[Tod Hopkins]

Yup. Precedence and order. Adjustment layers act on the layers below NOT the individual clips. The nested sequence is not 2000 pixels wide from the point of view of the adjustment layer above because it’s moving the layer, not the clip. If you want to change the framing of the nested sequence you have to apply the effect to the nest.

[Tod Hopkins]

In my experience, this is a project-media problem, not a bandwidth problem. This can be the project itself—size, corruption, complex elements—or problematic media. Camera audio is a common culprit, particularly long, multi-track camera originals. Adobe is not great at handling compressed audio. It converts everything and it’s shockingly slow at doing this. And sometimes it gets hung up and wants to cache audio or waveforms every time you start up. It even though it acts like it is caching, that’s not necessarily what’s hanging it up. It’s just the process that’s on-screen when the slowdown occurs.

Divide and conquer. Create new projects and bring in material only as needed, bit by bit, and then see if there is a particular point where this happens with the new project. Consider if it only happens with specific source media. You may need to convert.

Good luck. This can be a difficult problem to solve.

[Tod Hopkins]

Just looked at the specs for QLab. Your issue is probably not your codec but the CRTs. The direct answer to your question, “what is lightest,” is MP4 h.264. For standard definition, a bitrate of 10Mbps would be high-quality and should not be an issue for any modern system.

Your problem is probably a signal issue. You are sending the wrong signal to the CRTs. Most CRTs (in the US) can only handle a true NTSC signal, even if it has a digital input (rare). Your starting file should be 720×486 (non-square) interlaced at 29.97fps, though it may be hard to make an interlaced MP4. Possible in theory but not in practice. More common for interlaced playback would be standard MPEG.

At some point you are doing A/D conversion. You can start with anything your signal convertor can understand but you have to end up with 720x486i29.97 or the CRT cannpt display. That’s assuming this is a television. If it is a computer monitor, well, too complicated to get into here.

[Tod Hopkins]

At the risk of oversimplifying with too little information, those two screenshots are certainly poorly lit for the actors but not necessarily underexposed overall. As the camera person points out, the contrast between the background lights and the actor’s faces is problematic, but I don’t see a fundamental problem that can’t be addressed in grading.

Simply applying a LUT is not the solution though. LUTs are just as likely to foul an image as fix it. They are simply shortcuts, not solutions. First, you need to know the color space the footage was shot in, then use the proper LUT to adjust to what you want, but that’s just a baseline and even the “correct” LUT is not necessarily going to result in a good image. Remember a LUT goes from one space TO another. For instance from Canon Log3 to Rec709. Not to mention you need to apply the transforms properly and be in a properly set and calibrated environment to make good judgements.

There is another issue specific to modern Premiere. Premiere now makes many color space adjustments automatically which may result in doubling up corrections if you don’t take proper steps in the proper order.

My solution when I don’t have the proper information from the shoot and the footage doesn’t look right is to strip all corrections away and correct manually. LUTS are just shortcuts. If they don’t work, ignore them.

[Tod Hopkins]

In a “duh” moment, I realized it was easy to test the max sequence length in Premiere. I can report that it is, indeed, 24 hours. Even setting the sequence to film feet and frames still maxes at 24 hours. Even if you can bring the clip in, you can’t put it in a timeline. FYI this was the current version of PP on Mac.

[Tod Hopkins]

Mind you, like others I don’t have a 24+ clip to test so I don’t know for sure what PP can and can’t do. I’m presuming based on experience and theory. As for stripping the code, there are tools to do this but really you want to convert to a non-time code format (mp4, HEVC, JPEG image sequence, etc) using a tool that does not automatically copy the tc metadata. All these can have tc metadata but they don’t expect tc like ProRes or MXF.

I suggest learning an FFmpeg front end like FFWorks or Shutter Encoder, even Handbrake might work. Handbrake is surprisingly handy if your destination is mp4.

[Tod Hopkins]

Try striping the time code from the file. Rolling time code past 24 hours is problematic because you’ll end up with duplicate, non-ascending code. So you either need to break it apart or switch to an editor not bound by code. Even if you can get the file in this way, Premiere probably can’t create a timeline longer than 24 hours. You can try changing the sequence count to audio units maybe but there is no non-timecode sequence setting.

The simplest path is probably to divide and conquer. Edit in Premiere in two pieces and then reassemble the two exports with a non-TC bound tool like FFWorks.

Or just switch to a control track capable editor to start with.

[Tod Hopkins]

I have a few cheap, off-brands. They all work most of the time. But my very old LaCie and internal Pioneers are still the most reliable, if not the fastest. The LaCie is likely a Pioneer inside (gold standard back in the day), though I’ve never checked. If you are reading lots of old discs, it’s good to have a few options. Not all readers will read all discs, especially DVDs which were notoriously problematic. This is the reason I have several drives. If you want something fast and reliable, get a high-end name brand (Pioneer, Verbatim, Sony, Samsung, Philips, OWC, etc…) with an external power supply (critical), that can read and burn all formats including XL and M-disc.

I also suggest finding a trustworthy supplier of professional-quality discs. Someone whose customers will stop buying if they see high failure rates. Discs change all the time and even the good companies sometimes have bad streaks. Or go with Verbatim Datalife+ if you don’t have the energy. Easy to get and reliable. I prefer white inkjet printables both because they are easy to label (Sharpies are fine) and because the print layer offers a bit of extra scratch protection. For long-term archiving, use “archival” grade discs like M disc.

I also like Unikeep boxes for storage. Very convenient Don’t use non-archival plastics for long-term storage. Stick with archival products, though frankly, I think paper sleeves are perfectly safe, just not very convenient.

[Tod Hopkins]

Check the Mercury Playback audio offset. See screenshot.

Screenshot-2024-03-12-at-9.32.01 AM.png 67 KB Image File - Click to view

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[Tod Hopkins]

Sounds like you might be playing your computer audio through a different path than your Premiere audio. Are you using a DA for Premiere audio out? Premiere has audio delay settings for output for precisely this reason. You may have a natural video delay that Premiere is compensating for.