Mixing formats, free-run TC

Hello everyone,
I need some technical advice before I begin the monumental task of editing 20 hours (three days, three cameras) of wedding footage. My wife and I decided to edit our wedding movie together!
Wedding was shot primarily (90%) on two DVX-100A cameras (set at 24pA, 4:3) and a third camera, the Canon XH-A1, was used for the ceremony (set at 24f 1080i 16:9).
The final movie will be 90% DVX footage; distributed on SD NTSC DVD - 4:3 Letterbox
If I capture the DVX footage at DV-NTSC 24p (23.98) Advanced Pulldown Removal, what is the best way to capture/downconvert the Canon HDV footage to edit with the DVX-100 SD footage?
Will Canon's "24f" be compatible with Panasonic's "24pA"? Or is that irrelevant after I capture DVX-100 footage in to FCP 5.1.2?
Also, the two cameramen shooting the DVX-100s shot with free-run timecode (time of day timecode), and after capturing a few tapes I could not find a way to sync the clips (from the varying cameras)...in other words, I could not find the "time of day timecode".
I could only find "Media Start" and "Media End" which do not correspond.
In the Browser Window I opened a "Show TC" column and it just says, "Source" and "Aux TC 1 & 2 say "None".
Is there something special I need to do during or after capture?
Finally, after all is captured, should I use Multliclip to sync and edit the DVX-100 footage?
I can always sync the Canon footage by eye, as that camera was primarily used during the wedding ceremony.
BIG THANKS to all who can shed some light on my questions. : )
And thank you for bearing with me through all of my questions.
-Daniel
Mac Book Pro Mac OS X (10.4.8) FCP 5.1.2
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)
Mac Book Pro 2.16GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8)
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9) FCP 5.1.2
Mac Book Pro 2.16GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8) FCP 5.1.2

the argument that 24pa is only meant for a film out is really sort of irrelevant. 24pa was devised as a way to reverse telecine by dropping a frame, rather than reverse telecine processing in cinema tools that 24p standard requires. it takes almost zilch processing power to get a 23.98 fps sequence back to 29.97 anyway as fcp adds the pulldown automatically when previewing via firewire or printing to tape so i don't understand why folks make the argument that 24pa is for film out only. is it not.
for your project, 24pa makes a heck of a lot sense as you edit in a 23.98 fps sequence after stripping the pulldown. you end up with video that has a lower data rate hence less compressing is done which means better looking video or more time capacity fits on a dvd.
your main problem stems from a lack of pre-production and planning. the best scenario would have been to use three of the same camera but as your main wide camera is hdv 16:9, you'll need to find a way to get it to the same frame rate and aspect ratio as the other cameras.
regarding your time code, you'll have to sync by eye.

Similar Messages

How can I sync free-run clips to a timeline by timecode?

I shoot weddings with multiple cameras. For shooting a lot of the pre-ceremony and reception footage, I have the ability to jam the cameras so that they have the same free-run timecode. So, as the day goes on I am recording some shots with CAM A and my other camera operator is recording shots elsewhere with CAM B. Naturally, at times both cameras are shooting simultaneously and from time-to-time we are shooting the same stuff from different angles. But, being a wedding it is impossible to slap a slate every time we want to sync up shots. So, I'm looking for an easy way to sync all of the shots from the day using the timecode.
I think this would work best, if someone knows a way to do it:
Let's just assume that CAM A shoots the first shot of the day. What I'd like to be able to do is create a timeline with the same start time as the first clip from CAM A, drop all of the clips from CAM A onto one track and be able to line up the clips by their timecode to the timeline's timecode. Then, do the same for all of CAM B's clips on Track 2. So, I would end up with 2 tracks, CAM A's clips on Track 1, CAM B's clips on Track 2 and gaps when neither camera was shooting.
I know I could choose all of CAM A's clips and make a multi-camera sequence by timecode which would add the gaps between the clips, but this also puts each clip on a different track. It's also very difficult to then try and line up CAM B's clips with CAM A's. There is a way to do it by nesting the multi-cam sequences, but it's way too complex and doesn't make for easy editing since you can't see the individual clips.
The only way I've figured out to achieve what I'm wanting to do is to make a timeline that has the same start time as CAM A's first clip and manually drop each clip, one-by-one, onto the timeline using its start timecode as my reference. As you can imagine, with several hundred clips per camera, this is very time-consuming.
If anyone knows a better way to achieve what I'm looking for, please let me know.
Thanks!

