Richard Sanchez
8
Avid Coins
17
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
-
Is it no longer compatible with current versions of Avid? I saw it’s still available at https://www.automaticduck.com/products/download/
Richard Sanchez
Los Angeles, CA“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks
-
1:1 sounds like massive overkill. Your intended workflow is to transcode first at your finishing resolution and then transcode to low res for offline? First off, I’d recommend you look at QTChange. https://www.videotoolshed.com/product/42/qtchange This program will allow you to apply the timecode information from the THM file and embed it into the Quicktime file, so you can retain timecode and reel name when working in Avid. Next, I’d transcode your footage to DNxHD 115 (I’m assuming your footage is 23.976, but if it’s 29.97, you can transcode to DNxHD 145). DNxHD is still very high quality and is used for finishing, but the file sizes will be significantly smaller than 1:1.
If you link via AMA and then trancode, it generally transcodes faster than just importing. I thought you could AMA quicktime files in Media Composer 4, but it may not have been added until 5.
Richard Sanchez
Los Angeles, CA“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks
-
Transcoding to SD does seem to take less time than transcoding to HD, though I’m assuming just because it’s less data to write. Not significantly less time, but a little less.
Richard Sanchez
Los Angeles, CA“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks
-
When going low res, I usually offline at 15:1s, or in the case of our show our 59.94i material is coming in at 10:1m and our 23.976 is coming in at 8:1m. The m resolutions are very low resolutions originally made for multicam. They’re very blocky, but require very little drive space and bandwidth. If you’re in an HD project, you won’t see them available, but as soon as you switch the format tab to SD you’ll see them come available to you. The quality is very low, but we’re shooting about 400 discs an episode, so we need to preserve storage space. If you have the space, good ole’ DV wouldn’t be a bad way to offline as well.
Richard Sanchez
Los Angeles, CA“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks
-
Do you plan to do an offline at low res? If so, then the transcode will take time. In general, I find it’s faster to link to AMA and transcode than it is to import. However, if you plan to edit high res, you might try setting your format tab to HD. Are you 23.976 or 59.94i? In any event, make sure your format tab matches both raster size and frame rate, and set your import media creation settings to XDCAM 50Mbs, and you might be able to fast import.
Richard Sanchez
Los Angeles, CA“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks
-
That’s strange. I’m currently working on a show shot XDCAM 50Mbs and we haven’t experienced that issue. We’re mixing framerates at 59.94i ad 23.976p. I have noticed that the 59.94i clips take significantly longer to transcode than the 23.976, but haven’t noticed any issues outside of that.
We’re using U1 and U2 drives, and strangely enough have noticed that transcodes go much faster on the U1s than on the U2s, despite them being marketed to read faster. I’m assuming part of that is due to the fact that the U2 is USB3 based, but has to conform to the Mac Pros USB2 ports.
Are you using a U1, U2, or a 1600 deck? Also, what version of Avid?
Richard Sanchez
Los Angeles, CA“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks
-
I personally hate Squeeze, however, if you’re on a Mac, you can now buy Compressor completely separate from Final Cut Pro. It’s only $50, and I prefer it for compression.
Richard Sanchez
Los Angeles, CA“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks
-
Did you render to your system drive? If the Avid is trying to read off of your system drive, or a full hard drive, that might account for why it drops frames after rendering, but not when reading the unrendered media.
Richard Sanchez
Los Angeles, CA“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks
-
I’ve seen a similar issue on the show I’m currently working on. Our workflow is all XDCAM based, and our plan was to ingest on the cheap using all U1 and U2 drives. Mount XDCAM disc, AMA, transcode for offline. The plan was then to assign tape names to each of XDCAM disc, and then use an F1600 deck to batch capture for online. The theory being, save money on ingest buy renting U1 drives for offline, but batch capture the old fashioned reliable way. What we found in testing this workflow was that our timecode was consistently off by 12 frames. Every single clip had to be slipped 12 frames. Weird things is, sometimes 12 frames forward, sometimes 12 frames backward, but always 12 frames.
In doing some investigation, we looked at the starting timecode of the transcoded clips versus the clips when linked in AMA, and indeed the timecode was off. We never modified the timecode so, this was very strange behavior.
I then tested a workflow where I decomposed my sequence for offline. I found that I couldn’t point the AMA linked clips to link to the new offline master clips, but if I made subclips out of all of those master clips, that the AMA linked clip would link to those subclips. I then transcoded those subclips to my High Res workspace, one tape at a time. With all that media now on the high res workspace, I relinked the offline master clips to that it came online perfectly accurate. to expedite making subclips out of exist master clips, I exported an ALE of the bin with my master clips, and then imported that ALE to the same bin, with the shotlog import option “Merge Events with known sources and automatically create subclips”
It’s not the most straightforward process, but I tested the workflow several times and it was perfectly accurate each time despite the straight timecode variations I was experiencing.
Richard Sanchez
Los Angeles, CA“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks
-
You need to copy the MXF files into the Avid Media Files > MXF > 1 and delete the pmr and mdb files. (Those are your database files) Avid will rebuild the database, and then drag the AAF into a bin.
Richard Sanchez
Los Angeles, CA“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks