Filmasart
Forum Replies Created
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Listen, if you are doing a specific type of work such as music videos, live concerts, and commercials with choreographed action this affects you. This is just one guy from a list of many others that agree:
https://www.scottsimmons.tv/blog/2006/09/13/bottom-10-final-cut-pro-tips/
The reality is the media management needs improvement. These are not issues in Avid.
-K
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Auxiliary timecode should be unique at the subclip level. Because in a busy post production environment you don’t always have time to tie up a machine so you can shuttle 200 takes of a music video in order to capture “master clips” that you can then properly sync. Trust me this is a big deal in the music video business (and choreographed commercials) and its not an issue with Avid. Its much more efficient to capture film transfer tapes as one batch rather than spending the time logging it before capture, that’s just stupid. Everyone on Avid works this way because its the most logical. It just happens this is a major flaw in FCP media management. I think its something the Apple developers aren’t aware of (hopefully.)
This guy among others has talked about it:
https://www.scottsimmons.tv/blog/2006/09/13/bottom-10-final-cut-pro-tips/
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Yes essentially I’m talking about better media management on a larger scale and yes this issue would probably be solved with an overhaul to media management in FCP. But that is probably asking too much seeing as this is just one of the many features requested over the years in terms of better media management.
The reason for posting this is to bring awareness to a feature that is essential in any PROFESSIONAL music video and choreographed commercial work; this has been a thorn in my side with FCP for some time now. Furthermore I think it could be an easy fix for those of you programmers and developers out there that want to make some cash. It seems this is something that would be relatively simple to implement, maybe its a plugin/script that can create a “soft” timecode unique to each subclip. Alex thanks for that work around, it’s still breaking the master/subclip relationship, creating new master clips, but it may be a faster workflow for how I’m already doing it.
But to respond to Andy and Walter, particularly Walter, who I’ve seen all over the cow forums for several years, It seems you DO spend a lot of time just “hanging out on the forums” like Andy. Your particular style is to act smug and knowledgeable while it is other people like Alex and Bouke who are actually using these forums for what they are designed for: trouble shooting. So my advice to you is to find a tech chatroom you can grandstand on, while the rest of us who are doing real work in real production cities figure things out. How’s the industry in Sugar Hill, GA? I’ve been thinking of leaving L.A. for the big leagues down there.
-K
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You could have tried assigning auxiliary timecode and then syncing the multiclip based on auxiliary timecode rather than the master timecode. I do this all the time for music video work. I create a bin and sequence that I call “sync” with all my camera angles/takes synced in time say where 01:00:00:00 is the start of the concert/song. Then just place all the clips in their proper place along the timeline and go modify, timcode, select the AUX TC 1 tab and give it the value from your timeline sequence.
So say that you had 4 camera angles and 3 are all gen locked and start in the same place as the concert at 01:00:00:00. So you line all those up on the timeline and assign the first frames to be AUX TC 1 of 01:00:00:00. But for the 4th angle where the camera guy stopped and started the camera you have to have these as separate master clips which it sounds like you do. Take these into the “sync” sequence and put them at their proper place in time. For example maybe the first take starts at 01:00:00:00 then he stops the camera and starts it again at 01:02:30:00. Then just slide the clip into its proper place and assign the auxiliary timecode for the first frame of that clip to be 01:02:30:00. When you highlight all the clips and select create multiclip sequence just sync them by auxiliary timecode instead. This way if you ever have to take this into an online you have all the true timecodes properly intact. I hope this helps or is what you were asking about.
-Keith
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Auxiliary timecode works in FCP but only partially. The major problem, and I’ve complained about it for years, is that you can’t assign unique auxiliary timecode to each subclip without rippling the entire reel. This makes it completely a pain in the butt when dealing with music videos where several takes will be in a row on the same tape. Sure if you are editing a live concert where each camera is never turned off auxiliary timecode and multicam work fine.
The only solution is to digitize every take as a master clip, but we all know that the fastest and most efficient way to edit is to digitize an entire tape first and THEN subclip/sync afterward. No one want to shuttle a tape and log it before capturing especially a facility where machine time is scarce. I’ve resorted to syncing all of my subclips and then exporting quicktimes and reimporting them back into the project and THEN assigning unique AUX TC to each new “master clip.” As a proud FCP user I got to say shame on Apple for ignoring the pro users. We have been requesting they fix this for years. This will remain one of the many amateur flaws in FCP that they need to fix if they are ever to take on AVID. Lets just hope that some day they don’t kill FCP like they did shake. <-- burned shake user as well.
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Thanks but none of that really answers my question. I’m very familiar with all the formats. I work at a visual effects company in Los Angeles but not an editorial house, so Final Cut is only an occasional thing for me. I’m just trying to figure out why this director is capturing the footage with a PAL preset: DVCProHD 1080i50 when it was shot NTSC 23.98. He probably just doesn’t know what he’s doing. Thanks anyway.
Keith
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I work for a visual effects company in Los Angeles. The general rule of thumb when it comes to keys is never mix DV and keys in the same sentence. As far as visual effects is concerned HDV and DV are essentially the same format, they share the same tape stock and similar problematic characteristics. With that said you do what you got to do. We’ve run tests with HDV compared to true HD and DV. HDV isn’t too bad as long as there isn’t a lot of motion. It’s certainly much better than what you get with DV. Just make sure that you shoot far enough from the screens to minimize spill. And I agree with previous posts that you should try and pull your keys in after effects or shake (keylight is good). But just a word of warning, depending on how you shoot you may not be able to get rid of the spill entirely without drastically cutting into the mattes. You may want to spend the extra dough and shoot on DVCProHD. Good luck.
some good reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDV -
It’s probably an issue of square pixels versus broadcast pixels. Make sure your graphics match your timeline’s aspect ratio. For NTSC they should be .9 pixel aspect ratio. You can change that in photoshop under image/pixel aspect ratio/D1 NTSC DV (.9). See if that works. Sorry if this response is something you already tried. You should put more info in the post about the settings of your FCP project and the setting of you graphics.
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After countless visits to the Apple store and phone calls to Canon over the last 2 weeks no one seemed aware of the issue. But here is how I stumbled onto a solution.
FIrst, I uninstall the Canon bundle of apps that it comes with and reinstalled from a disk called Canon EOS Digital Solution Disk Ver. 12.1. I believe you can purchase it from Canon for like $20 but they don’t make it available for download. But try this solution I’m describing below first with the software you have and the most current updates from the Canon website. Also, before moving on search and destroy any files with the word Canon in them (except your personal files). You’re looking for preference files mostly I think.
Now here is the solution I stumbled on in considering the possibility of a different app to do remote capture (real genius idea right): there is an app that you need to download and purchase called Capture One PRO 3.7. Once installing that app it seems to fix the problem, whatever it was, that the Canon software was having with USB connectivity. At the same time Capture One Pro 3.7 is nice for capturing RAW files remotely so check it out for what it is.
In closing, it would be nice if some computer genius out there could run some tests on the systems before and after what I’ve described and figure out the system files exactly that changed. That way one of you might write a patch and live the praises of the rest of us helpless ones. Just a thought and good luck.