[Richard Herd]

[Herb Sevush] “However at this point PPro has truly become FCP’s successor”

Ran into a big problem today.

In FCP > STP, you can make picture edits and then conform the audio.

That cannot be done in PP > AU. (I use CS6.)

Now, I’m having to rebuild 25 tracks of audio, because a 5 second sound bite needed to be removed.

I have googled everything. Searched the Creative Cow. Searched Adobe. Nothing.

I figured, bummer, but I can conform it using an EDL. Nope. Then I figured, I could conform it using a hand listed time code. Nope, because in Audition the file timecode is rewritten based on where it is in the sequence. Restating for clarity, Audio1 In(1:24:32:15) Out(1:24:37:13) and it is in the time line at 7:49:16. When I opened the Audio file in Audition the timecode then started at 7:49:16. Surely, I thought, there is a way to change the timecode read-out, but (and again to your excellent point), there is nothing in the manual, there is no video, there is nothing on the Cow.

So I’m rebuilding 3 days of audio work, because the Director wants 5 seconds of audio clipped from the middle.

If anyone has a better solution, I’m all ears.

[Richard Herd]

I ask what the client wants and do that. Sometimes, they don’t know, so they get an h.264 wrapped in mp4 — basically the YouTube preset, although I might slow the bit rate if they know where they are playing it.

Unless we are willing to make a file for every possible deliverable* (a de facto flip factory), there’s not too much in our control.

* HTML 4, HTML 5, YouTube, vimeo, iPad, iPhone, Firefox, IE, Chrome — there seems to be a different secret sauce for every possibility. Currently, actually, YouTube provides the best flipfactorytype secret sauce.

Broadcast is a whole other beast. It can take faster bitrates, but then they need to be FTP’d without being flipped and even if you’re using some kind of upload software for an agency, for example, when the file hits the broadcaster, it will still get flipped to the internal secret sauce! Sometimes, I miss Beta SP.

[Richard Herd]

Project workflow is everything.

The current project I have is about 10 minutes of corporate/industrial of 6 different shooters delivered greenscreen talking head footage, of 14 people. Slightly different lighting and slightly different audio, but all professional.

I don’t get to use it for this project because I’m waiting for capital approval, but the benefit X would provide is the way audio is contained in the video. Right now, in PP.cs6 each speaker’s audio is on a different track, so I can mix them, but, because it’s a jump-cutty style, each speaker’s audio requires 2 tracks, so the J and L cuts are nifty. CTRL-S (split editing) in X is simply a very good idea.

I’m open to fixing my CS6 workstyle if someone has a better idea.

[Richard Herd]

Compression technique is its own thing. It takes some experimenting. Below, there is a good thread on it. Uploading to youtube, vimeo, etc. will never have the same high quality as the original. Mostly that has to do with bit rate. The internet forces us to make a tradeoff between bitrate and raster. When the video is uploaded to youtube, vimeo, etc. it is flipped to many formats so the video can be screened on multiple browsers, HTML 4, iPads, iPhones, Android, and so on. You want make sure you upload the format required by youtube, vimeo, etc. so when they flip it into their special sauce, it gets the best quality possible — but that quality will have some loss here and there.

Here is a more detailed explanation. MTS video is not like film, a series of individual images. It is already very compressed. The first frame, called the Intraframe, the I-frame, contains all the video information, rgb and pixels. The next frame contains what has changed, and the frame after that contains what has changed again. And so on, for about 15 frames (1/2 second). Then a new I-frame. When you make an edit that is not on an I-frame, the computer renders an I-frame anyway. (Not so long ago, the processing of that render was really difficult, but contemporary computers can handle it.) In the compression software, the I-frames are called key frames.

Long story short, you can also improve the quality of an image by lowering the number of key frames. You can also force key frames on scene breaks, and I haven’t needed to do that since I switched to CS6, but it was a normal procedure in FCP 7.

Those strategies will increase the file size and bit rate, but will add some quality.

[Richard Herd]

[Bret Williams] “collaborative workflows”

I can think of two types of collaborative workflow.

The hard one to do is the Isis working on the same assets simultaneously workflow like reality tv.

The easy one is duplicated assets, checking in, checking out, versioning and so on.

It appears that has become the defining characteristic in this forum for pro: duplicated assets v. same assets.

What other workflows are collaborative?

[Richard Herd]

Where are you storing your media files and render files?

[Richard Herd]

Also follow the guidelines exactly.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

https://vimeo.com/help/compression

However, when you upload a video in their prescribed way, they also “flip them” to formats for every possible device and browser. They will all be less than ideal.

It’s also extremely important that during production you get a proper exposure.

[Richard Herd]

[Todd Terry] “we’re tapped out”

Bullshit.

[Richard Herd]

Court case: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/movies/filmmaker-wins-case-against-irs.html?_r=0

[Richard Herd]

WOW! I wish I wish I wish for CC. Soon but not yet.

What about Dynamics Processor and side chain input, is that in CC (currently it is in CS6 Audition)? Just curious Since everything I output is crunched to -12 dB I spend quite a bit of energy gain staging the compression.