 960×720, I was referencing a 1280×1080 workflow. My apologies.

Why are you exporting your DVCPRO HD clips through QT conversion. They are filmed natively at 960×720, no? Conform all of your non-DVCPRO HD clips to 920×720, and just leave the DVCPRO HD clips alone. That should work fine…or am I still missing the boat?

-Ben