[Diego Lopez]

Well it’s almost a year later…. anything new?

As an editor – I can’t stand the fact that the camera won’t allow you to give files unique names. Who saw the post-production process and said “yeah, that’s fine.. this won’t be confusing at all”?

Especially trying to work with AVCHD natively (yeah, I know people suggest not doing this, but what’s the point of the software that can do it if the implementation doesn’t work?).

I’m still poking around – if I find anything out, I’ll come back here.

[Diego Lopez]

I haven’t been able to test this with our website yet, but I just noticed there is a “stream” option in the “Multiplexer” tab of an h264 mp4 setting in Media Encoder CS6.

The choices are: “standard,” “iPod,” or “PSP.”

This stream option is NOT available when making an h264 Quicktime MOV.

[Diego Lopez]

This is essentially the same thing. Transparent video means I don’t have to nest my sequence. It’s easier for me and I’d rather have less sequences.

[Diego Lopez]

Indeed, this is true.

Overall, my goal is to move forward with the CS suite as my toolset so I’m trying to wean myself from Compressor and also remove steps in the workflow.

One thing I noticed is Fast Start is not included in this setup, which I think is still not an option. Now I need to see if that’s something I can do with AME… if it’s not…. back to Compressor.

[Diego Lopez]

So as far as I can tell, there is still no way to add TC burn-in via Media Encoder. Very disappointed this is not an option built in as a filter like Compressor allows. Time to start requesting that feature I’d say.

I have a solution.

Up to this point, we had been outputting ProRes at full res from PPRO/AME and then using compressor to make it an h264 with TC burn-in that we upload to our site for previewing. This is cumbersome and can add up in terms of disc space.

What seems to be a better method is to add a Transparent Video track on top of the edit for it’s duration in your PPRO sequence. From here you can add a TC generator filter to it and export straight to your desired codec or Queue it up for later.

Exporting straight from PPRO CS6 pegged all 8 of my cores at 98% while outputting (I love seeing this… I know I’m getting the fastest output my machine can muster) and was thus very fast.

As we transition to CS6, I think this will be the way we continue to do it.

Hope this helps

[Diego Lopez]

This thread is related to the problem you’re having

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1118016#1118036

I’ve had the same issue and haven’t been able to solve it or consistently re-create it. It is very frustrating

We have a server connected via LAN, and it works well for editing, but we haven’t been able to discern if the storage method is related to the problem. I tested this theory yesterday by L&T the same footage from/to a local drive and separately our server, and the reel name came through in both situations. A different project on a different system created clips that were MISSING the reel names, so the server doesn’t seem to be the problem.

We haven’t really had a problem with media being disconnected after L&T, but we used to have problems with reconnecting media when it was moved to different drives. We solved this by re-naming the clips upon ingest in L&T using “Custom name and counter” and setting the custom name to match the reel name. As long as you name your reels something unique using a naming system (ex: PROJECT NAME_DATE_CAMERA ID_CARD#), then you’ll always know what reel it came from and what clip it is (by using the counter) because no other clip should have that same name ever.

[Diego Lopez]

I have had this exact problem for a while now and it really is disappointing. I’ve also gone through all the troubleshooting seen above and this is the most complete explanation of the problem I’ve seen, so it is at least comforting that other people have the same issue.

To add a further level of troubleshooting –

Just yesterday I made a test project and L&T’d AVCHD media from my internal drive back to an internal scratch drive (in other situations, our raw media and scratch were on a shared server so I wanted to remove that variable). My transferred files came in with reel name intact.
So far, so good.

I then went back to the raw media on our server which had already been transfered once to our scratch folder on the server (this transfer was MISSING the reel data).
In my test project, I transfered a single clip (which had already been transfered once by another project) from the raw media on the server to a scratch folder on the server, and the reel name was…. intact (vs the same clip in another project where the reel data was missing after the same L&T process.
Now I’m confused

I then queued a couple of clips (since the files that are missing reel data were logged and transferred in a long queue instead of per-clip like the first part of my test) in the log and transfer window and waited.
These files ALSO had the reel data intact.
Now I’m out of questions to ask

Basically, I can’t reproduce a situation where the reel data is lost, and it means the underlying issue that causes the loss of reel data is hidden in some corner even harder to find than where I looked (which was server-based vs local drive source/scratch).

I hope my troubleshooting makes sense and I hope we can figure out how to work with Premiere Pro at our post house so we won’t have to transcode at all (having a whole other set of significant problems with media caching and conforming multiple times with PPRO that forced us back to FCP for now)

[Diego Lopez]

So that’s a good solution for adding gain to the audio in your clip… but is there a way to actually monitor the levels of footage in your source monitor?

How am I supposed to know how much gain to add without knowing what the current levels are?? I have to guess, then check and adjust in the sequence.

Being able to monitor levels and even add gain/compression effects to clips before I even edit A roll was nice in FCP. I can get used to adding compression on a whole track in Premiere (super-sweet), but the inability to monitor audio in the source monitor seems like a significant oversight (that I can deal with until it gets fixed).

I would love to know I’m wrong and just missing how to do it

[Diego Lopez]

Talking through it here at the office, one question came up… does my problem have anything to do with length of clips? It appears that the longest clip i’ve been able to online was about 6min long. All the A roll clips are 12min or longer.

Has anyone come across this or can directly prove me wrong that this has nothing to do with it? It would suck if it did. Suck a lot.

Thanks again for trying to help

[Diego Lopez]

Shane,

Thanks for the response. The footage I am trying to online is AVCHD. It was most definitely all logged and transferred. The source footage in this project isn’t even ON a tape (except for the HDV footage mixed in, but that footage was also definitely logged and transferred and not captured)

The sequence is mixed with that, HDV (L+T from a BPAV), and ProRes (LT) from a 5d

However, before I went to media manage MAKE OFFLINE, I collapsed all my video tracks and got rid of all non-AVCHD footage. (as the AVCHD footage is the only offline footage)

One question I’m really curious about is whether or not the A/V settings matter at all in this scenario. If so, where should they be?

The weirdest thing is that when I try the workflow, all the B roll gets “batch captured,” but none of the A roll does — and the only difference I can see between them is that the A roll has been edited with markers and the B roll doesn’t have markers. Also, for some reason, FCP thinks the A roll was all captured from tape… even though they are in some cases on the same “reel” as the B roll…

Very frustrating.