[Drew Lahat]

Yeah the thread’s title should have been “How do you copy and paste TRACK audio effects?”.

I ran into this limitation because of another limitation… you can’t change most of a timeline’s audio settings (channel assignments) after you create it. So I had a timeline with a track audio effect and wrong audio settings… couldn’t duplicate it. ☺
Had to start a new timeline, and “copy-paste” the track fx with a pen and paper….

[Drew Lahat]

Yeah this is a Premiere question in the Premiere forum. Doesn’t help us that you can do it in other programs. ☺ And you cannot drag/drop Audio Track Mixer effects in Premiere 2017 or 2018.

[Drew Lahat]

Phew, it’s been a while (6 years, to be exact). ☺ Glad to see this tool is still being useful to some, unfortunately my AppleScripting is a bit rusty and I’m in the midst of several projects, so can’t dive into the code right now.
For changing the save path, it was a safety feature to prevent you from damaging your precious video if something goes awry. You can always delete the source files… Alternatively, can you just choose the same path to overwrite?

The place to affect that in the code will be set saveAsFileNamePath to (savePath as text) & outFileName

As far as deleting metadata, you can’t have a QT file without any metadata – might as well delete the file altogether. So the question is what metadata are you trying to remove. Quicktime can be quite serpentine about its elements, some are easier to access, some are nearly impossible to decipher. (For example, vendors like Sony/Panasonic/etc. can insert their own metadata which is utterly cryptic, and they don’t publish how to read it yourself.)

[Drew Lahat]

This is a fun thread… and one that could likely stay active for as long as CreativeCow exists. ☺

Bob started it as the state of “our industry”, which is an umbrella for everyone’s experiences. Mind you, he’s a post-production systems integrator. I understand his experience, and that of others in this thread – my career path has included systems integration engineering, cinematography, and editing, among a few other niches. I saw up-close the demise of a system integration firm and a post house, rendered irrelevant by those market changes.

Rich, you mentioned the racks full of terminal gear. I agree with Bob on that – what racks? Who needs all that SDI anymore? (Let alone the audio and RS422 runs.) Bob runs some Ethernet, throws a 10GigE switch and a (carefully-chosen) NAS and calls it a day. And still half the clients balk at the cost so they make do with sneakernet and external drives. That’s about 80% of Bob’s CreativeCow threads right there. ☺

I remember hearing an accomplished, top-notch editor at a discussion panel saying “what we do [editing] is not really that hard”. When I was in my teens and fell in love with video & filmmaking, there was still a significant technical barrier to entry: the equipment was expensive. I think we never realized the role this fact had in structuring the business. If the camera or editing room cost $150,000 you were gonna have less of them around, need a smaller cadre of operators (or artists); those people would be career professionals; and it’d make sense to compensate them proportionally. (That said, apparently we had fared better than regional airline pilots. Hmm.)

We all saw how producers lowered their labor budgets in tandem with falling equipment costs. Now, as others in the thread have said, we only have ourselves to market. People mentioned writers – no one (I hope) has gotten into writing, painting or acting expecting a stable career with solid pay. What us pre-millennial hacks didn’t expect, is that same would come to apply to the craftsman and artisan roles of editing, camera operating, production tech support, etc.

In the grander scheme of things, this is part of a global trend of automation and ever-improving market efficiency. The supply side of the Western World’s industries is cutting down labor costs at a rate that exceeds the consumers’ ability to afford what those industries make. Many think we’ll have to reconsider capitalism; one futurist suggested being compensated for profits corporations make from collecting and analyzing our personal data.

For now, all we can do in our own turf is adapt but also hold our ground. I hope that enough of us leave the industry if it can’t afford us – in order to save the industry – and avoid this race to zero that oversupply creates. Personally, I set my own minimum rate which allows me to afford rent, health insurance etc. and if I can make a living in the industry, great. But I gave up DP’ing partly because of what Ned Miller said, and I do a larger share of online editing and tech support, because it’s harder to fake the required expertise in those fields. And the top of the market still exists if you can get to it.

If Watson displaced 40 production jobs, become one of the 2 employees left, the robotic cameras operator, one of the engineers developing Watson, or one of the technicians maintaining its data centers. Or go work in construction, because I’m remodeling my kitchen and I’m repeatedly shocked by the supply/demand curve in that market. I have to sign off now, because my contractor messed up again and I’ve gotta go pay him more and beg him to please do his job. Hey, he was the best “talent” available.

