[Herb Sevush]

DRW –

What bug? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

You might want to look at the BlackMagic Design Multi-Bridge. Unlike the Kona 3 it can handle both analog component and digital — both SD-SDI and HD-SDI. While it down-converts HD to SD on the fly it does not have the Kona 3’s ability to up-convert SD to HD and cross convert 1080 to 720 on the fly. But if you don’t need those features it might be your answer.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

If, big question there, the AJ-SD93 is like the 1200A then the fact that Panasonic claims it can’t do assemble edits is fairly meaningless. They make the same claim about the 1200A, yet there is a way to assemble with FCP. With the 1200A you have to select the appropriate firewire setting for “Device Control” and then the appropriate Black Magic (in my case) or Kona setting under “capture/input” and then you are able to perform assemble edits with accuracy up to +/- 2 frames (you’ll also have to figure in an offset thru trial and error. Once you have it the system will be fairly accurate.) I don’t know if this holds for the AJ-SD93 as well, but it’s worth a try.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Walter –

The “welcome to the world of HD” was a sarcastic remark, not an affirmative one.

I do work in 720P60 and I have had to deliver 26 accurately timed (26:46) to the frame shows to PBS and I know exactly how crazy it is to do this, especially when dealing with a 1200A deck that has to be “fooled” into recording with accurate time code. It must have taken me 2 straight days of trial and error to figure out a decent work flow — the irony was that dealing with HD felt like i was going backwards in time, not forwards. And it is just little ironies like that, along with the loss of most of my remaining hair, that prompted my line — “Welcome to the world of HD.” Or as a friend of mine told me when I first considered doing an HD show – “Doing HD is like being in the old west. You’re all alone and surrounded by hostiles and there’s no Cavalry coming to your aid.” I found this to be a fairly accurate description of the situation, with the exception of being able to tap into forums like the COW to scream for HELP!

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Shane –

The reason we don’t have it is that nobody wants to go to the bother of computing a whole new drop frame standard. Remember that at 60 FPS the “dropped frames” would have to be doubled – 4 missing frames at every minute (other than the 10th) would have to be dropped to make the timings come out right — and obviously creating time-lines that can handle this is ain’t worth the programming cost. Welcome to the world of HD.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Walter –

What do you mean by “true 60P recordings”?

I’m editing with material shot with DVCPro HD 720/P60 and Drop Frame is not an option in FCP.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Steve –

Why is this any better than simply breaking the audio to mono in the bin, laying both audio tracks and video to the timeline, and then grouping them together.

I can see the advantage in applying different filters or levels to the different tracks, but my MAIN conern is the ability to go from ch.1 alone to Ch.2 alone to both 1+2 and so on – all within the same clip – as I might for a long talking head shot with the guest on 1 ch and the host on another. At other times I might have a host on ch.1 and Nat Ambient sound on ch.2 – and I might want to slip some Ch.2 sound into a hole in track 1 to cover.

I do dozens if not hundreds of these type of cuts a day and I son’t see how your solution makes this as easy as it is on any other system I’ve ever worked with.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Ron –

there are any number of workarounds, But —

If you get these kind of tapes to edit very often (as I do) you’d have to ask yourself why are you using this program. There are other options and no reason to put up with this kind of situation. You shouldn’t have to have a work-around for something so basic. I own the program, and there are things I prefer in it to FCP when cutting DV, but I won’t use it again till this is fixed.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Les –

{This is a repeat of the response I gave you on the FCP forum awhile back, maybe you didn’t see it.)

I haven’t used PPRO much in the last 9 months so I maybe forgetting / overlooking some things, but off-hand. In general PPRO is leaner and meaner. Less menu’s, less buttons, more consistency in commands – at the price of less functionality. Now to Specifics.

Logging and Capture – PPRO is much better about capturing thru time code breaks. This is a major plus as far as I’m concerned.

CG – FCP’s internal CG is incredibly primitive. Even if you get third party plug-ins that enhance the basic CG it still pails when compared to PPRO. While NOT in the inscriber category, especially for making a series of stills, PPRO CG allows you to create any sort of graphic you want with your video as a background if desired. You have to go into one of the external software solutions; i.e. motion, livetype, graffiti, to do anything like that and these programs all require rendering.

