Dan Riley
Forum Replies Created
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You need to look at it on your NTSC monitor, not the canvas.
Dan
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The TBC controls on a DigiBeta deck have no effect on input or recording.
However, if the DVCAM machine used in the transfer was a DSR2000,
that deck has TBC controls on the output and could have been taken
off present like you mentioned and not returned to normal.As far as FCP crushing blacks, you very much can do that with the
color corrector tools, but the setup doesn’t go below zero,
it just crushes stuff to that point. However the chroma could be
below zero.The other thing here is the terminology.
The client’s QC people are talking about pedestal.
We are talking about setup and black level.
Pedestal really isn’t a video term, that’s a transmission term.
It’s determined relative to the sync pulse and 100% (zero output).
The correct term for video is setup.
So what exactly are they talking about saying “the pedestal is at minus 50mv?Dan
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Tim,
You need to check the setup level at each stage, to see what happened.First, put bars in that DV timeline and output to that DVCAM machine.
Now look at playback of the DVCAM and see if setup is correct.
I hope you have an external scope to look at.Next take that DVCAM to the dub house and have them do a transfer to
DigiBeta. Now have then play that back for you and look at the setup
on the scope. What do you see? It should look exactly like your FCP timeline.I’m betting the post house wasn’t paying attention when going from
the DVCAM to the DigiBeta machine. And how were they doing the transfer?
From SDI or from component? Also there are settings on DVCAM machines
to add or subtract setup. They may have it set to move the setup down to zero.
You can’t assume they will do it correctly. You have to watch them
and QC yourself, unfortunately.All this assumes you didn’t crush the blacks yourself using FCP’s color corrector.
Dan
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It wasn’t your doing Julie. I was in a rant kind of mood last night.
I disagree with Kevin about when it comes to
edit to tape monitoring and ease of use. There are no VUs or
timecode info to tell you where you are in the show.
And that window that shows sequence playback is the wrong
aspect ratio…it shows non-square pixels.
When you already have an NTSC monitor you don’t need FCP
taking up processor time with that window.
It would be better to have timecode and VUs showing what’s
really happening with FCP output.Dan
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I didn’t find fault with your workaround so much as
I disagreed with your description of FCP’s edit-to-tape as a “feature”,
in that we should take it or leave it. At least that’s the way it sounded to me.
Many of us could not use FCP
if it could not edit back to tape timecode on whatever deck you have.
As I said before, it hit a nerve and got me worked up.As far as being condescending, I wasn’t doing that on purpose. I usually try to
justify my positions by explaining to the other person why I say
what I say. Maybe that sounded condescending and if so, I apologize.As far as the problem she is having, the solution is a firewire PCI card
if she keeps using firewire drives. Don’t you think?
It will only cost her $50 or so.
And certainly I would suggest a full render of the entire sequence,
both video and audio. This results in less hunting and gathering
from the drives and should make throughput easier….no?Dan
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so much for taking your seriously. My bad.
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I’m sure you are mocking me now, but I’ll bite because I’ve had
a couple of beers and it’s a nice night here in Seattle for blogging 🙂The thing that made FCP different from AVID was it was scalable.
You could edit your buddy’s wedding on DV or edit a four camera
simultaneous timecode show or sitcom from DigiBeta masters uncompressed.
FCP handles both, but the requirements are quite different, both from an
equipment and live operator standpoint. Nobody with any sense
would have bought an $100,000 Media Composer to edit a wedding
but they could buy FCP and so could a lot of the rest of us and
we could use it for offline work in our office instead of an edit
suite. Thus FCP had a market that AVID decided to pass on.Unfortunately for some of us, more time was spent by Apple
to be able to be all things to all people, and less time to be a
“pro” app that does things fast and easy with regard to
getting stuff in and out of it if you used anything other than DV.
It’s MUCH better than it used to be
and don’t get me wrong, I won’t go back to having my hands
tied by AVID, but it still could use some work in this area.
The two biggest areas that need work are how it handles the uprez,
(start your edit in DV then use MM to recapture only the media
you used in your sequence at uncompressed or HD)
and how you input and output footage to a deck.
Obviously you know the latter is a problem because you yourself said
you refuse to even try to do it with FCP. You just hit record on your deck.
So if, in your case, you don’t need to ever look at timecode
or ever have to deliver a tape to anyone that has timecode that
matches your sequence or your field tapes, then FCP is still there for you.
But for many of us, timecode is a way of life when it comes to
matching what we do with other people working on other elements of a show.Dan
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Pick whichever flavor applies to your system here:
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/add-ons-and-hubs/pci-pcmcia-cardsDan
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Thax,
Hitting record and starting your timeline playback is fine if you are
doing work where no one cares about your sequence timecode.
But MANY of us in the pro world DO VERY MUCH have to provide
our sequence timecode to various people. Like doing a layback
for an out of house audio mix, or masters to a 1-800 dub house
where they need my timecode info to put the 800# on the show
where I want it. Or how about TC windows made on a different
machine for clients to view and then give feedback based on TC.
Your response that this is a “feature” is so over the top.
Outputting to tape and editing to a specific timecode number is a
BASIC part of any professional editing system. And unfortunately
with FCP, it’s always been problematic, and a real reason why
many AVID Media Composer users are reluctant to switch to FCP,
(although her firewire issue is not what I’m talking about).Off on a tangent here I know, but that comment about “I only just hit record”
got me going.Dan
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No difference if you go in via firewire. You really aren’t digitizing.
You are just transferring a data file. That’s the beauty of DV.Dan