[John Whiteway]

Thanks very much for the reply.

Right now I’m going to try the solution suggested by Shane Ross. I think it will work, but I’m kind of restricted to doing that anyway. Seems this challenge of converting MP4 files has thrown me into a study of FC Studio I’ve been able to avoid till now. In short, I’ve never had reason to tackle Compressor or Soundtrack Pro before, and so far it’s just been Compressor I’ve been doing battle with. Soundtrack Pro is next on my plate, so as it is right now I wouldn’t know how to make the conversions you outline above.

I did, out of curiosity, go back over some of the notes I’ve accumulated in the last few days. I went onto Blackberry chat rooms, and there one fellow replied giving me the full specs on the MP4 files the Playbook produces. He says it’s audio is “MPEG-4 AAC at 128Kbps, stereo (2 channels) 48 kHz sampling” If that is the case do you think the solution you suggest would work in my case? (If I strike out on Shane’s idea I will be tackling Soundtrack Pro and your suggestion next.)

Thanks again for all your help.

John

[John Whiteway]

Thank you very much for the reply. This is the first time I’ve used Compressor so am still sorting my way through the program. I’ve gone back to look at the settings I’ve used and see that, as you say, AUDIO PASSTHROUGH is the default setting with the ProRes 422 (HQ) codec. I’m wondering though where I’d go to change that to Linear PCM 16bit stereo 48kHz as you suggest. In the Inspector pane I can click on an icon that would seem to offer me the chance to change audio settings but these options are all greyed out, as if with the choice of ProRes you are stuck with the entire package. Is there some other place in the program where I can make this manual change? Or do I have to be using something other than ProRes (HQ) to begin with? (Also while I’m at it, I’m assuming that correcting my problem means changing these settings then converting my Playbook MP4 files all over again.)

Again, thanks very much for taking the time to give me your help.

John

[John Whiteway]

Thanks very much Steve.

Now I finally have reason to learn Compressor. Hope it’s not too hard.

John

[John Whiteway]

Hi.

The answer to this question is likely in this thread but I must admit some of this confuses me a bit.

Here’s my specific question. Maybe there is an answer simple enough for a guy like me.

I have two external monitors I’d like to set up to my IMac. I’d like to be able to listen to my FC project in mono as it will be broadcast that way.

I can connect to the computer’s mini-jack with a selection of cables that will produce effective mono (stereo will go to both speakers), but it’s a fairly expensive arrangement. I could save $45.00 with another cable combination that would produce stereo in my speakers. If I could get FC to output in mono I could use these cables, get the mono I want and save myself some money.

Is there any way; i.e. a relatively easy way to set up FC to do this? Either such that the whole project outputs in mono, or at least such that individual sequences could be set up so?

Thanks.

John

[John Whiteway]

Sorry for being confusing. My camera is the XHA1.

But you have solved my problem!

I’ve never used a colour bars option with this camera so had to look it up after I read your reply. It turns out, right there on the side of the camera is a little switch: “Output: cam/bars”! I look now and see the switch has been moved to “bars”. My defense, if any, was that I was on the ground filming a tense house demolition and was as much watching my back as the camera.

Thanks again. I was all set to send the camera into Canon. Wish I could buy you a drink!

John

[John Whiteway]

One correction to my initial question. Audio information has remained. Over the colour bars one can still see the fluctuation of audio signal. In fact I’ve just tried an experiment and I can still record audio, just not picture.

[John Whiteway]

Strange world it is. I’ve just copied to DVCam and I’ve been able to capture from it with no time code break message. Why this worked I’ll never really know.

Actually, Final Cut has done a few weird things in the past. And when you consider the millions of calculations going on in its head I guess that shouldn’t be too hard to understand.

A few years back I suddenly found that I could not capture footage past 34 minutes on any tape without receiving the same broken time code message. I did everything I could to try and figure out what was happening, including extensive correspondence on pages like this. My only way around it at the time – and that was what I was remembering the other day – was to copy any clips I wanted to capture with time code past 34 minutes onto a DVCam tape.

But then a weird thing happened. Without thinking, one day I attempted to capture some audio that I hadn’t noticed had a time code past 34 minutes. It worked. No broken time code messages. Seeing this I went back and captured the video that went along with that audio and success here too. Well, I guess I’ll just have to capture post-34 minutes clips as separate audio and video clips from now on, I thought. This “system” worked but then I thought what the heck, I’ll try capturing a whole clip post-34 minutes. Now that worked too! And it has ever since. All I can figure is that there was one little binary switch not working and somehow this capturing of the audio separately fixed the problem.

Short of it, all I can figure in the case I’ve just dealt with, is that there was some weird anomaly in the problem tape’s broken time code that a DV copy kept picking up. DVCam somehow broke the spell.

So thanks for the help.

John

[John Whiteway]

Hello.

I have a Sony DSR-11 linked by Firewire to a Canon XL1, the camera these tapes were shot on. The tapes in question have broken time code in several places. By that I mean a resetting to zero when I stopped the camera and reviewed what I’d shot. All the copy tapes have a consistent time code, 0-64. They are not mirroring the breaks in the original tapes.

All I can say is that this is the only tape that is giving me a problem. I’ve copied 6 or 7 similar tapes with no problem. As I say, I have made two copies of this original tape. One I stripped before using to make doubly sure its time code was it’s own. Originally I had begun thinking there may be a physical flaw in the dup tape but this exercise seems to say that can’t be the case. I can only conclude that there has to be something weird about this one original tape.

I have one trick left up my sleeve. I remember years ago when I had time code break problems I’d sometimes copy them to a DVCam tape, rather than miniDV like the original. I’ll also copy only the last half of the tape where this problem is occurring. Hopefully this might shake things up. Also I’ll try making a DVCam dup from both the original and from one of the miniDV copies I’ve made.

The real problem for me is that this tape includes a lot of footage I know I will be wanting to be using.

John

[John Whiteway]

Figured out the answer to my problem.

Being a bit lazy I hadn’t been forwarding to the end of the tape to see where the shooting actually stopped. What I’d been doing in Log and Capture was simply setting an “out” point of one hour. Usually I film till at least that point and being that all the tapes had been striped before use I thought there was nothing to worry about. As it turns out in the two tapes where I was getting the broken time code message I’d actually stopped filming on that tape somewhere in the high 50 minutes. Once I tried recapturing with the correct “out” point things have all gone well.

Guess it’s short cuts that always lead us into trouble.

John

[John Whiteway]

Hello once more.

I’ve got the “dropped frame/broken time code” difference clear in my brain now – thanks – but have another time code related question.

When I began filming DV years ago I’d sometimes stop the tape to review what I’d shot and then go on shooting. The result was often tapes where the time code had been reset to zero, and that caused all sorts of problems. I learned through this experience to leave the tape alone till it was finished. Result – a consistent time code throughout.

But this doesn’t seem to be the kind of broken time code problem I’m facing here.

I’ve just slowly looked through the two 30-minute clips I captured that FC told me had time code breaks and there is no re-setting to zero in them, as I would have expected if there is a time code break. (I’m assuming the time code for these clips that I’m seeing on the FC monitor is the same as on the tape, that if there was a break in the tape – for example a resetting to zero – that would be reflected on the monitor count.)

When I reviewed these tapes I was only able to watch seconds and minutes as they streamed past. Could there be a break in the frame count that I just couldn’t see? But if so why wouldn’t that have made the time code revert to zero?

These are tapes shot in 2002. Is it possible there might be some degradation in the tape over that time that could explain this?

John