Michael Phillips
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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Media Composer still does this wrong for Sony material arrrghhh…
In your first screenshot you can see that Avid knows it’s 1.9:1 aspect ratio yet it defaults to “stretch” below rather than a default letterbox to let you know that it is NOT a 16:9 aspect ratio. If you transcoded as stretched, then everything will be off by 1.9/1.78.
What you want to do in this case is in the FrameFlex area click the “size matches project raster” and this will give you a center 16:9 pixel for pixel extraction. Now “stretch”is the right thing despite it not stretching (they need a NONE setting in there!!!).
When you transcode, do not bake in the transforms. This way you have the extra pixels when you use FrameFlex in the timeline to move things around a bit. You won’t have that many pixels available as it is not that much bigger than 1920×1080.
Michael
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There’s not a huge issue, but AMA linked clips still go through a plug-in architecture, in this case QuickTime even if DNxHD. Although the codec is native, the management, and playback pipeline is not as direct with AMA linked files as it is with native managed media. Also, AMA tends to have performance issues as more media comes online, as well as longer source clips (10 mins + type clips). Managing AMA clips needs more TLC, etc. If doing longer form ediorial, native MXF wrapped DNxHD is still the way to go, regardless of Avid Marketing around AMA editing. For shorter, fast turnaround stuff, it can work.
Michael
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The Media Composer FIND function does not allow all results in the timeline to be highlighted and active. It only allows access to results one clip at a time (which is one of my bigger gripes on MC FIND function).
For color correction issues as you describe, the color correction that comes with the Symphony option allows for relational color correction allowing you to do what you are asking for.
For now, you can do a timeline search, go to event, double click the saved effect from a bin, go to next result, etc. ~200 times. 🙂
Michael
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I may be a bug in that version of RCXPro. If I understand correctly, you are syncing dailies in RCXPro, and exporting MXF wrapped DNx. Whenever I see a file name rather than the MXF/AAF folder names it indicated that only one file was completed and not the batch, so something is not working upon export. It has been a while since I’ve synced in RCXPro, as I prefer syncing in Media Composer, but I will try to take a look at it some time today.
Michael
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There is a button called “Find Bin” which has the old bin icon on it and can me mapped to the keyboard or is already in the hamburger menu in the timeline. When sequence is active, clicking Find Bin will bring the open bin to the front and highlight the sequence.
Holding the Option Key before clicking “Find Bin” will open the bin (if closed) containing the clip of the event base on which track is active in the timeline. With Keyboard settings, you can create a single button that has the modifier key included.
As far as revealing a clip in the finder, it can only be done from a clip in the bin; with clip highlighted, File Menu -> Reveal File.
Michael
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I did a very quick scaling test in progressive project with progressive material using the 3DWArp in both HD and non HD modes for a 150% scale on a test chart image as well as a 4K R3D file with a variety of detail in it. In both cases, I see NO difference between the two renders and even doing a difference matte in Photoshop and zooming in 3200% showed no difference. So for scaling operations in a progressive project there is no additional value. Again, there may be something going on with interlace footage, but that is a test for another day… maybe.
You can download my test image exports here as TIFF as I did not want to introduce additional compression going out as JPEG here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_ZaNEoEqulkSWYzWmJsbzNaa0U/edit?usp=sharing
The quick side by side in Photoshop are:
Michael
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Another thing that “might” be happening, is some additional filtering for interlace material and DVE moves… but I am rarely or ever in an interlace project, so I don’t know for sure.
Michael
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3D Warp is on all MC systems and you are correct than when it was first implemented, it was hardware dependent. That no longer being the case, PIP is somewhat deprecated, but is useful as a quick preset and quick setup compared to setting up the same in 3D Warp. But 3D Warp has pretty much become the first tool most reach to for doing most anything as it combined a variety (as well as redundant such as scale) of parameters to control the image.
I suspect third parties have an easier time mapping to PIP than to the parameters within the 3D Warp effect. It’s only be very recently, that some of those parameters are supported when conforming in tools like Resolve, Pablo, Smoke, etc.
As far as quality, I wish Avid would give a little more detail as to when that HQ kicks in… I suspect it when an image gets resized, it is using a higher quality scaler (which one exactly?). It used to be, in earlier versions of Media Composer, a user could type in commands to the console to change the algorithm used to “polyphase interpolation” from whatever the default was (bicubic?). I believe that polyphase became the default in some past version so the console command is no longer needed. I don’t believe it does anything to edge or moves as that is already subpixel. I guess I need to do some HQ ON and OFF tests to see if that is improving anything. Other applications allow you to choose different algorithms as some are better for resizing up and others are better for resizing down.
And we all wonder what scaler is being used for FrameFlex as it does not have an HQ button…
If you want to really dig into what these scalers do, and are really good at math you can take a gander at:
https://www.ti.com/lit/an/spraai7b/spraai7b.pdf
Michael
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Direct LUT support was implemented with v7 so you either have to upgrade or use a third party product like DaVinci Resolve to process your footage beforehand, and create Avid native or compatible media.
Michael
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A pseudo workaround would be to promote one of them, save it out as effect in the bin, then select all other events that have a 3D on them, and do a double-click apply to all – this will will replace them with the promoted one.
