[Troy Murison]

I had my own brain fart BTW- PPro does allow for MONITORING of 23.98 footage via FireWire (if your footage/project settings are FW compatible) via the fly-out menu in the monitor window. It allows for inserting either a repeated frame or pseudo 3:2 pulldown. Either one works for monitoring but even not-so-discerning viewers usually notice something a bit odd with the playback, especially using the repeating frame way. But you can use it for basic monitoring on a NTSC monitor before output. But PPro doesn’t allow for proper 3:2 to be inserted for edit to tape or for anything else. It’s really a bummer. Maybe with faster machines/processors available now, Adobe will enable true 3:2 insertion.

-Tony, er, Troy Murison (believe me, I’ve been called, and even answered to, lots worse!) 🙂
Seattle, WA

[Troy Murison]

PPro only accepts/makes CMX 3600 EDLs, so keep that in mind. Also, PPro acts funny with many EDL items, like comments and sometimes transitions and DFTC/NDFTC sources. It does work, but you just have to watch it closely. PPro is VERY limited on what you can control on EDL export- ie: you can’t control sort order, how to handle b-reels, whether or not to include comments/names/notes, etc. In Avid, be sure to consolidate your sequence before exporting your EDL, otherwise you’ll end up doing the same thing in PPro (project trimming) to avoid capturing whole tapes (unless that’s what you want). No point in including clip names, comments, etc. when exporting from Avid, they don’t come through. Also, I would do seperate EDLs for audio unless you are capturing lots of raw footage- then you’d have to capture twice! If that’s the case, just make sure your EDL only includes ch1 and ch2 audio, 3&4 should be none. That’s what I can think of off the top of my head! You would think you could use AAF, but in my experience it just doesn’t work well, if at all. And using PPro AAF in Avid really doesn’t work at all (I’ve never had it work). Good luck!

-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA

[Troy Murison]

You’re right, PPro doesn’t include a tool for placing pulldown into 23.98 footage to get to 29.97. If you have After Effects, it does. Just import your 23.98 clip making sure it’s interpreted properly as far as PAR (and it should have seperate fields setting to none), make a comp by dragging the footage to the ‘create new comp’ icon at the bottom of the project window, then add that comp to the render que. In the render que render settings, enable field rendering (at whatever dominance you need) and then choose a pulldown cadence (usually the last one WWSSW). You’ll notice the frame rate sampling has changed to 29.97- this will be the output frame rate. Make sure you render the whole comp in Time Span setting. Now just set the output settings to whatever format/codec you need and render.

-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA

[Troy Murison]

I used the above to successfully export PPro 1.5 projects but it didn’t work
for my 2.0 projects. I haven’t taken the time to use AutoHotKeys itself
to write my own script yet for 2.0, but it should be possible. One limitation
of that 1.5 script is that you only get the ‘default’ render which is a
Microsoft AVI, DV codec with audio. I want to try writing scripts with
different options on export- which it would appear you could do, but I’m not
a programmer so I haven’t taken the time to fumble through the readme to
figure out all the commands to do that. Maybe someday…. PPro isn’t my
everyday editor, but batch export is something I use fairly regularly
with FCP and can’t when I do use PPro, so I feel your pain.

Maybe someday too, PPro will have it’s own batch export function. Please
submit a feature request to Adobe and ask for it if it’s important to you.

-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA

[Troy Murison]

I too feel your pain on the markers implementation in PPro.
For clip markers, there currently is not a way to annotate.

I am however able to make a duplicate sequence and all my markers
(sequence and clip) are available in the newly created sequence.
This was by right clicking the sequence in the project window and
choosing ‘duplicate’. Comments for sequence markers were there too.

Something that annoys me is that when you do set a clip marker on a
clip already in the timeline, that marker is not available
on that same clip opened from the project window nor match
framed into the source window. If you double click the timeline clip
to load into the source window, the marker is there. If you
place the marker on a clip in the source window, it appears
there and in subsequently-edited-to-the-timeline instances of
that clip and in all other occurances of the clip OTHER THAN
instances that were edited to the timeline prior to adding that
marker. Does that make sense? This doesn’t seem right to me.
This seems somewhat like PPro not updating clip names if you change
them in the project window when those clips are already used in
sequences- also very annoying.

I would also love to have the ability to print or otherwise gain
access to a text list for all markers: numbers, notes and their TC
positions (for sequence and/or clip markers if they could include
comments)- but that’s not possible right now either.

Please submit a feature request to Adobe! I have, so maybe together
we can generate some pull with Adobe! 😉

-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA

[Troy Murison]

[BazinoZ] “Incidently this was a digibetacam job where I injested everything as ‘off line’ in DV mode (to keep file sizes down and realtime performace high). After that I did a project trim and batch captured the trimmed project as uncompressed from the digibetacam.”

