[Mark Burton]

Like you I wanted to avoid using any external files for the mask. Plus this is quick and easy to tweak to get the mask you need and change if needed. It does have an encode time hit, but I imagine there is a similar if not higher hit from using an overlay. I also looked briefly as cropping and padding back to 16×9, but felt this was not as elegant as the drawbox route. Maybe its faster though?

With regards to the gamma issue, its a bit of a pain isn’t it. We tend to watch all offline material in DNxHD and when we do send out H.264 its for cut review more than picture quality, so we mostly get away with it. Hopefully with x264 things will improve though.

[Mark Burton]

Could you elaborate on what you ended up doing? I’m looking for a way to read the input files timecode and make the starting timecode value available to the drawtext filter so I can burn it into the picture. Currently I’m having to set the timecode manually for each input file. Thanks.

[Mark Burton]

I’ve been using this for 1920×1080 input videos. Its crude but works fine for me. Its set to our specific 2.39 framing leader so you will need to tweak the three numbers (142, 2.41 and 145) to get exactly the mask you want. Easiest to just test it on your framing leader:
I’d love to know if there is a better way though or if you found another way?
-vf drawbox=x=-t:y=-t+142:w=iw+t*2:h=iw/2.41+t*2:t=145:c=black

[Mark Burton]

Its such a pain isn’t it. I’ve no idea why Avid haven’t found a way to stop this happening.

We’ve resorted to naming our systems Z1, Z2, Z3 etc. This way the folders will always appear at the bottom of the list.

Anyone know if there are any changes for Lanshare / Unity software v5.0?

[Mark Burton]

I do this on every film. Two MCA’s connected via fibre, then my Mac laptop connected via Gig-E with a single workspace mounted to share files. I make a workspace called ‘GRAPHICS’ and export and save all non Avid files to this space. Very handy and works perfectly.

–Mark

[Mark Burton]

I wonder if it will still have the inherent delay associated with FW connected boxes?

[Mark Burton]

Thanks Pierre. We have been using 3Prong’s SpeedRamP plugin for de-interlacing so far, but although its a great tool, its not RT and also not really designed for the job as much as Fieldskit is.

There is a workflow issue with Avid progressive projects when you need to work with interlaced source footage. In PAL land people will often choose to work in a PAL 24p film project and although most footage it progressive source, often they will incorporate interlaced 50i source. The final output is 24fps film, so working at film speed is crucial.

When playing this back to an external monitor, the standard 12+1 field PAL pulldown (24fps – 25fps maintaining film speed) results in a very nasty frame jitter due to the interlaced source being put completely out of order. The progressive source reacts fine to the 12+1 field pulldown. To fix this the interlaced source material either needs to be de-interlaced or drop one field.

At preset the only way to do this is with SpeedRamP AVX (non RT), Boris Continuum Complete ($800) and Genarts AVX 2.0 ($1800). Please, please Re:Vision, develop FieldsKit to an RT AVX!

Many thanks
Mark

[Mark Burton]

Thanks Pierre. We have been using 3Prong’s SpeedRamP plugin for de-interlacing so far, but although its a great tool, its not RT and also not really designed for the job as much as Fieldskit is.

There is a workflow issue with Avid progressive projects when you need to work with interlaced source footage. In PAL land people will often choose to work in a PAL 24p film project and although most footage it progressive source, often they will incorporate interlaced 50i source. The final output is 24fps film, so working at film speed is crucial.

When playing this back to an external monitor, the standard 12+1 field PAL pulldown (24fps – 25fps maintaining film speed) results in a very nasty frame jitter due to the interlaced source being put completely out of order. The progressive source reacts fine to the 12+1 field pulldown. To fix this the interlaced source material either needs to be de-interlaced or drop one field.

At preset the only way to do this is with SpeedRamP AVX (non RT), Boris Continuum Complete ($800) and Genarts AVX 2.0 ($1800). Please, please Re:Vision, develop FieldsKit to an RT AVX!

Many thanks
Mark

[Mark Burton]

FCP 5.1.2 introduced support for 720p25 native import and editing. During import of 720p25 (50fps) remove duplicate frames will give you a true 25fps picture and this will work in the 720p25 timeline. 50fps is not selectable anywhere in FCP. A German site has a workaround posted that allows you to get 50fps selected after various XML imports / exports (can’t recall the site).

The Firestore will have a v3.0 update ‘soon’ that will allow people to record only the native frames from a 720p25 firewire stream – 2:2 pulldown essentially, to give you 720pn25 like the P2 cards store.

FCP 5.1.2 does not have a 720p25/50 capture component; you will not see a picture if you connect a camera and open the Capture tool – this differs from the 720p60 side.

[Mark Burton]

Thanks again for the suggestions. In the end, we are going to cut this in SD as its just so much easier to interface with all the external requirements. PAL DVD’s, NTSC DVD’s, Beta SP’s etc. are all going to be needed for various departments and its just easier for now to sacrifice the DVCPRO HD quality and go with an SD workflow.

I’m more confident this is the right space for this project and having found out a bit more about what’s expected of us, this will certainly be the only realistic way to go about it.

Thanks again for the suggestions, I’ll be keeping an eye on the Kona for HD offline in the future.
–Mark