[Nick Meyers]

Hi, Michael.

“what advantages are there in using a higher bitrate codec (in general), if that bit rate will ultimately be reducing to mere mpeg-2 DVD quality anyway?”

i think the best thing you could do would be to do a test.
capture some footage as ProRes, and as Prores LT and Prores Proxy.
or simply use the same ProRes footage in Prores Prores LT and Prores Proxy timelines.
then make some DVDs. can you see a quality difference?
i imagine you would.
especially on the text.

but i really wouldn’t know without seeing. i once used a lower res on a music video and it looked better for that project.
if it turns out you do like the proxy look, you can always edit it in a Prores timeline for better text

Harddrive space has never been cheaper, FWIW.

“As for Aux timecode, I’m still somewhat hazy on the process…. Can you give me more detail on HOW to apply it? ”

have a look in the Modify TC window. you’ll see a field for Aux TC, but you have to check the “Aux TC box first to make it active.

actually, i just learnt something. ticking that box would be a drag,
BUT you can bring up the Aux Reel column in the browser, and give all your clips an Aux reel#

you CAN apply reel# as a batch.
enter it for one clip,
then select the others, and right click in the Aux Reel column, and chose the new reel#

now all those clips have an aux reel#, and now when you go into the Modify TC window, the Aux TC field is active.
so you can use TAB to get to it.

problem is you have to copy the actual TC,
then paste it into the Aux TC field, THEN apply the offset.

a lot of this just a string of shortcuts,
and as such is very easy to program as a macro using a tool such as QuickKeys (i use that for all sorts of things in FCP)
there are other apps, cheaper than quickkeys, but that;s just the one i use.

there is a tool for batch modifying Quicktime TC tracks from Video Toolshed.
https://www.videotoolshed.com/product/42/qtchange

i wonder if it can add the existing TC to the Aux TC track.
or maybe apply an offset???
it doesn’t say as much,
but the guy who makes it, Bouke, is approachable, and may consider a request.

the idea of not messing up your existing TC seems important to me.
i know you are in a camera>FCP>final workflow, so it’s not important for re-capturing at a higher res,
BUT what if in three years time your clients come back and need something done again, or whatever.
accurate TC means you can deal with that, assuming you have the original cards backed up somewhere.

of course you know your market and workflow better than me. i’m just throwing some ideas out there.

oh, one more thing.
have you had a look at Pluraleyes?
https://www.singularsoftware.com/howto_pe_finalcut.html
that syncs multicam clips based on audio. might work for you .
you can try the demo.

good luck with your projects,
nick

[Nick Meyers]

“Altering timecode for multiple clips…can it be done all at once?”

no.
but there are ways to streamline the operation.

i’ll assume you have your clips aid out in a timeline, and each camera’s clips are on a specific track.
in that case double click the first clip into the viewer.
you can now jump from clip to clip using the left arrow to jump forward and the right arrow to jump back.

starting on the first clip, open Modify > Timecode.
give this a shortcut if you want to do it quickly.

as for changing the timecode, if you have a constant offset, it’s as simple as using that mathematically.
by which i mean you can very simply just type in your offset (+101, or whatever.)

AUX TC
is accessible in the modify TC window,
using that will add more work, probably worthwhile.

once you’ve set it, “Sync by AUX TC should be an option when making your multiclips

i have to admit there are a few question marks around your workflow.

using Proxy res, with no plan for re-capture is a worry.

your TC is off by “a few minutes”? that’s really quite extreme!
you need to synchronise the cameras at the start of each day, and they shouldn’t drift by more that a second or two.

you might be interested in this free app from Sphericp FilmTools:
Sequence Liner, it lays out clips in FCP according to their time-codes
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools/

cheers,
nick

[Nick Meyers]

i have often played a file off a Macpro,
but there is a lot that can go wrong.
you need a long time to tweak and get it right, find all the potential pitfalls.
by “a lot of time” i don’t mean 2 hours,
i mean a full day at least

dropframes are possible.
the better your graphics card, the better your playback.

having minimum amount of stuff on your desktop can help, esp if you are going the “second desktop” approach
make sure the computer or the display is not set to go to sleep EVER.

for presentation niceties, have a black image you can set your desktop to.
(remember the QT file will close it self on completion)

setting the refresh rate of the display is important.
i got best play-back of my 24fps file on a projector that offered a 96khs option.
i only ever saw that on a very expensive projector.

presenting the QT file to the projector as a second desktop can seem like a neat idea,
but having an I/O card in the Mac Pro, and giving a genuine VIDEO signal to the projector is a much better image.
and seems to not be so dependent on the refresh rate.

we had a Kona card and i found using the very simple AJA TV app to be reliable.
(maybe less taxing on the system that FCP?)
Blackmagic have a similar app.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

Adrian, like you i prefer working in the timeline.
after syncing and linking, i believe you can just COPY the synced clips and paste them in a new bin.
this becomes your source media.

however, that’s not how i’ve approached this in the past.
what i do is to double click each clip into the viewer,
then make a subclip.

this trims the audio so it doesn’t extend past the ends of the picture.
this is kind of essential if you are wanting to make multiclips
(or was last time i tried)

nick

[Nick Meyers]

“its just a reference to the original media”

that indeed is one meaning of “Rroxy”,
but Prores Proxy is self contained media, not a reference.
it’s “proxy” in that it’s really too low in quality to use for final products.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

use Mpeg Streamclip to convert to ProRes for use in FCP.

you can try working direct from the DVD, but if that has copyright protection,
then you’ll need to use Mac The Ripper to get the files from the DVD to your computer first,
then use Mpeg Streamclip.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

there is NO way to do this in an “automated” fashion the way you describe.
your best best would involve a fair bit of rotoscoping and lots of animation, sampling form adjacent / similar frames, etc, etc.

even then, i’d be surprised if you could get away with 2 whole seconds of fabricated human right there in the middle of the screen.

i could be wrong.
i wonder what the OP’s solution eventually was?

nick

[Nick Meyers]

i’ve had to do this a fair bit.
generally it’s because i’ve got multiple live takes, and best audio is from one, and best picture is from another.
generally i’m just dipping into the non-sync take. a whole song would be harder,
but here is my approach:

do an edit on the take you want to use.
do the best edit you can on it.
then
take that edit,
and lay it up in a new sequence against the audio you need to use.

lock the OK audio tracks and just go though the whole edit pulling it into sync.
don’t be fussy about this.
as soon as it’s a frame out of sync (or sooner really) trim a frame.
doesn’t matter if it’s in the middle of a shot,
or if you have 3 or 4 trims in the middle of a shot.

once you are done with this process, copy the sequence.
now go though the copy and start cleaning up the edits
using either the roll tool or the extend function.

the trick is that you can get away with slightly loose sync at the start of most shots as long as they then come into sync.

one freaky thing i found was that on some shots i could add or remove frames invisibly.
depends on how much movement there is of course.
i had a close up of a singer once and needed to remove some frames.
i found that if i did it on their natural “holds” it would work
in the line “cos i-i-i-i-i will always love you-o-o-o-o” the holds would be pretty much where the dashes are

of course if your two sources are WAY out of sync then you can start looking for cutaways etc.
how out of sync are they?
i had to do a clip once where it needed a frame removed every second.
no tricks worked there.
it just looked stepy.

a strobe filter will make that look intentional!

nick

[Nick Meyers]

you cant assign any value or effect to individual tracks,
BUT
you can assign a specific OUTPUT to an individual track.
so if you have an i/o card with lots of audio outs you can set your timeline up so that specific tracks send to specific outputs.

you do all this in the sequence settings > audio outputs panel.

if your audio card is feeding a mixer you are all set.
QuickTime Movie exports from this timeline will have separate mono audio tracks for each separate output.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

ok, i got this to work last week

now some of these steps may be redundant, or not necessary for your particular projects.
i was kind of working in a belts and braces AND elastic kind of way as i didn’t have time to test & fine tune.
but i’m pretty sure all these steps helped get the results we did.

============================

Copy Sequence to new project.

Delete all vision.

Select all audio, UNLINK ALL (Apple -L)

Create Master Clips (group if needed)
(this step was necessary for us, as the edit had been gong for a couple of years, and there were weird master / affiliate mismatches. it was better to GROUP all clips to ONE master file)

Media Manage
– create offline
– don’t delete
– base media file names on FILE NAMES

(“create offline” worked for us as the audio files had not been given reel#s, so carried though into the offline project)

new project will open
Sort Audio Clips by “Offline”
(as some may be audio from Video clips, they will be offline due to reel name. it was easier to see the results if i sorted them out)
Rename Clips to Match Files.

reconnect all offline clips. (camera sound)

check picture by pasting in pic from original seq, and checking sync TC

now make your OMF

============================

we had 5 spools in this project, so did this process 5 times, once for each spool.

hope that works for you-all out there.

cheers,
nick