[Michael Gissing]

I’d like a dollar for every time I’ve seen mini jack to XLR adapters wired out of phase. It is impossible to fix when people pan this sort of thing and mix it with other correct audio and then ask me why the dialog all disappears on a phone but is fine on the laptop.

As an audio post veteran I can hear the phase error in stereo and I always check mixes for mono compatibility so this problem doesn’t make it through.

[Michael Gissing]

Is the audio dual mono? I’m guessing you have a phase issue between two mono channels which was probably an issue with the audio feed to camera.

In QT it plays both channels out the left & right so you think its OK. In FCP the audio is likely to be panned centre and the phase cancelling happens. If the audio is dual mono, just unlink and delete one channel of audio. If that fixes the problem then it is a phase issue that is only apparent when monitoring the audio as mono in FCP.

Also any details of how your computer is hooked up to monitoring. Do you have a card like Decklink or AJA? It may also be a monitoring issue but i doubt it.

[Michael Gissing]

There are various OFX clone shape plugins. Resolve has one plus I have other options with the Boris CC plugin suite. The old trick to manually overlay with offset and a mask is much more fiddly.

I have also used the Boris pixel fixer OFX plugin to get rid of lots of small sensor dirt on some macro shots. Sometimes I needed up to 20 targets of small blobs to fix. You can’t do that as easily with layers. The good thing about sensor dirt blobs is they don’t move.

[Michael Gissing]

[Bill Davis]”Uh, it’s not an “article” actually.”

Is this the five minute argument?

[Michael Gissing]

[Bill Davis]”I think that analysts missed the point. The key process is removing FRICTION from a needed workflow.”

Actually I think that was the point. To participate in the cloud system requires additional friction at the beginning for which a pay off is elusive when it comes to editing. Everything this article touts is already available but only used by VFX and collaborative workflows. For most editors it doesn’t have practical application and reducing the speed to reduce the cost might open up the field to broader applications. But the initial friction has to be reduced as well. Getting your hi res assets into the cloud is still full of serious friction. This doesn’t address that especially as 8k + assets will be the new normal.

I’m with Oliver, it’s more promise than delivery for many film making applications. Cloud storage and processing has been touted for a while now and I do agree that it will be a thing long before viable nuclear fusion but I don’t share your enthusiasm or analysis of what this improvement to parallel processing means for editing.

EDIT: I should add that clearly companies like Blackmagic agree with my view otherwise making outboard grunt for under powered Apple gear would not be worth their while. They are very canny in choosing what hardware developments to pursue and they will sell a lot of these boxes.

[Michael Gissing]

[Oliver Peters] “The VFX guys have been doing variations of this for some time now.”

Where it makes absolute sense. The speed advantages that the article Bill linked will certainly help. I don’t see how it applies to basic editing though.

Also interesting to see how in six years the biggest change in your article would probably not shooting film if it were done today. Other than improvements to cloud rendering speed, the rest is largely the same

[Michael Gissing]

[David Mathis] “I am going to be more active in this forum and likely call it quits with the Facebook groups.”

I’m one of a group of admins in a Facebook page for local film makers. As it grew bigger, it started attracting scammers and trolls so I get all that extra work required to keep these forums healthy and useful.

I’ve always appreciated the enormous and thankless work that goes on behind the scenes here at the Cow to have kept this forum functional, relevant and robust without bullying or slander.

[Michael Gissing]

[Mark Suszko]”In all the banter about frame rate, anybody check and match the audio SAMPLE rates?”

The problem was the incorrect frame rate metadata causing FCP to think the audio was not 48khz @ 29.97, even though it was. Over the years the single biggest cause of audio drift in FCP has not been sample rates but the way FCP applied a frame rate to audio files and then would in the background, varispeed them to correct their frame rate against the sequence frame rate.

In this case the audio sample rate was absolutely correct but the frame rate had been stamped as 29.975. All FCP could do was to drift the audio. I wish FCP had never included in its software this ‘feature’ of affecting audio speed based on a frame rate metadata stamp. It has been the culprit in most of these sync problems. Sample rate has almost never been the culprit.

Once again in this case the problem was solved when I realised the frame rate metadata was incorrect. When that was fixed using Cinema Tools, the audio drift didn’t happen. So no need to check sample rate as it was always correct in this case. I wish a permanent sticky thread outlining FCPs audio behaviour could be applied to this forum.

[Michael Gissing]

Yes Bouke. I used to have the 23.976 formula written down to the extra decimals to do an audio file conversion for feature length programs for that very reason. It did matter

[Michael Gissing]

[Bill Davis]”Read this and tell me that the way we edit right might not be changing in the not too distant future.”

The article talks about shared server processing by slicing video files into small chunks and processing for “less than $1” in reference to 30 seconds worth of sheer grunt AI driven processing. Well editing doesn’t require anything like the need for such processing. VFX rendering maybe or complete animation but the article is mostly about image analysis and content ID, again not really about creative editing.

But even if it was, here’s what I see are fundamental problems. You still need a computer, albeit under powered with minimal GPU and storage. You need a high speed reliable internet connection. It’s a subscription model that, if it costs roughly $1 per minute to use, will cost as much per 40 hour week as buying a hefty GPU and 8TB of storage.

If you are talking about not editing at all but asking AI to do the job very quickly then yes this sort of cloud based system might totally replace an editor. So you won’t have a job or need a computer under your desk. What also is never talked about is getting you hi res files up in the cloud from camera. It will need to be as fast as local backup, as secure and as cheap. I see all that as possible. Not entirely desirable except for remote collaborative workflows.