[Ron Dawson]

I always use 48k.

Ron Dawson
Executive Producer/President
Dare Dreamer Media

Creating films that inspire and encourage the human spirit.

*** Dream Out Loud ***

[Ron Dawson]

I’ve now done three encoding tests for the same number of h.264 clips. 49 min of footage. 2 of the tests were encoded to xdcam, but taken from source files on different drives (one drobo and one seagate external), and one of the tests was a prores422 encode from the seagate. All the clips were transcoded with MPEG Streamclip 1.9.2 on OS 10.6.2 to one long 49 min clip. ALL THREE experience the same problem. The audio drift within itself. I’m using FCP 606.

I thought (prayed/hoped) encoding to ProRes would solve the problem and it didn’t. I’m going to try encoding the clips on the MBP to XDCAM to see if it’s an iMac issue.

I can’t believe no one can figure this out. If there are any Apple people on this thread, I could really use a miracle here.

I bought the FCP upgrade (which I’m loathe to do in the middle of a bunch of big projects, but this audio drift issue will be problematic for me on these projects if they persist). I hope that’ll solve the problem.

Ron Dawson
Executive Producer/President
Dare Dreamer Media

Creating films that inspire and encourage the human spirit.

*** Dream Out Loud ***

[Ron Dawson]

Wow. Thanks for the thorough explanation Jerry. For this immediate project I’ll use DVDProHD. Once I can upgrade to FCP7, I’ll use one of the lighter forms of ProRes.

Thanks again.
—

Ron Dawson
Executive Producer/President
Dare Dreamer Media

Creating films that inspire and encourage the human spirit.

*** Dream Out Loud ***

[Ron Dawson]

I transcoded the selected clips to ProRes and that solved the problem. I’ve never had an issue like this before in the past 14 months I’ve been shooting with DSLRs (well, actually, only one other time).

I know ProRes is a higher quality codec, but 90% of my projects end up on the web at 640×360 and I do a lot of post work with Magic Bullet. Just doesn’t seem to make financial sense to triple or quadruple my hard drive investment to start using a codec that is 3-6x the size what I’m currently doing (even ProResLT). It’s a numbers game. For the occasional project that goes to broadcast, or requires heavy green screen, or will be shown at true HD size, I could see doing those in ProRes. But ALL of my projects? Just don’t know.

But perhaps there are other considerations I’m missing. I’d love to hear people’s thoughts.