Jim Simon wrote:
Even with that feature, though, you'd end up with an eight hour sequence.
That's true, but I could take out the gaps pretty easily. Plus, I usually separate the day into sections anyway, such as Pre-Ceremony, Post-Ceremony, Reception, etc.
Jim Simon wrote:
It'd be a better feature request, I think, if you could designate selected clips as Camera 1, then other clips as Camera 2, etc. Then have PP create a sequence with all timecodes synced to each other, each camera's clips on their corresponding track. This would eliminate gaps where nothing was shot, which you'd get a lot of syncing the cams to a sequence timecode.
That's true, but beggars can't be choosers and I'd be happy just being able to sync clips to the timeline by timecode. I did submit the feature request though. Thanks for the link!

The Heartbreak of Free Run (on tape)

The good think about jam sync/free run is that it’s easy to sync up multiple cameras. The bad thing (if it’s on tape) a nightmare to log. The “digitize across timecode breaks” had never worked on our Avids. So it took me a while to try that same setting on FCP. Wow - it looked like it was working. I had put an Out on the end of the tape and an In at the beginning. It began making clips for each TC break – great – with no red line through the clip. But when it finished and I exited the Log & Capture mode, all the clips went off-line. Are they really offline? So then I batch digitized, which it did, but it also seemed to make duplicate clips with duplicate media. Am I doubling the amount of space needed for these clips (possibly tripling)? Or is this funky workaround the only way to do it. What the....?

Your workflow should work. It's the way I work, and I don't have these sorts of problems. Shouldn't be a problem to see if the clips are there are not, just look at the scratch disk in the capture folder. Now I generally don't use free run, but my experience with dvx100's is that there will occasionally be a timecode break at a camera stop/start. Just to make sure we're understanding each other, do you have the following enabled in user preferences: abort capture on dropped frames and on timecode break make new clip?

I have coverage with mixed formats - some with PAL ( we think 4:3 ratio) and some HD. When I chose

I have coverage with mixed formats - some with PAL ( we think 4:3 ratio) and some HD. When I chose our sequence settings to begin with, is there a way of preventing some shots with bars either at left and right or top and bottom?

Choose PAL 4x3 and scale down the rest.

HDV mixed format editing and mastering for broadcast TV

Hi
I have HDV blues with regards mixed format and multi time base.
Any help advice will be greatly appreciated.
I have never handled HDV in multiformat and multiple timebase to Mater and output for Broadcast television.
I am hoping to master to DVD directly on the configuration ( details provided below ) to deliver to NTSC and PAL market for DVD retail.
However I would need to take to a post house, one or more quicktime file to Output to Digital Betacam for television broadcast for both NTSC and PAL formats.
with regards
problems I am facing are on two fronts:
1) I am unsure of best quality and workflow to output master on Digital Betacam tape for broadcast TV in NTSC and PAL both formats.
2) With sequence set at HDV 1080 50i, and export setting as current setting, upon render and export of self contained quicktime direct from FCP timeline I face few troubling symptoms;
- that the quicktime exports 3mins to 35 minutes of qt clip but not the whole program of 90 minutes as one clip. System crashes and I have to reboot.
- Another symptom is that by doing above my time line shows aduio as out of sync to video. here i see that Audio tracks A1,A2 as being torn apart at cut edit points and have gap of 1 frame at random ( but not on all edit points ).
A3, A4 and other music and sound fx tracks have slipped off sync by few frames , again at random and also other places the edit comes back in sync with audio.
- Of course I am having to re- render this sequence timeline a zillion times even though the previously rendered files still exist in relevant folder.
Program duration: 90 minutes
current sequence : 1440 x 1080 at 50i
edit sequence time-line consists following source material directly ingested from tape via firewire in native HDV and DV:
VIDEO
-HDV footage of 1440 x 1080, 50i
-HDV footage of 1440 x 1080, 60i
-PAL footage standard and widescreen
-NTSC footage standard and widescreen
- still images
AUDIO
-AUDIO is 16 bits , 48Khz
- Voice Over is 24 bit , 48 Khz
Software: Final Cut Pro version 6
QT: 7.4.1
System configuration:
1) Mackbook pro: OS 10.4.11
graphics/ display card: GeForce 8600M GT
Hardware Overview:
Model Name: MacBook Pro
monitor: one apple cinema display 23 inch
Model Identifier: MacBookPro3,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
2) Mac pro: dual core, 2.3 ghz, 3GB RAM
two apple cinema display 23 inch
All project media residing in 1TB Lacie 800 firewire external disk.

