Replies – Forums – James Eckhouse

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James Eckhouse
April 27, 2012 at 2:34 pm in reply to: Glitch Importing MTSFiles into MC5.5

well good luck first! for the record – I had started on FCP but I am beginning to really like Avid. Never used Premiere. sounds like FCP is the easiest to load the MTS files into….
Love to know thoughts on a different matter – i see that you are a colorist – I shot my original scenes on Panavision 35. (Was a lot of fun and probably the last chance I’ll have to do that.)Now shooting the extra footage on the GH2 as well as the 5D. opening montage stuff… Need to match the look of the 35 as best as possible. Any tricks you might know???
thanks, J
James Eckhouse
April 27, 2012 at 4:12 am in reply to: Glitch Importing MTSFiles into MC5.5

disclaimer – I am really just getting familiar w. Avid so I’m generally lumbering about trying to do anything! in this case – had to shoot extra footage for a short I directed (I have a pro editor but he is swamped with pilots so i am kind of doing as much on my own and then sending him bins) hired a dp who shot on his very niftily hacked panasonic GH2. (better quality than a 5D mark III!) I had my laptop (windows)at the shoot so we transferred ONLY the MTS files and I took it home. then using a usb stick – I transferred the files (around 75)from my laptop to my MAC in batches. kinda dumb but I got there. I put the files on the same drive as all my MXF files but of course a seperate folder. again – only the MTS files themselves – didn’t replicate the file structure from his P2 card. In avid, made a new bin, right clicked, hit ‘import’, and got to the folder with the mts files. Now – i shift clicked a whole bunch at one time. but then i got error messages. thought it was because i was trying to do too many but that of course had nothing to do with the crashing and error messages. Still don’t know what causes this. I think Avid just hasn’t figured out the transcoding from MTS very well. If there is any kind of data glitch in the mts file it must not be able to handle it. anyway. after hours on line i found that program – ‘clipwrap’ – (tried to understand what ‘wrapping’ the file means.) I then converted all the clips that were giving me problems into the MOV format. back into avid – hit import again – and went to the newly formed MOV files. those i could shift click the entire batch (about 20) and it imported them in. (took about 2 minutes per file. they were very small clips – mostly under a minute each. now i don’t know what you mean about pointing to the folder – but it is easy (if your transcoding doesn’t hang up) to just select all the files in the import browser. maybe you mean that you are doing it from the camera directly. something tells me it is better to get them on your machine first…enoough already – I’ll stop! and the automatic duck looks great – particularly for getting FCP into Avid.
James Eckhouse
April 26, 2012 at 10:21 pm in reply to: Glitch Importing MTSFiles into MC5.5

Thanks Robert,
I tried pointing to the files numerous ways. 1st I simply put all the mts files in a folder on my scratch disk, then I hooked the camera directly and pointed to them on the camera, and then finally i moved them again onto the hardrive but with the folder structure from the cards as well (private/avchd/bdmv/stream…etc.) Same result – some would import, some made the system crash…at any rate – too impatient to reinstall MC (!). Found a program on web: “ClipWrap”. It somehow ‘unwraps’ the MTS file and turns it into an MOV file – supposedly without any resolution loss. I put this out there for anyone else encountering the problem. Program was free when using clips under a minute (mine were all establishing shots of LA – short clips) and it seems to be working! Didn’t need to use a program that actually transcodes. James
James Eckhouse
February 17, 2012 at 11:29 pm in reply to: Actors Demo Reel – MPEGstreamclip/avid settings

thank you alan!
James Eckhouse
February 17, 2012 at 11:26 pm in reply to: Actors Demo Reel – MPEGstreamclip/avid settings

thanks shane – yeah, because you can do edit points in Streamclip you can have small files which is why I was wondering – why not use the Avid 1:1 codec and not have to compress in that step. And i readily admit my pathetically crude understanding of how codecs co-mingle along the path of the workflow. I suppose if you are transcoding material from a DVD – it is already at a high compression and doesn’t warrant using a less compressed codec. I will have to test different options as you said.
James
James Eckhouse
February 9, 2012 at 12:11 am in reply to: Synch Problems going from MC 5.5 to 6 and back

Thanks for such a quick reply, Glenn. we have same project settings. Doesn’t feel like the machine is lagging or trying to catch up. going to do the match frames and also try the 720p. Will report back. thanks ever so much! James
James Eckhouse
November 22, 2011 at 10:06 pm in reply to: G Drive not a RAID drive

Thanks Brendan for quick reply. It is what I expected. Back to Fry’s to exchange for a RAID!
James Eckhouse
June 30, 2008 at 5:00 pm in reply to: G5 for Final Cut Studio 2

Thank you Chris,
newbie here has to ask – what’s difference between the two AND – what cards are the PCI slots on a MAC for generally?
James
James Eckhouse
June 29, 2008 at 8:20 pm in reply to: G5 for Final Cut Studio 2

Thanks Walter – very reassuring.
should probably wait on adding the Kona. Imagine it will take some time to retrain my PC/Avid addled ancient brain to Mac/Fcut format.
Enjoyed your site. Molly clearly overqualified…
Best, James
James Eckhouse
June 29, 2008 at 2:43 pm in reply to: G5 for Final Cut Studio 2

Thanks all for quck response.
Machine I am looking at is dual 2.5 G5.
(Now realize that is before the Intel chip)
Has 8 MEGs of RAM which sounds quite decent.
the Vid card is a RADEON ATI 9600 (seller says it has 256MEGS)…
Is that adequate?

(At this point I’m working with “smallish” DV projects. Docs shot with XL2’s. Assuming I might need something added to the system if I move into HD)
Regards, James