Data Management – While any Mac application makes it very difficult to keep an organized file structure PPRO is no Edit*. Both programs basically stink at keeping things organized and helping you delete and/or store job information easily. PPRO has the limitation of 1 job open at any time, whereas FCP is unlimited. Both programs allow for unlimited timelines open within a job. My recollection is that PPRO’s Bins are more limited than in FCP, but off-hand I can’t be more specific. Here, as in other places I would say that FCP is more confusing but more versatile.

Editing – PPRO is terrible in handling a matrix of audio tracks. If you use 2 tracks on a tape to record different audio, rather than as 2 stereo tracks or 2 redundant mono tracks, PPRO has no reasonable way to deal with this and still keep the audio in sync with the video. This is ridiculous but true. Also PPRO has nothing like FCP’s new multi-cam feature that is, as you should know by now, very dear to my heart. The rendering function in both system’s are very stupid, not nearly as sophisticated as edit*’s when it comes to understanding when something truly needs to be re-rendered. FCP has the incredible bug of destroying all renders if you mute a video track – this bug has been around for so long they no longer even try to fix it. At least PPRO doesn’t have anything as heinous as this. But FCP has many more way’s to doing any of the basic editing tasks and seems much more flexible. In addition it’s time-code overlay window, which I always use, is much better than the hidden properties menu needed to find time code info in PPRO. All in all I find FCP much easier to cut with but much harder to learn.

Output – PPRO has the ability to burn DVDs from the timeline; unfortunately this feature rarely works, at least in my case. It’s export to tape module is a pain in the ass but then again so is the FCP edit-to-tape function. Since I’ve only done Firewire input and output with both systems I can’t give firsthand info here, but from what I know I think that PPRO, with the right third party software controllers, is much more capable of handling RS 422 control. This is an area to look closely into when thinking about either system. As far as File export and import, both are about the same – PPRO is AAF, FCP is XML, ability to transfer timelines between each and Avid is possible with third party software (I believe, not sure here.) Both export the full gamut of MPEG’s and Codecs, FCP handles both DVCPRO-HD and HDV natively, I think PPRO handles HDV with 3rd party software and DVCPRO-HD not at all.

Real-Time – If you want real-time then get PPRO with Axio, otherwise there is no such thing on either system, except for draft resolutions. There is nothing like Axio in the FCP world.

My 2 cents – PPRO 2 is coming; perhaps they will address much of what keeps them behind FCP – who knows. They basically started with a clean slate and with the design idea of copying FCP’s workflow and functionality and doing it better. So far I think they are still way behind, but they might have an easier growth path without the legacy of workarounds that abound in FCP. And with Axio they really have something that FCP can’t touch.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Ron –

This has been my biggest problem with PPRO from the begining. The worst part about it is that 2 NAB’s ago I spoke to the main PPRO designer outside the Adobe booth and he didn’t even understand that it was a problem. I’m sure a more experianced PPRO editor, or maybe Larry Sherwood has a more elegant understanding or work around, but the design problem exists and I don’t know if Adobe intends to fix it.

The basic problem is that PPRO assumes that if you have digitized 2 tracks of audio from a tape source, then those 2 are a stereo pair, and drops them onto the timeline that way. Once on the timeline they are treated as a single stereo pair, i.e., you can’t delete or even change the levels on one track without doing the same thing to the other – you con’t have access to the individual tracks, just the single stereo track.

Now there are ways, in the bin, to break out the stereo to 2 mono tracks, but when you do this the sync relationship between the audio and video is destroyed. You can then re-sync them the same way that you would sync up film dailies, but this becomes a MAJOR pain in the ass when dealing with hundreds, let alone thousands of clips.

For me it is a total deal breaker and I won’t consider editing anything complicated on PPRO until this gets fixed. I don’t understand Steve Spaw’s Sub-Mix work around – but whatever it is, it is just that – a workaround to a problem that should not exist in a professional environment. I wrote to Adobe about this when PPRO first came out and of course that is like talking into a dead phone line – all you hear is yourself.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions