[Ben Wharton]

Hi John

Thanks for the reply.

The audio is 8 tracks (Stereo Pair plus 6 tracks of Surround) of 24-bit Integer (Little Endian) 48,000Khz.

And I’m exporting it out exactly the same way.

It seems FCP doesn’t like 23.98 for audio exports. Different media with the same spec does the same thing – render audio out too long.

Creating a 24fps timeline, putting the 23.98 master on that, then exporting audio at 24 appears to be the only way to get the correct output.

In the end I discovered we need to master to 24fps for this job – a theatrical movie server, but I’d rather FCP does what it’s supposed to do.

Oh, unless this is something about drop frame? Grrrrr.

Am I missing something?

Thanks for any pointers!

Ben

[Ben Wharton]

And finally

exported audio from a vanilla PAL DV25 timeline and no problems with audio drift/length at all…

Apologies not all of these tests were done before I first posted.

Ben

[Ben Wharton]

Attendum 2:

I’ve just exported a WAV from a 24 fps timeline of the same project (NOT its native 23.98) and now the audio is one frame short.

So it’s looking like there’s some inherant time base error being introduced… anyone concur?

And more to the point, how do I get around it?! Please…

Ben

[Ben Wharton]

As an addendum –

Could this be to do with 23.98 versus 24 frames per second?

The film is mastered at 23.98 but the exports are coming out about 5 seconds too long. And that goes from Soundtrack Pro too.

IS FCP counting at 24 and that’s the issue?

Ben

[Ben Wharton]

Daniel You know, I just never knew that about Flash not being a constant bit rate in CBR. Do I feel somewhat stupid. Thanks for that little bit of vital knowledge.

But that does work for “all key frame” H264s? I did a short test and it seems to work out, or maybe if it was way longer I’d be proved from again.

You might also be interested that the Digital Rapids calculator is “wrong” – their calculation is based upon a megabyte being 1000Kb, when we all know that away from salemenship, it’s really 1024…

Ben

[Ben Wharton]

Hi Daniel

Hmmm – for such an expensive piece of software, one that appears to not create CBR files, I’d say either the software was screwy or I’m misunderstanding something about its use / monitoring.

Time to ask telestream direct.

Thanks for the digital rapids link (so glad NOT to be using their systems tho – the software is so poor (but the hardware’s great!))

Ben

[Ben Wharton]

Hi Daniel

Thanks for the reply.

Well, I THINK I’m using CBR…

What’s confusing is that under the Flash 8 Bandwidth Setting it has fields for Peak Rate and Average Rate. I’ve set these to BOTH the same value, and then further down in Encoding Settings, I have it set to Use 2-Pass encoding, and 2-pass mode is set to CBR.

Is there something I’m missing?

Ben

[Ben Wharton]

Attendum:

All the above done on:

Mac Pro 8-Core 2.2gGhz
12Gb RAM
Leopard 10.5.6
QuickTime 7.6
Episode Pro 5.01

[Ben Wharton]

Michael

Yes, the audio is a tricky beast. Pro it is.

As for picture, I got the impression that using external systems which did some kind of pulldown would introduce ugly extra fields at various points going from 24 to 25fps, and that speeding up the footage so all the frames remained frames was the best approach. All you lost was the duration, it now being a slightly shorter programme. Which of course can be an issue if it’s cut for a specific broadcast slot with minimal plus or minus allowances.

But I am new to standards converting in this type of context…

Ben

[Ben Wharton]

I concur with Michael –

Any title work over DV, make your DV sequnece a ProRes 422 timeline, and output as ProRes 422. Just be very careful on transitions – cross fades/dips to blacks esp if you have any from/to text, and you’re using the dreaded text tool. FCP can generate some nasty artifacting for some unknown reason, and it’s a pain to get around it.

Unless you’re using AE or Motion instead – which is really what you should be doing!

Good luck.

Ben