[Matt Lyon]

I don’t know if I qualify as an expert, but I’ve mucked around with web outputs enough to know that it is a frustrating experience. There are no standards and your video will probably look slightly different depending on the OS and playback software being used to render it.

But unlike broadcast, you don’t have to worry about “safe” colors or video levels. Black is RBG 0/0/0 and white is 255/255/255.

My optimum workflow is to still work and color correct on a proper broadcast monitor. Protect your image for TV (since it is more restrictive), then do your web outputs based on that master. You may want to add a touch of post processing to make your video “sing” on a computer screen. Some people muck with the gamma or white and black points, or contrast … its up to you. De-interlacing is obligatory, if you are working with interlaced material. Watch your material on different computers, different OS’s, different player softwares. Upload a test to YouTube and Vimeo and an iPhone. Just like broadcast, I think it’s important to view your content on the target device it will be viewed on.

Since your broadcast master is being graded to a consistent standard, you should be able to create a single set of filters you can apply to your web deliverables that will work for most, if not all, of your outputs.

But as badly inconsistent as home televisions are, I reckon that computer video is many time worse. So I no longer lose too much sleep over getting “perfect” color on web deliverables 😉

Just my two cents,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Hi Michael,

The version of Compressor I have (3.5.3), has a “4.0” option. If you use this, is the channel mapping still wrong? More importantly, does it actually matter? As long as the channels are still discrete, does it make a difference if they are labelled “C/L/R/S” or “mono 1/2/3/4” or whatever? I guess it would be a function of how the playback software interprets the flags.

hth,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

The original poster also didn’t mention how he is monitoring his footage.

Morten, I would add that you can’t really judge motion artifacts in the FCP viewer, or even the full screen “Digital Cinema Desktop Preview” mode. (If that is how you are monitoring your footage).

To my eyes, the only way to really judge flicker/judder/stutter/whatever is on a properly set up broadcast monitor via a breakout box.

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

try turning up the data rate or quality settings in Episode. Generally speaking, scenes with more complexity require higher data rates, or you start getting artifacts like you describe. Settings that work well for some material may not do the trick on other stuff, so you may need to do some tests until you find a combination of settings that work well and give reasonable file sizes.

hth,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

It sounds like you might have imported the wav file with the wrong settings in place. My tutorial describes the proper workflow to avoid these sync issues:

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

see the second half (after the xml stuff).

hth,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Hey Tim, I responded to your Cinema Tools question higher up in the thread…

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Sorry, just catching up on this now. AFAIK,
the 23.98 designation in cinema tools really is 23.976. But follow Dave’s advice and do the change on a dupe of the file. From all your posts, it kinda sounds to me like a badly tagged frame rate is blowing FCPs mind. You should also set your sequence defaults as per my tutorial (search for it on the site). It is mostly about audio, but it can’t hurt to follow my advice. And I get a penny for your page view 🙂

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Hi Timothy,

The difference between your run times seems to be the same ratio as the difference between 23.98 and 23.976 frame rates (unless my math is totally off). So maybe the file you were sent is 23.980 fps, instead of 23.976, as it should be.

Try opening your quicktime in CinemaTools and “conforming” it to 23.976, then bring it back into FCP and see if the run time is correct.

hth,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

The video render status is listed as “FULL” in the pop-up window when I mouse over the timeline ruler. I guess I could force render, then do the export, but why bother if the batch-export trick saves the step?

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Hi Adam,

I’m jumping in late on the thread, but it seems like all signs are pointing to an issue with the machine, not the hard drive (since it works fine when connected to another machine). Do other projects play back fine on the machine in question, or is all video playback affected?

Couple other things to investigate:

Disconnect any other FW drives connected to the machine. I’ve had situations where a dying drive slowed down the whole machine, even though it wasn’t serving any FCP duties.

Bad UPS or bad power: a dying or underpowered UPS device could be throttling the machines performance.

If you’re comfortable using the Console (Applications>Utilities>Console), then crack that open and look for error messages that pop up while you playback. (IO errors, in particular, would point to a hardware issue). On that note: try running the apple hardware tests on your machine.

Try rebooting the machine and zap the PRAM (hold down ‘command-option-p-r’ on startup)

Make sure Time Machine and any other backup software isn’t running.

There could be an issue with the OS install, or the FCP install. It’s never happened to me, but other people have reported problems with doing “update” style OS installs, instead of “clean” installs.

hth,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto