[Matt Campbell]

Grant, the problem is that FCP and people use those terms very loosely. Often time when people refer to 23.976 they call it 24p. 23.976 & 29.97 refer to video frame rates. True 24p refers to film rate. Video has to do with the way the signal is carried electronically. Something to do with volts, watts, 60 hertz and all that jazz. B&W TV ran at 30 fps, when color was introduced they had to modify that to 29.97. something with drop frame vs. non-drop frame.

For Chris, and I what I needed months back, was true 24p output for a DPX to film out. Film runs at 24p while video on HDTV’s can run at 23.976 and or broadcast 29.97 (or 59.94i).

Chris, I would use rafael’s method. That dude knows what he’s talking about. he’s helped me loads of times.

But to answer your question, in Compressor, Encoder tab, Video settings, I set the frame rate to 24 and in the frame controls tab, followed Rafaels method. This is essentially what Cinema Tools does as well. It will conform your 23.98 to 24p. And, from your other post to me, if you don’t need audio, no worries. Cinema Tools will do this almost instantly and give you a true 24p file. But, make sure you save a copy first and use that copied file to conform with because Cinema Tools will write over the existing file. Again, this happens instantly so you don’t have to wait for saving or exporting.

this is essentially speeding up your footage 0.1% to fill the gap. Such a small increment won’t be noticable. So once you conform, edit that into your new 24p sequence with your other 16mm footage and you’re good to go.

OS 10.6.7, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 4 gb ram and AJA IoHD

[Matt Campbell]

Chris, I did have success with that file. Well at least I sure hope so. I never heard back from the facility that received the true 24p file for film out. Although I will say that using the Cinema Tools method and the bringing back your audio is prob the better way to do it. I also tried just dropping the 23.98 file into a 24p sequence rendered it out and exported. That also seemed to work.

What’s funny is I just posted a similar secenario but now I have true 24p material and am conforming that for 23.98 which will then get pulldown added for gong out to broadcast at 29.97.

OS 10.6.7, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 4 gb ram and AJA IoHD

[Matt Campbell]

So I think our plan is to send this out to a facility that will use their Alchemist hardware converter. Even when this is done, will the spot still be the same length. I.E. with broadcast being 29.97 or 59.94 Interlaced fields, will the spot be 29 seconds & 29 frame long? Or will that have to be adjusted by shaving frames? I think we’ll just need to QC it when we get the conversion back.

OS 10.6.7, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 4 gb ram and AJA IoHD

[Matt Campbell]

Thanks everyone. I think we’re going to run some tests. I’ll try Cimena Tools but isn’t that going to change the speed too. And will that speed change be noticeable/detectable to the eye?

As far as audio, since we’re having our in-house audio dept. do the mix, should they take our OMF at 24p in ProTools and then spit out a file for us at 23.98. Meanwhile, we can conform the 24p to 23.98 then bring back both elements into FCP and marry them back into a new 23.98 sequence and make our master from that. Does that sound right? Or should the conversion be done with both video and audio 1 file?

OS 10.6.7, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 4 gb ram and AJA IoHD

[Matt Campbell]

Don’t know of any freeware for this but After Effects does this nicely. Which is what I’ve used in the past, because you can go directly to ProRes or any other codec for that matter. Every time you make a conversion, like you are, you will have significant generation loss. How is your footage looking after the mp4 to mov conversion?

I would not use Handbrake for any conversions for editing. You should be able to connect your camera and maybe try FCP log and transfer. Not sure if this will work, as I have not tried it. But there might be a driver for this. I hate working with MTS files. So problematic.

OS 10.6.7, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 4 gb ram and AJA IoHD

[Matt Campbell]

Shane, as always, thank you. However another colleague sent this to me.

https://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1398771&seqNum=11

So I guess you can merge clips from the timeline, but only after deleting the camera audio and linking the new audio to the video clip and dragging into the browser. And after doing this and double clicking to load into viewer, I hit command option F for match frame and it reveals the video is linked to the new audio file.

huh, that is hugely helpful. the only thing is using the browser, it actually then gets a “merged clip” label to it. the timeline method does not. but I’m not opposed to the other method as well. I agree, if this was easy, everyone would be doing it. thx for the help.

OS 10.6.7, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 4 gb ram and AJA IoHD

[Matt Campbell]

Steve, sorry, I may have misinterpreted that. I simply meant to delete the camera audio after the good audio has been sync’d to it.

And if you export those new clips, I would only export reference files or try my other method. If you export new clips as self-containded files, you’re going to have gen-loss with each compression pass. Reference files and the other method, will not have any gen-loss, its simply referencing the original media and not creating new media.

With gen-loss it then becomes harder to color correct and color grade your footage. It’s more likely to break up and get noisy on you.

OS 10.6.7, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 4 gb ram and AJA IoHD

[Matt Campbell]

Dan, I’m currently doing this type of work as well. I’m having mixed results with Plural Eyes. My timeline contains about 80 clips along with external audio. PE sync’d about 70-80% of it accurately. The remaining clips did not sync, however I was able to sync manually all in one sequence. In your timeline delete the camera audio and then select the video and new audio and use the Link function, under the Modify menu or Command L on MAC. The in your timeline you can simply click on the clip and drag it back into your browser. I then recommend taggin that clip as manual sync. The you can move the new clip to whatever folder you’d like and it acts as new media.

I wouldn’t recommend exporting the PE sync’d clips as self contained media, because then you’ll have generation loss in quality. However, you can try the above or export reference media. But with a large project, reference media can be problematic.

hope this helps.

OS 10.6.7, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 4 gb ram and AJA IoHD

[Matt Campbell]

Molly, , if you do a straight import, AVID should write your new media in MXF format. Not sure why that isn’t working. I’m assuming your on a PC judging by Michael’s comment. If you have access to a MAC, I’d do as Michael says and have your friend convert the HDV files to DnXHD. You or he can do this with MPEG Streamclip. Its a free and handy little conversion tool that re-wraps media into different codec containers. Or he could use Compressor or some other tool to do the same thing. I would choose the latter because those are encoding programs meant to do just that.

Hope this helps.

OS 10.6.7, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 4 gb ram and AJA IoHD

[Matt Campbell]

Dylan, always use an external drive for media. Problem then is, if your external drive is optical, you won’t see the performance boost that SSD provides. Your still then rendering to optical drives and relying on disk speed.

With Mac Pro’s and MBP (17″ model only via Express 34 slot), you can use eSata cards and connect external drives via eSata. This is, theoretically, as fast as your system drives internal connection (as far as optical drives are concerned) and can handle full 1080p HD ProRes files. Thunderbolt is even faster still, but more expensive. FW 800 will most likely be gone soon but adapters are available for Thunderbolt ports for legacy drives with FW and/or eSata.

Your iMac should be screaming fast for what your doing. I’ve seen people using Mac Book Airs to edit full HD and even 2k material. Now with help from a Red Rocket card, but still, a MB Air. That’s insane. So I would take Rafael’s advice and run Disk Warrior. Use FCP’s Render Manager to remove old files, trash preferences and any other clean you can do to help. Also, with your external drive, stick to the 80-20 rule. Once your drive reaches 80% full, it will begin to slow down. Back things up and delete old jobs.

Hope this helps and sorry for the rambling. I this is 4 months old, but how did you make out with the iMac performance?

OS 10.6.7, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 4 gb ram and AJA IoHD