[Michael Gissing]

Yes Rob, it is exactly like mpeg because H264 is Apples fancy name for mpeg4

[Michael Gissing]

I would never consider using FCP to record VO. A digital desk with built in talk back is a great idea.

I haven’t used STP as I have Fairlights here, but I would recommend using an audio tool with embedded QT playback rather than making a picture editing tool go beyond its scope. That goes for AVID et al. None of them are up to the task in my opinion.

[Michael Gissing]

FCP doesn’t edit H264 natively. You need to convert the files to a codec that FCP can edit with to avoid rendering.

In your scratch disk setup, where are the video files stored? If they are on the internal drive with the OS and FCP software, then that is the likely cause of frames being dropped. Also you didn’t say what your sequence settings are. All this info will help us better guess the problem.

[Michael Gissing]

Why reimport an OMF and make it offline? Don’t you have the original project file?

Make the changes to the original sequence than then use something like Editrace to make a change list from the orignal and new EDLs. Make the changes to the Protools project and don’t muck around with reimporting and then re exporting. In short the process of relinking will be a nightmare. The normal way to make changes after sound post has started is by comparing EDL’s or just writing down exactly what you have changed and making a new reference picture QT.

[Michael Gissing]

If you don’t see an image during log & capture in FCP then you likely have the wrong Easy setup or the deck playback setup.

If you can’t see an image on an external monitor, it is because you have the wrong setup, a standard def I/O card, a standard def monitor or all of the above.

[Michael Gissing]

I think Baz is wanting to be able to route tracks to a pre mix bus and then dip all the music or FX with one master fader, not dipping multiple faders.

Another way to do this would be to link track faders so that multiple tracks can be dipped together by moving one tracks fader. This is more likely with FCP than expecting the software to support busses but either way, it points to the clumsy nature of FCP audio.

[Michael Gissing]

[Rafael Amador] “Good to know that there is somebody like you around:-)”

Thanks for the vote of confidence. I guess I have been lucky in my 33 years of experience to have covered telecine, location sound, sound editing & mixing, online and production from film to video tape to digital.

As for editing – that’s one skill I admire but have not got the patience for. I spend a lot of time with editors talking through technicals, so I am familiar with the black holes editors have. Indeed, I think that creative editing and being on top of all things technical is near to impossible.

[Michael Gissing]

Sorry Rafael, but I was away on a mercy dash to help my aging parents into a nursing home and checking COW was not on my list.

Walter got it right anyway. Dialog norm is Dolby’s idea of getting everything idiot proof by encoding a value that best represents the dialog “normal” volume. The intention is that digital broadcasts or DVD’s would all sound the same average volume on dialog so no-one would have to adjust levels from program to program. Because it is based on cinema volumes, where the cinema sets up the playback level of 85db based on pink noise, it doesn’t translate well into domestic or broadcast environments, so it is better to work with absolute levels and apparent loudness and bypass the dialog norm at the ac3 level.

Same goes for compression. The Dolby decode chip does poor dynamic compression.

[Michael Gissing]

Yes, I have been thinking about this instead of going to bed and getting up for an early morning flight so I am doing too many things at once.

Yes the 40% is correct.

[Michael Gissing]

Firstly the 50 fps will not sync in the final 25 frame timeline. It will play like a slow mo and will need to be sped up 50% to sync. This will make it look like normal motion, defeating the purpose of overcranking.

To make it seem like sync when shooting at 5 fps, it will need to run 80% slower. This is because the lip sync playback was not double speed to match the 50 fps frame rate. Otherwise your estimate of 40% would be correct.

In other words, the playback rate needs to be proportional to the 5 fps. As this is 20% of your base frame rate, everything sync has to be slowed by that amount including any further playback to lip sync to.

The director made a mistake shooting the singer at 50fps without speeding up the playback x 2 to lip sync. I appreciate you can’t tell him of his basic mistakes. The client is always right – especially when they are wrong.