[Heath Cozens]

I had a bit of a breakthrough with this issue today.

I have been working with a a big project file (300megs). Same problem. I had been saving it into my Dropbox folder – for the automatic back-ups, of course. But it won’t save – I can only save-as. Auto save wasn’t working at all, and the project crashed. Lost a lot of work today, as a result!

I read the above comments, and, suspecting that Dropbox might be behaving somewhat similar to a network drive, I tried saving the project elsewhere. Problem solved. Well, worked around, anyway.

[Heath Cozens]

Cheers. It’s a shame, really -rampant and misplaced Apple-bias. That MainConcept suite is way too pricey.

[Heath Cozens]

Hello Ian,

This is a little off-topic, but is there any way to achieve this using Premiere CS 5.5? I need to get my edited reports back to SxS cards for satellite play-out on a job I’m working now.

[Heath Cozens]

There are still a lot of question marks remaining for me.

Phil wrote “When in PAL environment shoot at 1/50 shutter speed and in NTSC 1/60”.

Japan is an NTSC environment, but has both 50 and 60hz electricity running in different parts of the country but I think the point that Phil’s making is that when the mains run at 50hz, shoot at 1/50th, when it’s 60hz, shoot at 1/60th… (correct me if you meant something else Phil)? That makes sense and yep, that’s what I normally do.

In 60hz, the flicker isn’t resolvable through shutter speed adjustments when shooting in PAL. But in 24 or NTSC, shutter speed doesn’t matter much at all- odd.

I guess it’s conceivable that some mercury vapor lamp effect might have crept into the footage but I don’t think so..

Maybe Canon can help. I’m taking it in tomorrow.

Cheers

[Heath Cozens]

Hi Phil,

Thanks for checking this out.

Actually, the point I’m making here is that the DSLR is not behaving as a normal video camera would.

Normally in a 60hz environment, you have to shoot at a shutter speed of 60 to eliminate flicker. With the 5d, it appears that this doesn’t work.

In fact, when shooting PAL, any shutter speed under 60hz lights results in flicker. Conversely, shooting NTSC under 60hz at any of the lower shutter speeds produces acceptable footage.

For clarity, I’d like to recap methodology.

The first half of the video covers 50hz electricity.

Under 50hz, I shot at 23.976fps (cinema frame rate) at shutter speeds of 30, 40, 50, 60, 80, and 100. In the same 50hz location, I then shot at 25fps (PAL) using the same shutter speeds. Finally I shot at 29.97 (NTSC) using the same shutter speeds again.

For the second half of the video, the above procedure is repeated but in a location where the current runs 60hz.

If you have time, please have another look. I think you’ll notice some very peculiar behavior.

Heath

NB: the locations are in Japan, which is cursed with two electrical systems – both 50 and 60hz, despite being exclusively NTSC. I shoot both PAL and NTSC here depending on the job, but I’ve never encountered this kind of issue before.

[Heath Cozens]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the comment. It echoes what others say, too and I’ll definitely keep it in mind.

For now, I’m going with an old low-fi chestnut that I’ve worked with before : place a copy of the clip above itself in the timeline, offset by one or two frames at half-opacity.

I’m not sure how well this would work with a lot of action in the frame, but the clip in question is a video-portrait. It does a pretty good job. I’d recommend anyone with the same problem give it a crack, too..

Heath

[Heath Cozens]

Thanks Perry,

I’m a bit ashamed to say that rebooting the computer fixed the problem.

I have NO idea what the original prolem was, but that’s fine. Thanks for the suggestions!

[Heath Cozens]

Thanks Andy.

Yup it’s not the ideal set up. As it is, i’m not in a position to change any details regarding equipment or staff — it’s really a make what you can of it deal.

I’m not bothered about the PAL NTSC thing too much — I’ll convert later and work around it. Sound is more of a concern. If worst comes to worst, I’ll not use it at all, replacing it with CD track. Obviously that takes the meaning away from the live filming..

Lighting, I have no idea, It may be dark, but hopefully not too so. the bands kind of famous, there should be about 6-800 people. Bright enough for them to see but no great light show. THe PD 150 will manage OK I’m sure.

Anyway, my goal as I said before is to get something approximating full coverage of half of the songs. If you have any advice as to how this can be done with the very limited means, that would be great.