Michael Gissing
Forum Replies Created
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I suggest emailing the project file, but each time, add the date to the name – ie “Fred6thJune”. That way when you save the email attachment, it won’t overwrite your existing project name and it will give you a date based comparison. You can always cut and paste from the new sequence to your work in progress. I think that the files on both systems will need to have the same path to relink.
Also I have found that I must collect the email on the mac. Once I got an email with project file attached and when I collected it on a PC and then saved to the mac, it somehow screwed up the encoding and the file wouldn’t read.
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Drop or non drop won’t make any difference. PAL has 25 fps and NTSC 30 fps (sort of. You poor buggers know the agony of 29.97)
So as soon as you use deck control, the capture should abort when the timecode fails to click over from 24 to 00. Also timecode is meant to be syncronous to the actual frame which won’t happen if you control the NTSC deck. You could tell it not to make new clips on t/c breaks. This will create clips with useless code but might let you have machine control to trigger capture now.
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With luck the disk won’t have region coding which is one of the great dumb ideas of DVD’s. Here in Australia, we all make sure our players ignore region code and our monitors are auto switching to PAL & NTSC.
Computers however usually insist on a region code and will automatically choose one for you if you don’t – often setting to the region of the 5th DVD that you have played. There are hacks to get around this on PC’s and Macs, but I suggest you try a computer geek forum to find out more. Apart from this intentional software interference, there is no reason why any computer, here or in the US can’t play all DVD regions.
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Brett,
The reason that -20dbFS equates to 0VU is ancient, but it is true that 0dbFS is +20VU. You can measure the analog out of my digi beta if you doubt this. Broadcast levels require that tone be at -20dbFS and that peaks not exceed -10dbFS. This forum is littered with constant mistakes about what levels to use but these are the SMPTE broadcast rules. PAL is similar except -18dbFS is ref tone with peaks to -10bdFS.
You can do your own thing in house but please don’t advise that using -20dbFS is crazy as it is mandatory if you wish to deliver to broadcasters world wide.
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Have you checked your render settings? Perhaps they are on RGB not YUV.
Like Walter, I have not had a level jump using 3 way on HD either
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I use a combination of a Cobalt brand cable and a Gefen DVI extender amplifier to run 10 metres without sparkle to a 23″ Cinema screen. I would suggest a visit to the Gefen site as they have all sorts of extenders for Apple screens
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Broadcast levels in the digital domain are simple. Ref tone for PAL UK is -18db on the FCP digital scale. Peak levels can go to -10db (ie +8db above reference.) Broadcast audio studios use compressors and limiters to acheive this.
If you are using FCP you will probably find that without using a compressor/ limiter, your program will not have the same apparent loudness. But those are the levels allowed. So if you use the FCP meters to setup tone and measure your peaks, then all you have to do on the SP machine is set the ref tone to 0 VU. I suggest bypassing the mixer if possible as it is likely to be extra electronics and a chance for panning and other issues to get complicated.
As for mastering to DVCam, I would recommend it over SP if you are staying in DV codec all the way. Better is to go to digi beta via your declink card and working in uncompressed for your final timeline.
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The Decklink HD Extreme card lets you play an HDV or HD Uncompressed timeline and output a downconverted SD uncompressed via SDI. It will even do an SD letterbox downconvert. It looks good to. Recently a client tried both the live downconvert and a QT rendered downconvert of the HDV timeline and thought the Decklink was a better downconvert. (SD letterbox)
However, the component output remains HD. The downconvert only applies to the SDI outputs (AFAIK). Perhaps Decklink can change that with a driver/software update.
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Firstly, taking an aif file means the audio facility will not be able to properly unpick butted edits and access handles. Not much use.
Even if you export an OMF, the return audio will need to be an aif file of a mix. You can’t easily reimport an omfi and even if you use Automatic Duck to do this, the levels, EQ, sub frame edits and audio processing will not track, so the “sweetening” will not work. (I hate the term sweetening, btw. Imagine a picture editor being called a cutter or slasher. We don’t sweeten anything, we transform rubbish into art.)
So the return mix will be a single aif or wav file. This is good if you don’t do sound post until after lock off. It is a waste of time for both to do it otherwise.
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The best stretch/ squeeze tool is MPEX3 which can be found as part of a Pyramix or Nuendo system. The best Pro Tool equivilent is Pitch & Time, but last time I know of a comparison done, MPEX2 was better. I doubt it is included in Pro Tools Lite. Any change over 10% is likely to test squeeze software. I haven’t tried the Soundtrack Pro.