[Matt Lyon]

Tim,

You should be able to modify the permissions for the files in the finder “get info” window. Or, if you are handy with the Terminal, use the “chmod 0777” command. Of course, proceed with caution and keep a backup of the “good” xmls.

Also, are you sure there isn’t an issue with the audio? Does the rest of the footage sync up fine? If the clip is truly being interpreted at the wrong frame rate, then I would think using Cinema Tools and the “conform” command is you best bet. It could be you have to fix the permissions on the quicktime in question in order to get Cinema Tools to work.

Hope this helps,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Has the other company set up their FCP station with the proper settings for your editing timebase. More specifically, they need to have the “default sequence setting” configured to match the working setting of your project. See the second half of my tutorial:

https://library.creativecow.net/lyon_matt/fixing-fcp-assets/1

When you import a project via XML, I believe FCP treats ever piece of media as totally fresh, and may therefore be assigning a bogus frame rate to the audio, hence the sync drift. I describe the issue in more detail in the tutorial.
Of course, there may be something else going on here, but this is the first thing I’d check.

Hope this helps,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Hey Ben,

Grinder sounds pretty good. Have you ever tried using it to batch convert DSLR footage to Prores proxy, then use FCP to “online” a locked cut at HQ or better data rates? I’m wondering if Grinder and FCP “log and transfer” play nice with each other.

TIA,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Makes sense … I wonder if we had to do that too and I just forgot about it 🙂 Thanks for the follow up, Sascha.

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

It sounds like the xml is corrupt. I’ve seen this message a few times too. Usually if the other editor re-exports a new XML, it will be fine. It also can’t hurt to zip the file before emailing or FTP’ing.

Hope this helps,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Hey guys,

Coming late to the party here, but I was curious about how Storm compares to reconforming directly in FCP? Using the RED FCP plugin, it is possible to re-ingest your footage as “native” files. Have any of you guys tried this approach? It is outlined in a RED whitepaper you can download on their site. I’ve only tested it out with short sequences, but seems promising. IIRC, this gives you RED native files in quicktime wrappers, so maybe there are limitations with handing off this kind of media to other finishing systems? Curious to hear if anyone has handed off a film in this manner.

Thanks,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Tom, I think it is very common practice to send “reference stills” to your color grader so they can get an idea of the look you are going for. For example, a DP I just worked with often takes still from his footage and mucks with them in photoshop to establish a look, which then gets sent along to the colorist.

Although it sounds like your editing system isn’t a proper color evaluation environment, there is no reason that you still can’t evaluate how much “information” is lurking in those shadows of your footage. I would think it totally reasonable that if you are seeing shadow details in FCP, you should expect them to be retrievable in the final grade.

Now, if the colorist said there was some technical reason that she/he couldn’t boost the shadows, like too much noise, or banding, that would be a whole different story.

Hope this helps,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Dan, I can’t shed any light on the timecode problem. But I’ve seen the “log and capture” issue a few times.

Usually, I’ll go to recapture a prores proxy timeline and it will give me a message, “some of your clips were captured from tape” (I’m paraphrasing). But after clicking through, FCP will jump right into log and transfer mode and everything will re-capture fine. So I usually chalk up these messages as a minor annoyance, since everything else about the online works fine.

I did once have a problem with a RED timeline, where FCP seemed to insist that one clip was captured from tape (it wasn’t). I ended up having to manually recapture and conform the clip.

What steps are you taking to prep your timeline for re-capture? You might want to duplicate your timeline and delete all the audio tracks. Then try media manage–>make offline–>re-capture. I find this works reliably.

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

If anyone is interested:

I had to fix this same issue today on a timeline of mine. So I duplicated the sequence and deleted all clips EXCEPT for the ones with incorrect field dominance. Then I exported an xml, opened in TextEdit and did a search and replace:

find:
replace with:

Quit FCP, relaunched with new project, imported XML and everything was fixed! Final step was to copy and paste the clip items into my old project.

Hope this helps,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

No problem, glad it worked! Compressor doesn’t seem to be very good at correctly interpreting field order. I’ve never been able to get it to behave consistently. Nor can I figure out why it works in some cases, but not in others. So my recommendation is to always double check the clip properties before running a conversion.

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto