[Jeremy Dehn]

Many thanks for the tips.

Yeah, I was pretty sure I couldn’t completely eliminate the differences, but you’ve helped me to narrow down how to make the best of a bad situation.

I’m testing out your Compressor suggestion as well as the techniques on the link you included. From there it’s up to the producers to decide whether to accept the imperfections or reshoot.

On the off chance this changes anything, My Premiere and After Effects are from the CS4 bundle (Premiere v4 and AE v9), and my last version of Avid is the ancient Xpress Pro HD v.5.

Thanks again.

[Jeremy Dehn]

Yeah, I thought it might be that 23.976/24 deal too, but I played with 99.9% and 100.1%, and that made the sync worse. Mathematically the difference between 23.976 and 24 should mean I’m off by a frame every 1000 frames, shouldn’t it? And I’m off more like one frame every 14,400 frames.

I also just tried the modify/timecode deal, but none of the TC boxes were checked at all, I’m assuming because these are plain wav files, and there is no timecode assigned to them until they’re imported into FCP. They don’t show a frame rate at all even in the FCP browser.

Any other ideas? I wonder if it’s just a consequence of variable bit rate compression that sync might be off?

[Jeremy Dehn]

Thanks for the reply. Good questions, and looked at original footage and also did a test shot creating a sync point every minute for the 12 minutes the camera shot before it maxed out.

It’s off by about one frame per 10 minutes, so admittedly not much, but I guess that’s my real question, whether this is within a normal tolerance for this gear or if I’m doing something wrong.

The audio is slower, meaning if it’s in sync at 1:00:00:00, then at 1:10:00:00, I have to move the audio clip back one frame.

By the way, I did confirm easy setup matches the sequence in terms of frame rate, but I’m using FCP 6.0.6, which doesn’t seem to have an easy setup for ProRes 422, so in the easy setup I choose Format HD, Rate 23.98, and Use custom setup, which is set to ProRes 422 matching the sequence settings, set via Final Cut Pro/Audio video Settings/Sequence Presets. Then when I drag the video clip to the timeline it still gives me the pop-up to change the sequence settings to match clip settings, and I confess I’m not sure why. Could that be the issue?

[Jeremy Dehn]

Thanks a lot for the reply. Glad I asked before I started using AIC, which is what I was leaning toward doing.

And you’re right, I was talking about ingesting and then deleting a batch at a time–I do need FCP7. I do this for low budget films, rather than commercial work, so I have to keep costs very low, which I was doing by buying every other version, which worked fine until FCP X messed up the pattern. Since I can’t justify spending a grand on the no longer current FCP 7, I think new drives is the answer. (Unless you or someone else knows a way to install just the ProRes LT or ProRes proxy codecs into FCP 6.)

Thanks again. Really appreciate you and the COW for being such great resources.

[Jeremy Dehn]

Is your project in DV or some other 29.97 fps format? If so, the wave or jitter is most likely due to interlacing, which happens because of the way that standard definition interlaced video shows you every other line of resolution at a time.

Probably the quickest solution is to use the de-interlace filter in FCP, although this probably won’t completely eliminate the problem if you’re outputting to standard def 29.97 video. You can also further reduce interlace flicker in titles by avoiding fonts that have a thin serif and sticking to thicker, block text. You might also try creating titles in Motion, Live Type, After Effects, or some other motion graphics software that might be better suited to finer control over your credits.

Good luck.

-Jeremy

[Jeremy Dehn]

Good call, but yes, I tried it. Reinstalled both the codecs and FCP itself. I stopped short of wiping the drive and/or reinstalling the OS, but that was only because I’d found the problems almost immediately after taking the computer out of the box and installing my normal software on it.

In addition to the tests I mentioned above, calls to both Apple and Kona tech support bore no fruit, although I did speak to someone with whom I edited a film a couple of years ago, and he reminded me of some inexplicable but similar problem we had on that project–our editing computer had a different version of Kona card than the capturing computer had. They theoretically should have been compatible, but it looked similarly poor until we we changed out the card and made both computers match.

So I still don’t understand exactly what the problem is, but I have to conclude that the card isn’t quite as smoothly integrated into FCP as it’s supposed to be–at least not in the particular configuration of hardware and software I have now.

I couldn’t spend any more time on this, so finally just gave up, ran the footage through Cinema Tools, and am cutting now at 23.98. I’m not thrilled about changing timebases midstream (and I had to re-sync most of the footage) but this is the only way my tests come out OK.

Thanks to all who tried to help. I still love the Cow.

Jeremy

[Jeremy Dehn]

That’s OK. Thanks anyway for trying.

I have an e-mail circulating around AJA… seems it’s an unusual deal. So hopefully they’ll figure something out.

If anyone else has any thoughts, I’m all ears. Thanks again.

Jeremy

[Jeremy Dehn]

Ok, but that’s what I’m saying. It should work, but it isn’t working either way.

I read the thread about the Kona and Apple codecs being the same, and according to that thread I shouldn’t have a problem, but I still do.

And I also tried installing the Kona codecs and they didn’t help either.

So neither one of those ways works.

Any other thoughts on what might be happening? Thanks.

Jeremy

[Jeremy Dehn]

Thanks for the replies.

I have a follow up: I know I need to stop being so cheap and invest in an NTSC monitor, but when I output an NTSC DVD and watch that on a regular TV/DVD player, as opposed to on my computer, I still see a really bad problem. Doesn’t that mean that there’s a problem other than with the way I’m displaying it?

Secondly, I was under the impression that I can’t watch an NTSC monitor playing uncompressed 10 bit video unless I also spring for a Kona or Blackmagic card as well. Am I wrong about that? Can I just get a DVI to RCA adapter and run that cheap Wal-Mart TV out of my second video port?

Thanks again.

-Jeremy