[Richard Sanchez]

Four way stripe refers to a RAID 0 configuration, where four hard drives work as one for increased throughput. However, for 10 bit uncompressed HD you’ll need more like 8 drives for that kind of throughput. You might want to look into an external raid tower by CalDigit or something similar.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

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

[Richard Sanchez]

I’m assuming with 10 GB of ram you have 4 2GB ram modules, and 2 1 GB modules. Remove the 1 GB modules. We had this problem with our mac pros. If your ram isn’t paired up evenly, the system doesn’t utilize the RAM as efficiently as possible. We had this problem were it wouldn’t allow us to playback our timelines in High quality, but once we removed those 1 GB modules, we had no more problems.

However, dropping frames probably has much more to do with your hard drives. What kind of a setup are you using? If you’re using a four way stripe you should be fine, any less than that would explain problems playing back 10 bit. Likewise, are we talking 10 bit Uncompressed or Pro Res (HQ)?

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

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

[Richard Sanchez]

Did you try Log and Transfer? I recently did a job that was shot using a AVCHD camera, though I was only given the SD card, but I just used the Log and Transfer tool and set the preferences to transcode the footage to Pro Res and I was in business.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

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

[Richard Sanchez]

Depending on how your network wants the show delivered should dictate how you want to prep your audio splits, for my broadcaster, they ultimately want a DA88 with Music on Tk 1 & 2, Dialogue 3, TV / Film Clips 4, SFX 5, MED 6 & 7, and Narration on 8, so I diagram out how each episode is going to work.

I usually work in even numbers to keep everything straight, and arrange my VO on tracks 1 & 2 (even though realistically I’ve only ever needed one track), I put all Dialogue on Tk 3 – 6 (even I need that much). Since this is an investigative documentary program, we have a lot of TV and Film clips that I put on Tracks 7 & 8, or 7 -10 if there are overlapping clips or excessing bleeping. Beyond that, I find that the SFX tracks vary depending the graphics, and is never the same so that’s one that you want to write down (I usually create a quick text file to keep my track orders straight) and Music is set below that.

Then, since the texted master requires Stereo Mix & MED undipped, and the textless requires Dialogue at full, SFX at Full, and MED and Final mix level, I separate which sequences I use to create the appropriate stems.

I use my texted master sequence to create my stereo mix stems, and my MED stems (since I only have to disable the VO tracks to get the MED). Then in my textless sequence, I remove all dips for narration from the music, and bring the SFX up to full level (without peaking above -10, as per their spec) and use that to create my Music, SFX, DIA, and NAR stems.

The MED, M&E Undipped, & Stereo Mix are all stereo tracks so I export AIF set to stereo mix for those. As for the others, I export them using quicktime conversion to spit out mono stems. Keep in mind, that if you are creating a mono stem from stereo tracks, you will need to lower the mono stem by 3 db before you lay it back, or it will be too hot.

The handiest keyboard shortcut for moving audio clips around that I use, is option and the arrow keys to move clips up and down tracks without changing their position in the timeline.

This is based on just one broadcaster’s spec, so you should make sure you’re prepping them stems according to how your broadcaster wants them, but this should help.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

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

[Richard Sanchez]

That’s interesting, because certainly I’ve heard all the horror stories of putting 24p material in a 29.97 timeline which made me apprehensive at first with the show I’m working on now, but it worked out fine (being 720p 59.94) and I haven’t noticed any issues with it, and certainly neither has the network.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

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

[Richard Sanchez]

Question #1: Sounds like a bad idea, as far as making an accurate EDL that, sounds like a not good idea. For Question #2, I am doing that for our current show and it works out fine. We work in 23.976 Pro Res sequence, but lay off 59.94 manually cutting in betacam stock footage and DV footage to preserve their framerates fluidity. We’re about three episodes in, and all have passed tech eval fine.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

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

[Richard Sanchez]

We frequently have an issue due to our multiple san setups that cause render issues, which is, when a project is created using a drive with exclusive write access is passed to another system that does not have write access to that drive, if the new user attempts to render, he’ll get the message “File Specified is Locked” However, if we use the Render Manager under tools to flush away the render queue, and render again, the sequences will render fine.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

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

[Richard Sanchez]

More information. What version of Final Cut are you using? Are your scratch disks externals? When you render what error message are you receiving?

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

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

[Richard Sanchez]

Is this a 23.976 project that needs to be laid off 59.94? I learned that earlier, that the keyrames don’t copy over. If this is indeed your workflow, maybe mine will help you. Due to earlier editing decisions, our program is cut at 23.976 but needs to be laid off at 59.94 to preserve the fluidity of motion for the betacam stock footage, and DVD evidence footage that our show very frequently uses.

We do our leveling and mix entirely in Final Cut, and before everybody jumps on me that FCP is not the program to do this, believe you me, there isn’t a person who agrees with you more than me, but that’s what was decided so that’s how it is. That said, I do my mix in my 23.976 sequence and upres the show to 720 23.976. Once that’s all done, the program is exported and laid into a 720 59.94 sequence with all my betacam and DV footage manually cut on top. I split those to their own tracks to make this process quick. Finally lay in the M & E stems, underneath and layoff. I’ve been delivering our program this way and no complaints yet.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

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

[Richard Sanchez]

Specifics regarding text, it was the text generator and not the Boris 3D text. It had the Bad TV effect applied to it (which I hate, but our EP loves!) and randomly the text would stop wiggle (per the effect) and appear black. Also, the show credits (which had no Bad TV effect) didn’t show up at all. When rendered they disappeared completely. It was the strangest thing, but once I reverted it was fine. If there’s anything else about the font, let me know and I’ll tell you.

Regarding the P2 footage, it was DVCPRO HD footage in a Pro Res (HQ) timeline. It was timelapse footage, so it had speed effects of up to %10000 applied to it. I later found out, it was the shots that had both speed effects and motion effects that would freeze. They would play for about a half second and then freeze for the duration of the clip. If I applied a filter or moved the clip, it’d turn to RT Extreme green bar and play out fine, but as soon as I’d render, freeze frame again.

Regarding the specifics of the media in the timeline. It was a Pro Res (HQ) timeline at 23.976 with Varicam footage captured at Pro Res (HQ), DVCPRO HD, and Mini DV. GFX and CG were all delivered as Pro Res (HQ) Quicktime files. I had problems with several DVCPRO HD and Mini DV clips, though moreso with the DVCPRO HD.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

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