David Mackenzie
Forum Replies Created
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A very easy way is Davinci Resolve. In the Source Media screen, simply drag the folder containing the broken image sequence down into the Media Pool.
An intact sequence will appear as one item. But if there are breaks detected, Resolve will create several clips in the pool, and the names will let you find where the breaks are.
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Dwaine – brilliant, thanks a ton! Will try that next time.
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Aha, got it. Seems that working from the Master Timeline and then using the Split Clips / Join Clips from the EDIT dropdown menu inside the Color page is the best way for me to work on this.
Still, if anyone can clear up my original question, it’d be much appreciated.
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OK guys, if you don’t mind, some more questions:
6. I’m editing an interview shot on PAL DV. The files were imported through iMovie (they’re .DV streams) by someone else (their equipment was stolen in case you’re wondering why iMovie is used here!). I brought these into Final Cut.
Whenever I simply resposition the clip in the timeline or make a basic edit, I have to manually re-render the audio to avoid getting bleeps. This surely cannot be right?
7. When I leave Final Cut and refer to a document (a list of Editing Notes), returning to FCP takes a couple of seconds while I have a “Preparing video for display” box on screen. My laptop has 2gb of RAM, with about 500 being reported as free. Is this the problem?
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Thanks for the pointers, guys. Looks like it’s just a case of getting used to a few quirks… but no, the RAM in my system is A-OK. Maybe adding some more of it will cure my speed issues.
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“Why on a studio monitor? Thanks.”
There’s a million reasons why a studio monitor will look better, but I believe that a studio monitor can replay 50hz PAL natively. Again, that might not be the case over there in the US.
So what you’re saying is that on your computer monitor, the NTSC and the converted PAL versions look roughly the same? If so, it sounds like the conversion will give a decent result on a real PAL TV.
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Max: interesting, thanks. I was actually referring to the authoring system Sony used for DVD, rather than the encoder. Querying the implementation identifier on just about any Columbia title will return “SONY DVD VIDEO”; which I’ve been told is a system that is strictly for internal use only.
Correct me if I’m wrong, of course!
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Now that brings up an interesting point. What are you watching the PAL conversion on?
If it’s a computer monitor, then no, that’s a decent facsimile of what you’ll see on a PAL TV.
If you’re viewing the disc on a TV… I’m assuming that your American TV only supports NTSC. If so, the player is probably doing a botched conversion so the TV can display the disc. So the process then looks like:
NTSC Source files -> PAL source files -> Authored PAL DVD -> DVD player converting back to NTSC -> Display on NTSC TV
If that’s the case, it’ll most likely look terrible! The best way to check how it looks is to play it back on a studio monitor or TV which supports PAL (not an easy thing to find in North America, I’m told).
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“I’m wondering, what do the American companies that have shows that are broadcast on television and then ported to DVD do? I suppose they use a super expensive hardware encoder like the one you mentioned? Or perhaps, they film in a format that makes for a better NTSC to Pal conversion?”
They’ll likely feed to it to a converter such as the Snell Alchemist PhC. That, I believe, operates in one of two modes:
The Video mode is for video camera generated material or similar, that is, when both fields in the picture are not the same. It essentially “remaps time”, if that makes sense, and uses motion vector technology to make sure the results are as accurate as possible.
The film mode recognises the original source is Film, performs an Inverse 3:2 pulldown routine (to get the NTSC 60i content back to 23.976fps) and simply speeds the film up to 25fps.
The software converters we have access to are most likely the older Field Blending type. These don’t use motion vector technology but result in a picture with more motion blur.
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Has anyone here used a Windows encoder called TMPGenc? The company has branched out and is making various consumer-friendly versions, but if you buy/try the original TMPGEnc Plus 2.5 from them, you’d probably be shocked at the quality of the results and the control given over the encoding. It goes at bargain basement prices, too. I’d be curious to hear if anyone has compared the quality of its output to Sonic Cinevision. Certainly it compares very, very well to CinemaCraft.
BTW, for authoring: the studios do have other proprietary systems too. Sony use their own in-house one.