[Tony Young]

Some very good info at kenstone.net–needs updating a bit, but is helpful.

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/you_tube_redux_gary.html

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/youtube_compressor_gary.html

[Tony Young]

Would you get any better quality if you digitized DVCAM tapes to ProRes in the first place and then put them on a Prores timeline?

Or would it be the same quality to use the DVCAM footage that has been digitized to DVNTSC and then placed on a Prores timeline?

[Tony Young]

Good question–still undecided, as it hasn’t been sold to a broadcaster yet. As most of the footage is SD, I would guess that it’ll be SD–so maybe BetaSP or DigiBeta.

[Tony Young]

In the past, I’ve exported a DV movie for ProTools, though that was an old suite they had. It worked, though–just the File >> Export >> Quicktime conversion >> DV STREAM. That gives a .dv tag at the end of the file, but I’m not sure what is the optimal file for a Pro Tools is to import. I’m sure some of these guys would know. In the meantime, I know that has worked in the past.

Also, in the past, I’ve run into an issue with OMFs on long projects with many tracks (1 hour/18 tracks) where the OMF exceeded 2GB and an error message came up saying 2GB exceeds the maximum capacity of the format. Anyone ever run into that? I had to break it into 2 9 track OMFs.

[Tony Young]

Thanks, Dave. The After Effects idea is a good one, and the HAL effect is the kind of thing I’m looking for. Sounds tricky, but I bet that’s about the only way to make it happen. I’m not terrific in After Effects–I wonder if there’s anything in SoundTrack that would work.

It’s odd that the variable speed option in FCP doesn’t effect audio, as far as I can tell. I’m still on 5.1, so maybe it’s been changed.

Anyhow, thanks for the idea!

[Tony Young]

The real-time audio tracks are probably the issue, as Steven pointed out. I’ve definitely had that happen before–changed the real-time tracks to 12 (or something) and it was fine. No more beeping or rendering.

[Tony Young]

Thanks, Rafael. That’s interesting. Perhaps it’s the way we digitized it? Or maybe there was an adjustment between 6.0 and 6.02?

I certainly noticed the same issues with PhotoJPEG between the running gamma and the playhead stopped gamma–in Final Cut 5.1. So that must be a standard function of the codec.

Hmm. We brought our footage in on a blackmagic card through SDI. I believe we’re at QT 7.4 as well. Maybe that’s different than transcoding from DV or Prores. Maybe it’s a blackmagic photojpeg issue?

Maybe it’s a timeline setting in 6 that we didn’t adjust when we tried to go to that version? Tough to tell.

I phoned Apple and discussed with a tech yesterday, sent him some QT samples, so he was going to try a few tests and see what he could come up with. He had never heard of folks using PhotoJPG as an online codec. Anyhow, hopefully that yields a few answers.

Sheer sounds like a great option. Actually, it sounds terrific. So–it’s completely lossless at half the file size? What kind of mb/s do you get for standard def?

Anyhow, thanks for all your help!

[Tony Young]

Perhaps something for the same folks looking for the ‘best setup’ about ‘best codecs’ to use for SD and HD?

[Tony Young]

Thanks for the reply, Rafael. I know it’s not a common codec, but it worked well for us in SD for the past couple of years. Very low file sizes for the quality–far better visual quality than DV, about the same as DV50, which ran about 7mb/sec.

The only other stuff I’ve been able to find about this issue is on the LAFCUG forum — https://www.lafcpug.org/phorum/read.php?4,192516,192516
That guy has about the same problem I do, but I’ve been lurking here for years, so I thought I’d ask.

Good question about the YCbCr. I do remember messing with that years ago, and we went back to RGB.

Hey, if you could digitize a couple clips in PhotoJPEG in 6.0.3 and try rendering a transition in YCbCR, that would be fantastic. Maybe there’s some other setting in 6 that we missed. Maybe a sequence setting? I wonder if there would be someone at Apple we could talk to directly about an issue like this?

Honestly, I haven’t had many issues in the past few years that I haven’t been able to fix by dumping prefs or a simple restart, so a major issue like this is all new. Thanks for any ideas.

[Tony Young]

Hey there,
Does anyone know if the gamma bug for FCP 6/ photo jpeg was ever fixed? Like some of the other folks, we have hundreds of hours of photo jpeg footage digitized, and haven’t gone to FCP 6 because of the problem.