Interestingly enough, you can’t even perform that offline/online workflow using PPro’s multicam function anyway. Project trimming and EDL export for conforming a multicam timeline doesn’t work. None of the source tape metadata makes it into the multicam sequence so project trimming results in having to recapture every frame of your sources anyway. Exporting a EDL of the multicam sequence results in every event being a AX event (no reel names) with matching source and sequence TC. This is a major bug/oversight in PPro right now, but I think most folks using multicam must be using it with DV sources and then that’s their final output so no harm done. Otherwise we’d surely hear more sqawking about this! I and I’m sure countless others have informed Adobe about this among countless other issues with metadata handling in PPro….

Your technique is great for this kind of workflow, especially if you can get real time performance anyway!

-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA

[Troy Murison]

[Dean DeCarlo] “I have to manually (at the deck) search for the code, write it down and then enter it? Is it this way on he Mac with Final Cut?”

No, FCP has a decent playout interface that includes accurate insert and assemble
editing with a ‘live’ feed from the deck (if that’s what’s patched/routed back to
the BM card) to allow you to see what you’re doing. Also, you can mark in’s and
out’s on the fly and use ‘goto-in/out’, JKL, etc. keyboard shortcuts for deck
control or enter TC into the in/out boxes. We’ve had no accuracy issues doing
edits (insert or assemble) using FCP’s edit to tape with BM cards of various types.
The window behaves just like the capture window with regards to deck control which
is very similar to PPro’s. The only thing lacking is a ‘preview’ function (it’s the
old online editor in me that wants that one- but then as one guy I know says
“Preview is for wimps!”. That function has saved my absent or burnt minded self
in the past though!) Other systems (Avid, Quantel) allow you to preview an edit
if the deck supports that.

-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA

[Troy Murison]

Navigate to:
Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Character Map
Select the font you want in the pulldown at the top-
then click on the symbol you want and it ‘blows-up’.
Then select ‘Select’ button, then click the copy button.
That places it in your clipboard. Then paste in your
application. Some fonts don’t offer all the characters
so that may be what you are up against. If you have a
keyboard with a ten-key, you can also hold ‘Alt’ and,
using the ten-key, type ‘0169’ and release Alt- that should
give it to you as well. (I’m pretty sure it’s 0169, but
I’m on a Mac right now so can’t check!).

-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA

[Troy Murison]

You could target the video track that contains the video you want the
audio for, select that clip, mark in-to-out (I remap that to ‘T’ and
I don’t remember what the original shortcut is) then match frame while
your playhead is parked at the head of that clip (I remap that function
to the ‘M’ key so I don’t remember offhand what the default shortcut or
menu path is either without opening the program)and then just re-target
to the audio track you want to edit to and then make a overwrite edit.
Make sure to un-target the video track or you’ll replace that clip and
any settings/filters it has applied to it. Sounds like a lot of steps
and it is, but it goes pretty quickly once you get into a rythm if you
have a lot to do. Maybe there’s a better solution too…

Is this what you are looking for? Hope this helps!

-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA

[Troy Murison]

I’ve used both quite a bit. Both have their own issues. Stability for me
has been very good for both in general, but there are some (different) things
on each that seem to be killers. Depending on what kind of work you are doing
and who/if you need to trade metadata with for finishing (may not be a issue)
may make more of a difference. FCP in general is more robust in getting metadata
out and to a audio or video post house for finishing for instance. PPro and
the Adobe suite is so great for working with one another it’s amazing. That’s
the MAIN reason I use PPro. FCP for me has been better with long projects
with thousands of clips (project opens faster, saves don’t take 10+ minutes,
project file isn’t 100+ MB as in PPro) but it too gets bogged down eventually.

As for AE v. Motion, they are really two different programs and actually can
complement each other well if you can swing both (if you have a Mac!). I’m not
sure what you mean by the compressors being better/worse- they each have
access to good and bad. PPro seems to render faster for me for exporting
MPEG 2’s and review encodes, but that will vary wildly system to system and
is like comparing Apples to oranges. 🙂 One thing really cool about FCP and
QT is that you can use reference movies to move data from one app to another
which really cuts down rendering time. Of course Adobe’s full integration
is even better, but if you want to do all your encoding say in Squeeze,
exporting your final movie in PPro v. FCP, FCP wins hands-down for being
able to export just a reference movie. This is really huge for large projects
and for using another program to set up a batch render for example. I think
there are frame serving apps or plugins to let PPro do a similar thing if
that’s important to you.

It really comes down to what kind of work you’re trying to do and your own
personal preferences. If you feel PPro is too unstable but are otherwise
happy, it might be worth trying to figure out what’s up with your system-
in my experience they both crash but not too often if each is in good order.

If you do change, picking up FCP after using PPro shouldn’t be too hard,
they’re very similar. There are lots of small differences and different
idiosyncrasies to each but they are both capable editors and the final
product is almost always what we as editors are judged by anyway. Unless you
are totally frustrated by PPro’s lack of ability to perform some specific
task that FCP may do better and your clients/work are suffering because of
it, it may be worth just figuring out what’s up with your system crash-wise.

Just my .02 cents!

-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA