[Michael Kammes]

What kind of footage are you transitioning to and from, and what are your timeline settings? Are you in Safe or Unlimited? Are you rendering the effect?

I am assuming that you have plenty of heads and tails for the transition? Try taking 2 longer shots, and trimming a bunch of the top and tail, and trying a transition, and see if it still happens.

Sounds like a transition between 2 Long GOP files, and the wrong I-Frame is being referenced during playback. This is just speculation without more info.

~Michael

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[Michael Kammes]

HDV is dreadful in post. Go to Pro Res 422 HQ.

However, remember that when you capture via HDV, you cannot change it to ProRes 422 HQ while capturing. You must ingest as HDV THEN transcode to ProRes 422 HQ, then edit.

~Michael

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[Michael Kammes]

DCPs are based off of the deliverables of the facility requesting the DCP. Thus, if they request TIFFs, give them TIFFS.

DPX and TIFF are the standards. 3rd party apps out there (including free ones) exist for creating DPXs, look into that. Gluetools is a fantastic product.

~Michael

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[Michael Kammes]

Once again a little light ribbing gets lost in the B&W of forums.

Terry, I’ll “buy” you a drink at panel event!

~Michael

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[Michael Kammes]

Been tellin’ people this for weeks, Terry. You’re losing your golden touch, man!

We need to have an Avid Intervention.

~Michael

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[Michael Kammes]

OK, here is a ballpark:

A non consumer color grade monitor, 24″ will be $4000 on the cheap side, even if you can find it used or a demo unit.

Software that has higher level / robust color grade ability (and this list is not complete) like Resolve, Scratch, Pablo, Digital Vision, Iridas, Baselight, Smoke, Symphony, etc….are all expensive.

That being said, Blackmagic’s Resolve does have a new(er)$1K version, but does have system requirements. Even if you went with VERY cheap internal storage (3 x 2GB Drives), a decent graphics card, a decklink card and a GUI monitor with easily push a $5K qualified Blackmagic Mac to $7K. (I’d say that’s conservative, IMHO) Add a Tangent WAVE panel for another $1500.

So, now you’re at $12,500.

That’s before any kind of room treatments & lighting, which I feel is very, very important to having an accurate color grade.

(BTW, config your system to Blackmagics specs and DO NOT deviate: https://www.blackmagic-design.com/downloads/davinci/pdf/DaVinciResolveMacConfigGuide.pdf )

Many uses will say “Well, I’ve used Apple Color and graded fine”. That’s obviously their prerogative, this is simply what I recommend.

I think you’re in for a wild ride as a colorist, and trying to work in this budget will be only the beginning!

~Michael

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[Michael Kammes]

3.5 introduced AMA – that is, the ability to link to (some) camera original media files without importing. 3.5 was the FIRST incarnation of this, so AMA linking to MXF P2 Media *may* work.

MXF is a wrapper, and could be one of many codecs. P2 is a media format, not a codec. P2 media can house DVCPro, DV50, DVCProHD or AVC-Intra – codecs, which can then be wrapped into an MXF wrapper. The 900 doesn’t do AVC-Intra. Don’t know if that info helps.

You have the calibrated software plugin, yes? That works in Quicktime. See if you can play any of the MXF files in Quicktime (outside of Avid). Look for the largest MXF file, that’s probably a video file.

Can you call the camera person and get specifics on what Camera, and what codec they used?
~Michael

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[Michael Kammes]

Well, at least you can get it in somehow!

You can try AMA linking in a project with a different frame size / rate, see if that helps.

There are a few patches to 5.0.3, I think 5.0.3.8 or so is available. Perhaps one of those would work…?

~Michael

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[Michael Kammes]

What do you mean “can’t link’. What is the error message? Does it work if you import?

~Michael

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[Michael Kammes]

The big question is budget.

Color Grading (or ‘Color Timing’ learn that, the old timers will love you) is usually expensive. Why?

Software – good software – is expensive. A color grade worthy monitor is also relatively expensive. Control panels for the color grade application can be expensive. That’s the tip of the iceberg when building a basic color suite. We haven’t even tuched on correct room lighting, storage for all of the raw media you’ll be working with, etc, etc.

If we have a budget to work from, that will certainly narrow down the available candidates.

~Michael

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