[Drew Lahat]

Shane, the TC in and slate, etc. may be unusual but my hunch, based on how extremely technical the spec sheet is, is that they know precisely what they want, so I’m not questioning any of that. And as far as no slate e.g., this is more and more common with transcode-ready assets e.g. for iTunes, Amazon etc.

Fiona, as far as all the MXF essence and metadata structure requirements, you either ship it as is and hope it’s all ok, or to do it right, use an MXF analyzer. Yes, it is heavily technical, as online editing and QC can be sometimes. That’s why I charge more. ????

A few tools to do the job:

• IRT MXF Analyzer – a mere 4,400 EUR, but they have a cloud service you can upload your file to (hopefully it’s not long form), for ~20 EUR per file, or time-based, and also with 2 free analyses per account.
• Nablet MXF Explorer is a bargain in comparison, at $700.
• Myriad Bits MXF Inspect is… free ☺ though the author disclaims it’s not completely SMPTE-compliant. Beats not inspecting the file at all, though.

[Drew Lahat]

Blaise, what would you do with the timecode? Looks like for conformed TC, Premiere retains the original timebase, including in the source player – unless you change it.

E.g. if you conform a 30fps clip to 24fps and step through it, you’ll see many duplicate frames. But it appears that it’s not a video issue, it’s the source player relying on the TC time base. If you cut it into a 24fps sequence, all the frames should “fall” into the right place in a 1:1 relation.

As said, it’s changeable: Modify > Timecode > Time Display Format allows changing the time base. Of course this changes the clip’s timecode.

So what’s “better”, a mismatched clip time reference (between TC frames and real video frames), or a mismatch between the TC inside Premiere and the raw camera footage TC?…

[Drew Lahat]

Definitely a good workaround, Blaise, using Premiere’s current capabilities. For some reason I thought I had past issues with interpreting multiple clips (might’ve been in AE)… but tested it and it’s easy.

Not stoked on the need to keep an eye on those clips through feature-length timelines and dozens of versions, but it’s definitely doable. I’m currently the only editor on the project, this isn’t a reality show where dozens of freelancers come and go.

This also takes care of the most important aspect – timing. It’s nearly impossible to conform to 4%-slowed footage at the end of the editorial process, since the edits` timing is all off. The drawback is the need for an orderly picture lock and online phase. With this director there may be a dozen festival screenings before we actually get to a picture lock…

Also John, great find! A little hidden feature in AME I wasn’t aware of. Now we just need a few more options implemented like generic AU/VST plug-in “effect” and we’d be all set.

Still looking into doing this with ffmpeg/mencoder. There are advantages for having all the footage sorted out in the front end, from the get go.

[Drew Lahat]

Obviously this is a topic of interest, and has become one of the better spots online to discuss the matter since I started the thread (just ask Google).

If the facility grows, the work load grows, or clients move from HD to 4K, there’s plenty of reason to invest in proper gear upgrades. But if you work in HD, especially in short form, 4Gb is still a sweet spot for an editing bay. The bandwidth of a 1080p ProRes(HQ) stream or the length of a theatrical trailer haven’t changed since 2009… and 4Gb Fibre Channel is a known and proven technology, with ever more tempting deals on eBay on robust professional 4Gb gear. The wires are already in the wall, and if you know what you’re doing, you can leverage MPIO and enjoy redundancy and double or quadruple the bandwidth.

I think this is an excellent case of forced obsolescence, since some clients don’t need 8Gb and 16Gb, but the manufacturers move at the speed of R&D and their competition, so they push new technology and abandon the old, to maintain revenue.

I do not advocate sticking with 4Gb if you have any choice. The support is gone, the laser diodes are aging, and you’re relaying on hacks in a professional production environment to bridge the gap between contemporary software and EOL’d drivers. If you can help it, ditch it, join the IT revolution, and switch to 10GbE. You’ll enjoy more vendors to choose from and more competitive prices than 8Gb FC (which is in its own already outdated). But if your boss/client is making you keep their 4Gb FC infrastructure alive… there’s this thread. 🙂

[Drew Lahat]

Hi, good to know. Thanks!

[Drew Lahat]

Thanks! Those conclusions and impressions are indeed starting to float as I follow forums and talk to colleagues who attended. I’m looking forward to reading your reviews.