[John Heagy]

[Richard Pengelly] ” I am lost in all of the different opinions and my deadline is approaching.”

Save yourself time and headache… just convert it to 30p. 80% the 24p look and no headaches or long renders.

Why 24p… is it a requirement or choice?

John

[John Heagy]

We use Episode Engine which offers “Split & Stitch” this breaks up a long file and distributes it across a cluster of machines, then assembles it back into one file. It can go as fast as you have money for hardware and cluster seats. I think the stand alone Episode Pro will do the same but will be limited to the cores on that one machine.

Compressor can do the same thing but keeping a Compressor cluster standing is harder than a drunken coed wearing 5 inch heels. 😉

Stomp is the only low cost app I’ve seen spread processing across multiple instances of it’s self.

John

[John Heagy]

We do save and work with FCP project files directly from our XSan. We do on occasion run into the “general error” when saving. The solution is to save locally, quit FCP, copy the file back to the san and resume. We have the Autosave go local into the Shared account as we also use network user accounts. We basically do everything Apple says not to do… but it works for us.

The “out of memory” error during rendering is usually due to hi rez stills in the timeline. If you have them try re-saving in Photoshop or resizing them down a bit.

One word of advice: If you do run into the “general error” when saving don’t put off saving local. It can eventually get into a condition where it won’t save anywhere.

[John Heagy]

[David Smith] “Does the process remove any frames?”

No, it’s just slowed down. Anything shot at 24.00 is 100.1% longer when conformed to 23.976.

The same is true for 30.00 vs 29.97. SD is the reason why we are still using 29.97 even though HD supports 30.00. One can’t have an SD and HD broadcast of the same show be different lengths. Once online distribution kills tradition broadcast is when 30.00 can be considered.

[John Heagy]

I haven’t found a CLI tool to do this either. Let me know if you find one.

FYI… FCPX does not read the “Reel” metadata that FCP7, Arri, Aja, RED… etc embed in .mov. If you’d like Apple to read it’s own “Reel” metadata (aka: tcsource) please tell them:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/finalcutpro.html

Thanks
John Heagy

[John Heagy]

You can’t send the AVCHD files directly to Compressor. You will need Clip Wrap to turn them into .mov files. Clip Wrap gives you the option of just re-wrapping them as AVC.mov or encoding to ProRes.

[John Heagy]

The error means the camera directory has been altered in some way. I’m not a fan of formats that require a byzantine directory structure to work, P2 included. You can try Clip Wrap, but it may require the directory be correct as well.

https://www.divergentmedia.com/clipwrap

John

[John Heagy]

Hi Craig,

There is another way. You could do on a small scale what we do. We don’t rely on FCP’s L&T to link anything. We convert all file based media to ProRes outside of FCP. If the files have TC we maintain it – if not – we assign TC. The key is to ensure every card or drive, or however you want to group a set of files, has a unique “reel” assigned to the ProRes conversions. We link everything based on TC and “reel”. We have a custom linking app but there is FcpReconnect from VideoToolshed that does that same thing.

https://www.videotoolshed.com/product/41/fcpreconnect/3

We use old Avids and FCP but this system works with any offline/online system/s that supports TC/reel metadata. We had planned on going FCP for offline using anamorphic SD in ProRes proxy (18Mb/sec). I tested the frame size for accuracy to HD online and it all works fine.

The key to all this is an app that can assign TC and reel to the GoPro and 5D media of the world. This app is CatDV. Let’s take worst case… GroPro. Drop a “reels” worth of GroPro files in a CatDV catalog. If there are any “chunked” files you need to join use the merge tool in CatDV. Once you’re happy with the list of files you can assign continuous TC and “Reel/Tape” across them all. Rename them as you like and export them as reference movies and let Compressor convert them to ProRes and Proxy.

Edit with the proxy and when your done export an xml of your seq. Load the xml into FcpReconnect and then point it to all the HD ProRes files. It will create a new xml that is linked to the HD ProRes based on TC and reel.

It takes a bit of work up front but once done you’re free to manage and move the media anywhere. We even chop up the HD prior to LTO archive so restoring shots is faster.

I said earlier we had planned on going to FCP for offline. Of course FCPX threw a monkey wrench into that. FCPX doesn’t read QT “reel” believe or not! Thankfully AVFoundation can write it so there is hope.

John

[John Heagy]

Hi Francis,

Ah yes the the whole “24p is better”. Unless you’re able to shoot the ENTIRE project in 24p your asking for trouble converting 30 or even 60 to 24. Keep in mind the horrendous video look you want to avoid is 60i… 30p is half that rate and much closer to 24p than 60i.

A look at the future of the “cinema look”

https://www.firstshowing.net/2011/peter-jackson-talks-at-length-about-using-48fps-for-the-hobbit/

[John Heagy]

Why 23.98? Do you have international broadcast deliverables?