[Bill Russell]

One more. I remember a lovely project from somewhere, and a fine fine dub house, where 24p HD telecines were cown converted with the random cadences so that the DV Cam work tapes didn’t match the original reels. (Among other things.) SO, if I were to choose to order DV Cam dubs first instead of capturing DV firewire directly off the JH-3, what do I ask for to help insure proper DVCAM work tapes? Then does Avid Express HD automatically detect 24p (23.976 timeline) correctly? Most importantly, how do I resolve the DV Cam’s 29.97 timecode with the original 24P timecode when I take the project back to a “higher” avid to conform the HD?

Always your humble fan.

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[Bill Russell]

Huh, I didn’t realize DVCPro HD was that high a data rate. (That number seems higher than firewire throughput? But I guess its time to start paying attention to the names 🙂 But anyway, good, it’s another reason to edit DVCam anamorphic. Hey, I’m the editor with the Avid, so it’s just going to have to be so.

Thanks for everything, Michael.

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[Bill Russell]

And anamorphic will be good because the HD conform may not happen until distribution, thus the offline will become the festival screener, our initial DVDs etc etc.. Okay, so that’s cool, thank you, I’m convinced. Will the JH-1 also work, or does it need to be JH-3?)

However … sorry, I’m almost done here … the DP is still talking about downconverting to DVCPro HD so that we are still HD, but I don’t see a good reason for it when the workflow you described is possible. But since it is still in the discussion, I have to ask about it: Will DVC Pro HD play and edit comfortably off of firewire drives? Will it downconvert and play SD and analog out the Mojo? Is there any advantage (besides being HD)?

Thank you, Michael – as always, you are most helpful!

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[Bill Russell]

Hey Michael! Okay, thanks. Now if I do the DV25 downconvert, do I still need Express Pro 5, or is the 4.x I’ve got sufficient? I assume the downconvert is to anamorphic?

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[Bill Russell]

And firewire cables can go bad, too. Check that if you haven’t. Otherwise, no wise words from me (other than powercycle everything if you haven’t tried that).

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[Bill Russell]

…underneith, inside the deep little “screw caves”, one of course under the “Warranty void if you break this seal” seal. Cheers!

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[Bill Russell]

Thank you. No such icon/utility for such seems to be on my system. I’m thinking the drive is going bad. I wiped it out yesterday and batched everything back into the project today. Upon a restart, XP decided it had to check and fix the NTFS partition on that drive, and seemed perhaps to have truncated a bunch of file names as a result. I have two drives, but the same one is acting up like this. Oh well.

Still disconcerting to have OMF files right there, but corrupted/unrecognized by Avid.

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[Bill Russell]

Couldn’t have been more right on, under my nose, easier. I’m back in biz, thanks to you!!!! Thank you.

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[Bill Russell]

things to look for….

are you the only one that works on this Avid????

[Bill Russell]

Hi there. I assume you mean Motion (TM) / Motion 2 (TM) with a capital M? Nope, just color correction, straight speed changes (not ramps / remaps), and motion (lowercase) tab stuff (position / scale / crop).

I guess, from this forum, the new FCP5-MM-delete problem is a baby’s rash — not always there when the doctor looks.

I’m looking forward to scrutinzing the feature documentary I left FCP5 MM’ing last night. I already know that FCP4.5 can’t do it: Earlier I had a bin of clips with picture drop-outs (digitized originally by the client, but plays clean on our DSR-80) that needed recapturing. A few of those, alas, didn’t capture right. One had a reverse on it in the sequence. Another — I dunno what was up.

Some people on the forum say they have had flawless experiences with FCP4.5 MM, over and over again. That just astounds me, since I encounter MM problems lurking somewhere on EVERY MM job I meet. Every. Single. One. …whether by us on our systems or by a client trying to put together a job to bring in. Always, always, always.

Maybe it has something to do with the nature of both the material and genre edit style, since I am mostly involved in documentaries (but my experiences not limited to documentaries). Several friends and clients and many years: documentaries mean complex timelines that change again and again over many many months or even years, projects sizes get enormous. New footage, last-minute footage goes in an out of the project all the time. Terrabytes of storage by the end of it all (the documentary that came in yesterday lives on FOUR firewire external RAIDS — I’ve seen worse, like insane leaning towers of firewire drives, plus firewire drive colonies tucked into every corner and wall crack — needless to say those COMPUTERS don’t work, let alone FCP), and lots of capture now and mixed media sources.

Every serious documentarian knows what I’m talking about — I see it over and over in edit rooms, dens and bedrooms, it’s funny. It’s taxing on FCP, true, but it should not be FCP’s excuse. FCP is the affordable, flexible, contained solution, it is aimed at just such users. Other systems have delivered in this area.

Final Cut is perfect for docu’s… the right market niche…. except when it comes to the end of the process, then it breaks down (not just in MM, but in EDL creation and even simple relocating and relinking). It’s a serious fundamental weakness. That’s when I miss Avid or especially D-Vision or Discreet Logic Edit (until Discreet erased it). I once lived in D-Vision land. It was a ROCK, lots of documentary filmmakers had it. It worked in 1995.

Cheers!

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