[Richard Sanchez]

Baz,

It’s problematic doing audio edits to HDCAM, or are tape edits in general problematic going to HDCAM? Maybe is an issue with tweaking device control settings?

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Richard Sanchez]

That sometimes is what scares me. I’d rather just be safe and relay the whole act over. There’s no better way to spoil your day than to get a phone call from network QC!

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Richard Sanchez]

“Why is codec “None” offering 8 bits per pixel for alpha masking when almost no video has alpha masking”

If you’ve ever had to transfer footage to graphics house, or are integrating animation from a graphics house, you’ll work with video with embedded alpha channels all the time. The old method of doing it, would be to lay the graphic back to tape, and then lay the alpha channel (which will appear as a greyscale image) back to tape and use that as a luma travel matte. This is pretty standard workflow for sending footage and from graphics houses.

It isn’t just None that supports this, Apple Animation does, Avid DNxHD does, it would be nice if a new release of Apple Pro Res did.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Richard Sanchez]

I’ve never been able to do successful audio punches within Final Cut, like you might punch audio in pro tools or the like. I thought I was doing it wrong, but I had another editor explain to me that the tape deck pre rolls, but since Final Cut does not, it tends to create audio pops at the insert point. This works fine for video fixes, but makes audio fixes a pain. That said, whenever I had to do audio fixes to tape, I would typically relay the entire act, from the commercial break spots.

I could be totally wrong, because I’ve read about other editors doing audio inserts and being alright, but I’ve never had success doing punches, so I would try just relaying the entire act.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Richard Sanchez]

Millions of Colors + refers to the images being an RGB + Alpha Channel. If you render as Millions of Colors, it’s just RGB no alpha information.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Richard Sanchez]

Is the sequence audio to a different sample rate? It sounds like a sample issue if the sync drifts like that over time. Was he editing in a different timebase than you?

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Richard Sanchez]

Final Cut doesn’t do a very good job scaling, and especially if you’re trying to preserve text being shrunk down, you’d be much better off doing something like this in After Effects, or maybe even Motion. I don’t mess with Motion much, but it’s worth a shot there.

The other thing is, if you’re in a DV sequence, the DV codec is not good for graphics or anything with sharp contrast. Graphics and lower thirds tend to look very bad in a DV sequence. You could try changing your sequence compression to DV50 or Pro Res (this will make your render files significantly larger, but it will handle the graphics better).

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Richard Sanchez]

Weird. You did the same process on another project and it worked? I had that problem recently were I was trying to use the copy feature with “Delete Unused Media” hoping it would chop off the extraneous media, and had the same issue you had. I noticed that if I set it to recompress (to the same codec mind you) then it will reduce the storage needs as you would expect. Since it was an actors reel, and mainly material captured off of dvds anyway, I used that option to consolidate and archive that project.

I assumed from this that when you hit the copy tab, the “Delete unused media” doesn’t apply (despite it not being greyed out).

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Richard Sanchez]

Since it’s only a four minute sequences, you could create an offline that deletes the unused media. Batch capture with handles and then archive that. True, it would be a bit of a hassle but that’d be one way to do it.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Richard Sanchez]

You have a Kona 3 and an IO? I would think have drivers for both of those products installed simultaneously is a recipe for trouble. I could be wrong, but it might cause conflicts. Also, the audio should be able to be embedded into the SDI signal, so you shouldn’t need the XLR ins anyway.

You could probably use the camera as a VTR, but that’s a really bad idea. I’m sure you were already expecting that answer, but I’m saying it anyway. You won’t be able to recapture later without the timecode that you’d take in via RS-422 from a deck.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks