Paul Ingvarsson
Forum Replies Created
-
Hi Tim,
I’m mostly an Avid Symphony and DS Online editor – here is my take.
It sounds like you’re using mostly firewire and domestic kit so I would suggest the cleanest solution is to use an edl to transfer your project to the Avid so that they can reconform from there.
Although this would yield the best results as error correction in studio grade DV decks often gives better quality pictures out of an SDI O/P I am guessing you’ve already passed off this train of thought.
Second option is to output your sequence to DV anamorphic. This can be captured by the avid as normal (avid does not differentiate between 4:3 and 16:9 media). Also output your timeline as an edl (for edit point reference – Avid Symphony can automatically place add edits in a source clips based on an EDL – if you need more info on this let me know).
In Apple software there is a bold distintion between Anamorphic and 4:3 media – in most other places this is not the case. For example there are no settings on a Digibeta to select 4:3 or 16:9 – the only way to tell is by looking at the footage by eye – or reading the label someone has put on it to say 16:9 or 4:3. So yes – Digi supports 16:9 Anamorphic.
In Avid symphony there is a tool called ‘Reformat’ this is a dedicated 10 bit ARC (Aspect ratio converter) that will on a clip by clip basis – or whole timeline modify your footage to be 4:3 center cut out (that can be panned left or right to maximise the framing of your subject) or 16:9 Letter box – ie no need to hire a seperate ARC – that cannnot selectely Pan and Scan.
Hope this helps, good luck,
Paul
Freelance DS/Symphony
London -
Are you looking at user bits rather than timecode??
Paul
-
I’ve just done a job that involved lots of freezes and slowmo’s – just wait until you try to get those into motion! I ended up exporting each layer from FCP as a Quicktime to the treat in motion.
As a guess the B&W cc may have to be performed with one of the effects that DOES translate from FCP to motio – there must be a table of supported effects out there (ie 3 Way CC probably doesn’t work)
Paul
Freelance DS/Symphony
London -
A wild guess but take a look in the Shake forum where there have been discussions about the 10bit codecs not working properly in QT7 –
Good luck
Paul
Freelance DS/Symphony
London -
Hi Walter,
As i’m sure you know – although 1080i and 1080p are technically the same once on tape and generally 1080 is considered an interlaced format – if my client shoots 1080 @ 25p then I should be able to stay within the progressive environment. I want my animated scales and pans and wipes to be rendered progressive – hence rendering in frames (seqs prefs set to ‘none’). 1080 can be a progressive format if you feed it progressive frames – I do this all the time on DS. I ended up outputting to tape live – no problems whatsoever with actually putting the media on tape – just getting the ‘edit to tape’ tool to accept that things would be ok if it just got on with it rather than complaining that my seq preset doesn’t match my output.
All I need to do is somehow make an output preset match the sequence preset – but i don’t know how to do that – i’ve created new sequence presets and easy presets – but I cannot select them in my device control in the ‘edit to tape’ tool…
All the best,
Paul
-
Hello Simon,
Avid capture 720×576 (assuming you are not digitising at an ‘s’ or ‘m’ resolution.
The black borders on either side of your frame are called ‘analogue blanking’, it’s a now defunct feature of older analogue systems – those black line actually occupy part of your 720 pixel horizontal picture resolution. Digibeta when digitised does not have these black lines (although I think you can set a Digibeta to blank these areas for you on playback).
Someone else very elegantly explained why we have the option of exporting to square pixels, which is now becoming more questionable as newer versions of the Photoshop family have built in support for drawing and displaying non square pixel formats.
I’m not sure if Avid fails to flag the field dominace in it’s QT exports or After Effects ignores them. But within the After Effects program directory (i think) you should find a document called ‘interpretation rules.txt’ within there is a long header that explains how to modify the document to suit your needs – basically you tell it to always import PAL footage upper field first.
If you are doing commercial work, you might very well be dealing exclusively with frame based material – if that is the case it doesn’t matter what your interpretation settings are you will always see corret results. As long as you render upper field first to get back to the avid (assuming you are rending in fields) you will also still see good results.
Hope this helps,
Paul
Freelance DS/Symphony
London -
Mel,
I asked a similar question just a couple of days ago – i’m really happy with my edirols MA20’s
https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=124&postid=854755
Paul
Freelance DS/Symphony
London -
usually in this example your matte track will be locked but you can still subclip the contents of the matte and fill track and then just cut your imported matte only into your edit on the master timeline. I would beware of doing this as it could well restrict batch import if you were to revisit the project after deleting the media.
Paul
Freelance DS/Symphony
London -
I’ve been doing this just today on the same setup as you have – with no problems.
Are you trying to capture uncompresed HD to your internal drives? Obviously you won’t be able to do this – try the Blackmagic DVCPro HD 1080 codec in 8 bit and see if you get the same problems.
Paul
Freelance DS/Symphony
London -
Why not connect the deck to the FW400 port? The tearing may only be apparent on your computer display – it’s best not to make any picture analysis on the canvas itself it has no bearing on what you will actually see when you edit back to tape. Hook up a monitor to your deck and set up FCP to output to the deck while you edit.
Paul
Freelance DS/Symphony
London