Hi guys, thanks for getting back to me. My client has now changed her mind and so I'm just mixing XDCAM and HDV 16:9 footage which is absolutely fine. Awesome. Thanks for your help!
I have one issue - some of the XDCAM footage she has given me is .MP4 video (actually each clip is a folder with 5 files in it (.MP4, .SMI, .PPN, .XML, .BIM). Do I have to convert the .MP4 into .MOV via Compressor to work with it (presumably this will compress it somewhat) or can I convert it simply and losslessly somehow (perhaps using sony XDCAM software?)
Thanks again for any help!
Oliver

Working with Free-Run Timecode

We have a multi-camera event coming up which will consist of 3-4 cameras. There is downtime between each segment that we are covering and I'd like to set each camera to free-run timecode so I can synch them in post. The Free run will be manually set on each camera so they won't be in perfect sync.
Once each event starts, the cameras will start rolling and roll continuously through the event and then stop and wait until the next event.
However, I know that FCP is slow in capuring footage with TC Breaks. Is this the best way to do this, or is there a better way? it looks like I'll be manually syncing anyway, but the TC's will at least get me in the ballpark. We're expecting 12-15 events, some of the cameras are lock down on particular items (clock, crowd, finish) so having a common synch image will be difficult.
Thanks.

Jake,
I don't know what kind of experience you have shooting events like this, but I'll relate some of my experiences for anyone who's interested.
Shooting live events with multiple cameras can be a lot of fun, but many times things have fallen apart for me once the event gets rolling and there's an intense pressure to not miss any of the action, even if it meant forgoing steps that would have helped me later. Preparation was key, or I'd be cursing myself in post. I've repeatedly found that there's no such thing as too much set-up time.
In the past I've used a cable to send free-run time-code from a master camera to a slave camera, but once the cable is disconnected the cameras always drift out of sync. You've stated that you're only using it to get in the ballpark though, so it should serve that purpose reasonable well. I've done a lot of multi-cam event shooting that required extensive post production and the thing that killed me was cameras shutting off and turning on at different times. Try to synchronize your shooting as much as humanly possible and you will be MUCH better off in post. TRUST ME on this! The on's and off's don't have to happen simultaneously, but the more consistent they are (and there less there are of them) the less confusion there will be in post. If a camera has to be turned off unscheduled to change the battery or something, have the shooter shoot into his hand for a few seconds after re-starting it to leave a nice visual cue of the edit point. (Also, don't wait as long as I did to learn about FCP's DV Start/Stop Detect feature!) I should add that I didn't have any problems working with free-run footage in FCP, but it depends a lot on your workflow goals and how you choose to capture it.
Also, I find that the most accurate way to synchronize video tracks in these messy situations is often by listening to their associated audio (even when using a wireless I try to always use one channel for the onboard mic)--unless you use a clapboard consistently it can be much easier to hear when audio is a frame out of sync than by looking at a visual cue in different footage from different angles (assuming the sound is reaching each camera at roughly the same time).
Part of my preparation for these events involved developing a pattern by which the event would be edited, and sticking with it. Most events involve some sort of activity which repeats, and I learned to shoot with each cycle's edit pattern in mind. I'm the first to encourage editing creativity and variation, but there have been so many times where I wished I had shot with a clearly-defined edit pattern in mind as opposed to chasing after creative shots that I then had to struggle mightily to even make use of in post.
I also learned to ensure that each shooter has a clearly-defined role. When everyone would swing around wildly trying to catch whatever eye-catching thing happened next, I'd end up with 4 identical wildly-swinging shots! Also, having one shooter assigned to cover the whole event with only a very smooth, very wide, "as-if-this-is-getting-broadcast-live-right-now" shot will save your butt many times over in post.
Another thing--you can never have too many cut-aways. If you think about it, if you come back with 60 different wildcard shots, and you're producing a 1-hour program, that only leaves you with one cut-away per minute! These are easy to get if there is a crowd involved by moving from person to person and rolling for about 10 seconds on each, but they have to be recorded while an actual event is taking place. When I would try to grab my crowd shots during downtime, it resulted in cut-aways that made it seem like the audience was entirely uninterested in the event taking place. Another thing I never seemed to have enough of were crowd reaction shots, like applause and laughter, because often all of us shooters were too busy frantically zooming in on the bucking bronco or the rodeo clown.
Didn't mean for this to get so long, but post-producing live events can be a real beast and I made a whole lot of mistakes before finally starting to get the hang of it. These days, I think recording live-to-tape with a field switcher is the only way to go, but that's just not always practical.
Good luck!
Zap
Dual 2 GHz PowerPC G5 Mac OS X (10.3.6)

How to format "free space" on a drive?

