[Robert Neil]

Thanks for the responses. I have no reason to be partisan re: BM/Kona, I have access to a couple of places and both brands. I happen to have tested in the BM establishment and the footage looked rock solid via SDI, whether it was a DVCPro HD Quicktime being downconverted or a PAL Quicktime playing through the digi deck natively.

In any case, maybe one issue is easily resolved:

Assuming I play out from the DVC Pro HD timeline rather than downconverting in Compressor/FCP, EITHER via Blackmagic/Kona or Matrox MXO, how do I make my credits behave like smooth PAL credits and not jerky progressive DVC Pro HD ones? I have tested making credits in the DVC Pro HD timeline and downconverting to PAL, and they remain v jerky. When I start a PAL timeline with footage which has already been downconverted and create the credit crawl in there they are silky smooth…

[Robert Neil]

Thanks chaps – I think the answer to my question is ‘no’…

I can see why you might have rolled your eyes at my question Walter, but disengaging the audio tracks (which I am proud to say is already part of my skillset) is too many clicks – I have 4 audio tracks enabled / tabbed (working from P2 cards with 4 tracks of audio which are needed elsewhere in the project.)

If I click all 4 audio tabs that’s 8 x clicks to get them disengaged then re-engaged, plus the drag-and-drop.

If leave the audio track tabs alone, and drag and drop the clip on an empty area of timeline then alt-select the 4 x audio tracks and hit delete/backspace that’s only three clicks/keystrokes.

But don’t you agree it would be handy to be able to do a qualified drag/drop with clips from the browser/viewer that left the audio behind?

[Robert Neil]

Actually let me take back the last comment about getting an AJA IO HD, and not waste anybody’s time by posting on the old Kona vs Io HD thing. I think my original plan to get a Kona LHE for the Mac Pro is much better value for money, I don’t need to be able to digitize on the road, and I already have a Matrox MXO for outputting versatility from my MBP.

[Robert Neil]

OK chaps, thanks for the responses.

Does anyone think the following plan is fundamentally flawed:

Put an extra 2 x 500 GB drives into the Mac Pro. Add an eSata card to the build. Use the Caldigit S2VR Duo which I have (which I know will handle full HD Prores 422 HQ without hiccups) as my edit drive, 1 TB in RAID 0. Use the 2 x 500 GB drives in the Mac Pro as ‘manual RAID 1’ to backup all the material I’ve got digitized in the eSata CalDigit thing for a given project, and as overflow if I’ve got more than one project to juggle.

And When I get to edit a project that requires 444/uncompressed HD, then that is when I will get a faster set of drives. (And get that production to pay for it 🙂 )

And use the cash I save to get an AJA IO HD rather than a Kona LHE (a question on which I am about to start another thread.)

Whaddya reckon?

[Robert Neil]

OK, I’m finding it easy to get my head around what needs to be done, but pretty hard to get the result I need – i.e. a clean and wholesome stereo AIFF at the right length and pitch to match to my video files (in this case I am outputting numbered TIFs at 1920×1080 to be played back on film at 24 fps, having been shot on HDCam at 25 fps).

Do I have the following right?

I can do the change of duration in a couple of ways: in FCP I can do a speed change to 96%. In STP I can select the -4% pulldown option in project settings (though this seems to affect playback only, I haven’t figured out how to export a file that retains the pulled-down duration.) OR in STP I can use Time Stretch (or whatever it’s called) to get the audio timeline/clip to its required length. which is the best, and how the heck do the latter two work?

I can do the +4% pitch shift in a few ways. I can use AUPitch in FCP or in STP. The results in both programs seems to be pretty crappy – voices sound a bit unnatural, music has odd things going on. If one did use AUPitch can anyone give advice about how to use the other parameters in the clip (Smooth, etc) to improve results? I can use Pitch Shift II in STP. But how do I know what setting to use to get a precise +4% shift?

I’ve been googling and having a poke through the manuals but no cigar so far… Cinema Tools I have never opened, and hope to be able to fix this without bringing a 3rd program into the equation.

What’s to stop me sending the 25p timeline to Compressor and asking it to convert to true 24 fps (not the 23.xxx NTSC 24p), video and audio and all?

Or should I stop going round in circles and sleep on it?!?!?!

[Robert Neil]

“PS what format are those files that aren’t 48k? They aren’t mp3s are they?”

/looks guilty…

Moving swiftly on, having eliminated the pop problem…

The project pulldown setting in ST yields perfect results, but how do I get the now correctly timed and pitched audio out of there? When I try to export a stereo AIFF it reverts to the original timing and pitch.

(Not sure I need to go to 23.98, I am having this audio transferred to film, straight 24 fps right?)

[Robert Neil]

Hi Jeremy

Yes, everything was rendered, but I did remember that a couple of the effects I used were not originally 48000Mhz (though surely they should have been converted in the audio render files?). I’m having a lot more luck going back and forth in Soundtrack. An AIFF of the whole timeline (exported from STP) is a lot more stable than my original audio tracks in FCP.

However I am having trouble settling on the right settings for the pitch shift.

What is the cleanest and easiest way to handle this, between FCP and STP? I see promising things in STP but have never used them: there’s the 4% audio pulldown setting in prefs, but how to apply this? There’s also time shift and pitch shift II, as well as the STP implementation of AUPitch, which is a lot better in that program…

[Robert Neil]

And just tried putting the 4% speed shift (ie length of clip) on after the pitch shift, again made it sounds even worse…

[Robert Neil]

Hmm just tried applying it to the non mixed-down sequence and it sounds horrendous, all cuts have minor explosions…

Time to experiment with SoundtracK ?

[Robert Neil]

Duh 🙂

Thanks Tom !!