Michael Gissing
195
COW Coins
190
DaVinci Coins
3
Solve Coins
Forum Replies Created
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Try a mixdown before export.
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[David Roth Weiss] “MPEG 4 would absolutely be wrong.”
David is absolutely right! (Gee David, we can’t seem to disagree on anything at the moment!)
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Did that facility specify Animation codec? If so then go with that. If they have FCP then ProRes is best.
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Quicktime is part of the OS so reinstalling FCS is not likely to make any difference. Have you done the usual drive maintenance (repairing permsissions)?
Personally I haven’t had any issues with QTX but you might try installing QT7.
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An M&E mix is also a mix, not just the music and atmos thrown together. If there are no mix keyframes on this material it isn’t a mix.
I personal would never consider mixing in FCP for this very reason. At the least you need to be able to properly control bussing. I suggest if you are unable to send this mix out to a professional, then learn to use Sound Track Pro which is part of the Final Cut Studio software bundle. It will also give you better quality dynamics processing to make sure your material is broadcast spec plus it can do sub frame editing which is essential for decent dialog and music editing.
I suspect your problem is that you are using keyframes in the clips not keyframing track levels. Read the manual about automating keyframe track levels. In the future try Sound Track Pro.
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Also ProRes HQ is overkill. If you have FCS3 then you also have the lovely ProRes4444 codec which is much better than animation so use that as your Motion export which is not only an alpha channel codec but also 10 bit and drops into your regular ProRes timeline very nicely. Final renders will be faster.
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Filezilla isn’t the problem. I recommend this great little ftp client to everyone and I have it available as a free download on my ftp site.
Your final file for broadcast can be as simple as an mpeg2 transport stream which is relatively tiny. What matters most is who it is being sent to and the specs they need at their end. Why are you sending an old 8 bit uncompressed codec which (as David said) is so last century? I can’t imagine anyone wanting that if they are either going to playout to tape or directly broadcast.
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Don’t get confused with the PPM metering. Broadcast specs are ultimately measured by the digital dbfs metering. I have never owned a PPM meter and entirely base my mixes on digital scale, a fixed monitoring level and my ears.
With over 800 broadcast docos mixed to date, I have never needed any other metering scale. They are all approximates and only phons metering is a reasonable apparent loudness measure. PPMs are like an almost accurate digital meter so use digital metering as it is actually accurate and is the basis for broadcast deliverable spec. (yes I deliver all the time to BBC and others in Europe so lets keep it simple and honest for the poor fellow).
You absolutely must have a good compressor limiter which will stop all peak excursions over -10dbfs. FCP is a poor mixing and audio editing tool and my best advice is to go to an audio pro to mix properly. Frankly you won’t stand a chance of getting a mix that has the apparent loudness and dynamics control that a pro with proper tools can achieve.
here is a breakdown of the two most typical broadcast specs in an answer that I prepared earlier along with some repeat info-
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/982782 -
Australians are used to playing NTSC DVDs and we are fond of buying 16:9 TVs and DVD players that are multi system/ auto switching. Maybe its the sheer width of our clear horizons, but Australians have one of the highest uptakes of 16:9 flat screen TVs. We have been digital broadcasting 16:9 for years and will probably be the first country to stop analog 4:3. I have not delivered anything SD for broadcast for over a decade that was not 16:9 anamorphic and on digi beta.
If you still need to do a conversion to PAL, leave the sequence as anamorphic. When you letterbox the NTSC you further reduce the actual used pixels by nearly 40%. The letterboxed PAL will then be zoomed on the 16:9 monitor and will look like rubbish. Letterboxing is not a good idea. It just throws away lots of resolution.
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Does the graphic appear stretched and has black pillar boxing edges? If not then it is 16:9 anamorphic.
If you want to correct this apply the distort as I previously mentioned. This will mean either black bars top & bottom(letterboxing) or center punching which will cut off the 16:9 edges to create your 4:3