I bought a 2 TB hard drive and created a 1.5 TB partition in ExFat format. The other 500 Mb was left as "Free space". I thought that I could format that free space later, but now I don't see a way to do so. When I select that partition in Disk Utilities all the options seem to be grayed out. Is it possible to format "free space"?

You would have to delete the partition and add a new one.

Batch Capture (Re-Capture) with Free Run TC

I'm batch capturing footage from 5 years ago for a client that wants another copy of their video. 1 tape was shot REC RUN timecode and it batch captured without issue. However, the 2nd tape is FREE RUN timecode and the capture utility bounces all over the place trying to find the in point. 50 clips, 0 successful captures.
Have adjusted handles, etc....no dice. I actually had re-captured this tape in CS4 a few years back and it worked fine, might have lost one clip total. Now in CS5, nada.
Let me know if anyone has an idea what I can do to make PPro park the playback right on the in point without trying to preroll, because nothing I've tried so far has worked.
For all I know it's a specific issue with CS5...dunno....I turned my back on MiniDV tape a while back and have not tried it since.
Using CS5, PC, Panasonic camcorder is the capture device.
Thanks!

Ann Bens wrote:
Why not capture the whole tape with scene detection.
Then chuck out the clips you do not want.
Ultimately this is what I intend to do if I can't find a resolution for this issue by the time I start working on the project again tomorrow. It should work, re-linking clips doesn't involve preroll or handles so I don't expect any problems going that route. I do expect to capture about twice as much footage as I actually need, as you indicated, so that will be a small hassle but that seems to be the workaround for the moment.
Thanks for the responses....if anyone else has something they'd like to add (or if anyone is aware of this kind of thing being a recognized bug) feel free to weigh in here. I might file a bug report...it seems to be that the preroll settings are not being recognized, or something along those lines.
Oh, I should also have noted that this is a fresh (er...4 week old) install of CS5 on a fresh (ahem...also 4 week old) install of Win7 x64. So there's not an application conflict...this is just an Adobe computer for all intents and purposes.

Free run timecode - batch capturing

Hi, In FCP I'm trying to capture a whole tape shot with free run timecode and several breaks. I've set On timecode break to 'make a new clip' in preferences/general. When I click 'capture now' it captures the first clip then goes into an eternal loop trying to capture the second. What am I missing?

Free run code has it's uses, don't hate it, just hate it when it's used where it doesn't belong.
For example with the DVX and/or hvx, if you are shooting, for example, a concert with a bunch of cameras, that all have to be moving around and not able to be tethered to a single code source, if you put all the cameras in a little pile and, using ONE remote, preset a code and throw them all into free-run, then they're all locked together. Just fire them up and shoot. Tape and card changes are a snap and fast too, and when it's time to make your multiclips, they fall right into place.
Another good use is two or three camera big long corporate meetings, where the beloved clients drone on for hours.
But some ninny doing a run and gun with free run is just begging for someone to do him serious bodily harm.

Batch capturing free run timecode.

Hi,
I have just been through and logged 3 hour tape which was recorded on free run timecode. I have just tried to batch capture it all and it isnt working because of the timecode discontinuity.
Is their a way I can override this? Any help would be appreciated as this is a nightmare for me.
Thanks very much,
Simon.

Won't recording in capture now make each timecode break it's own clip?
Yes. As it should be. If it didn't, then the timecode would be right for the first clip, but then all the others, the timecode would be wrong.
Or is there a way to set it up so that it makes it one clip?
Yes...if you turn off deck control. Switch it to UNCONTROLLABLE DEVICE. But then you lose any and ALL reference to timecode, and timecode is GOLD to an editor. Why? Because if the drive with the media dies, all you need to do is recapture the footage and your edit will be rebuilt. Or, if you deleted the media and needed to recapture it at a later date, then you could. If you capture with NO reference timecode, and you lose the media....your edit is gone, and you'll have to rebuild the cut from scratch.
But, do that if you want. Just know what the consequences might be.
Shane

Property to set hex/binary/decimal format at run time?

