[Claire Presnall]

But actually, I spit it out of AE, brought the mov of the edit into PP, dropped it on top of the disabled video and used the multicam audio (because when I flattened it, it chose whatever audio was attached to the visible clip rather than the good audio on the main camera), and voila, everything exported beautifully. So the multicam audio wasn’t an issue there.

[Claire Presnall]

Based on all my workaround attempts, I think you’re right that it’s the multicams vs the MXFs. The multicams were janking my audio levels too, and just being all around not friendly, but they seemed less irritated by the .movs and .mp4s. The multicam video was disabled at the sticking point, and we were seeing straight MXF b-roll (hearing multicam audio), so I was thrown off the scent. My error reports kept listing specific files and timecodes, making it :40ish seconds into a 3 minute edit, and I foolishly believed them, wasting 2 hours removing and replacing clips, trying to find the secret formula before flattening the multicams and sending everything through AE. The flattening was probably the fix, and the AE was probably unnecessary.

[Claire Presnall]

Ya know, I thought about doing that, but each video is hours of interview footage at 4k, and my fancy new baby has just been plugging away doing her thing, so I got cocky. And now I’m paying for it.

Also, the lav audio is baked into the cam 1 footage, and when I transcoded it straight from the Finder through ME, it blew out the audio (like the multicam issue I describe in the next paragraph), which was part of my hesitation as well. No matter what settings I chose, it was like “let’s turn this baby up to 15. Fuzz is where it’s at!”

But back to this issue. It’s definitely something to do with the multicams (which is funny that those aren’t the clips the error messages are fussing about). The 2 videos with 1 camera set ups exported just fine. Before sending to AE, I flattened the multicams since AE doesn’t seem to know what to do with them, and AE exported without issue. And when I was building the multicams, it was blowing out the main audio. I would have to move my audio then delete the top audio tracks because it was something baked into those tracks themselves.

I think the moral of the story is MXFs are the devils codec.

[Claire Presnall]

So far, we’re still hanging up right at that 41 second mark. I don’t have time to sit and wait and see if we ever make it past that right now. But I’ll give it another go tomorrow and report back.

I’m suspecting it has something to do with the multicams. I was having some issues with the audio on those getting blown out that required a bit of a brute force workaround.

[Claire Presnall]

Cool. I’ll look into that just as soon as my next video that is ALSO doing this super fun thing that I am definitely enjoying finishes outputting from AE. That little box is definitely checked. I mean, it should also be checked in the first one which worked, but if memory serves that one didn’t have any multicams. Hmmm… The plot thickens (or perhaps thins).

I’ll let you know if that fixes it.

[Claire Presnall]

Yes, but when the client’s specs are an odd number mp4, you try your best to provide an odd number mp4. Their specs are based on the Jumbotron specs they were given by the stadium which clearly states that it is an odd number of pixels wide but also that delivery needs to be an mp4. I’m not sure the Jumbotron folks and the machine that runs the images on the Jumbotron folks have ever had a conversation about what’s possible which is how we get this kind of issue.

And the PC vs Mac thing appears to be HOW they each handle it. PC adds a weird line of some super bright color as if to say, “hey, I don’t like this, and I’m going to make sure you know it.” Mac just shaves it off like, “well, surely they didn’t mean it, so let’s just tidy this up for them.” I use both and generally don’t have a preference, but when I was trying to trouble shoot export issue, I couldn’t replicate the problem on my Mac. Neither of them were willing to give me an odd numbered width mp4, but the Mac version could just get sent on with fingers crossed, while the PC one needed a bit of attention first.

[Claire Presnall]

I did us the “create multicam” inside of Premiere. And I tried literally every combination available in the setup menu all with the same result.

My winning solution of duplicating the mp4s, creating a multicam with those, then matching up the mxfs by hand, I just put the settings on auto & everything sounds great on my first attempt. ?‍♀️

[Claire Presnall]

We did. We tried so many things including the render engine, and the only thing that worked was exporting on a Mac.

It seems to be a PC hates odd numbered pixel widths thing. So I just had to make my comp an even number of pixels wide, and voila! No more stripe. Client hasn’t complained about the file being 1 pixel skinnier, so I guess that’s just how we’re doing things now.

Thanks!

[Claire Presnall]

Sure, phones are all different. But why would one person, filming with one phone, sending clips of one 10-20 minute activity have files that vary in sizes from 1080 to 640, and sometimes as small as 320 in the same shoot? They are not changing their settings, just pointing the phone and pushing record. I’ve never had that before, and it’s happened with 2 different people (out of at least a dozen so far). I don’t have direct contact with the people who are filming, so I haven’t gotten an answer from my contact about what phones folks are using, but it is their personal phone.

I’ve searched the Googles and found nothing about phones automatically adjusting image resolution between takes.

I usually end up sending it through Media Encoder, since I’ve had issues in the past where Premiere will lose audio sync with iPhone clips.

Thanks!
Claire

[Claire Presnall]

So, immediately after I decided to give up and move on, I checked one last time and found “ink manager” in the upper right menu on my swatches panel. It’s way down at the bottom of the list, and I guess I’d just missed it in looking for a more complicated way to do what a simple little checkbox “all spots to process” does. So my “live with it for now” has become “BOOM! Fixed!” and I can check those crazy ads for weird overprint issues without worrying about all of their specialized fonts.

Thanks for your suggestions!