Hi, I'd like to allow my user to choose between hex/binary/decimal formats in his number input. I'm happy to do the radio button stuff and the code to "hear" what he wants, but I can't find a property of my variable which selects the format at run-time - there is of course the "Format & Precision..." which I can get at by right mouse click BEFORE running, so I know it's likely to be available at run-time. Any suggestions welcome. Thanks, Richard.

It's not necessary to use property node because you can use the builtin
property of the indicator.
Click the rigth mouse button over the indicator and select show radix.
On the left side of the indicator appear radix that you can push to choose
between hex, binary, octal and decimal.
Bye
Golzio
"R" ha scritto nel messaggio
news:[email protected]..
> Hi, I'd like to allow my user to choose between hex/binary/decimal
> formats in his number input. I'm happy to do the radio button stuff
> and the code to "hear" what he wants, but I can't find a property of
> my variable which selects the format at run-time - there is of course
> the "Format & Precision..." which I can get at by right mouse click
> BEFORE run
ning, so I know it's likely to be available at run-time. Any
> suggestions welcome. Thanks, Richard.

Mixed formats-editing-transcoding and mastering

Hello,
My client has a project with that has mixed format and we need to figure out what workflow will be best to edit and master.
The final video will be 1-2 hours.
It will be shown primarily on the web and, at a later stage, in dvd.
There are 2 main sources:
a) screen captured video with animation codec at 1024X768, square pixel (most footage)
b) video footage shot at apparently 24p "advanced" and already digitized at 24 via Cinema Tools and converted to 29.98- non square pixel (some footage)
The client wants the final output to be either 960x720p or 800x600 h.264
Audio was recorded separately for both a) and b) so everything needs to be synced.
Project is in a FCP Studio 2 system with a G5.
Questions:
What should the sequence settings be? There isn't a 960x720 setting.
Should we uprez the DV 24p and to what?
Does the b) footage need to be converted from animation to AIC (lower data rate)? Would this be effective or introduce unwanted artifacts?
What to do with the square and non square pixel footage? Take them to AE?
Thank you for your feedback,
Mabel

well it's a 16:9 format. Is your 640x480 material 4:3 or 16:9 widescreen, which means it's anamorphic with the display of the 640x480 image stretched horizontally? If this material 4:3, you have to decide whether you want your sequence to be 16:9, in which case you either have black bars on the left and right of your 4:3 material or you could scale up your 4:3 material to fill the frame and lose the top and bottom part of the frame OR you can make your sequence 4:3 and "letterbox" the 16:9 material (black bars at top and bottom) or scale up the 16:9 material to fill the frame and lose the material on the left and right. Remember scaling up will cause you to lose quality. If you decide on a 4:3 standard def sequence, you should be able crop your 16:9 "HD" material to fill the frame and this sounds to me like the best solution.
I would use compressor to convert all your footage to a single fcp friendly format before editing.
Before you go any further, what is your end use? This should help decide the best way to proceed.

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Hi folks,
I am most familiar with Premiere Pro CS3. In the past, I have created multi-camera sequences that are synchronised by timecode. I have been shooting using the Free Run timecode feature across all cameras, as to maintain a sync'd timecode.
Now that I am using Premiere Pro CS4 at work, I am running into a few issues in preserving my timecode values during capture. I have recorded HDV footage using two Sony Z7's. I downconvert the HDV footage into DV upon capturing - this is so that I can use the scene-detect feature, and still supposedly preserve the timecode for each media file. I captured all of the tapes using scene-detect, and the timecode values were correct for each media file captured.
Having saved, closed, and reopened my Premiere Project the next day, the timecode values for the majority of the media files have been reset (ie, they all start at "0:00:00:00". This is very odd! Only a few of the media files have retained their correct timecode values.
Has anyone else experienced this? Could they please shed some light on this problem or quirk? Am I taking the wrong approach in capturing/organising media? I am following the same procedure as I had done in PPro CS3.
I have since deleted the Media Cache/Preview Files, requiring Premiere to re-index, and re-conform the media files. The timecode values are still incorrect. When I select all of my media files and tell them to go 'offline', the correct timecode values re-appear.
Many thanks for your help,
Andrew

Does anyone have an answer to this problem?? I think I am having the same problem. I don't have as much experience as the others on the
forum, but basically what I tried to do was filming a multi-camera event in free run timecode, then
captured in HDV split, and assumed I could get Premiere to align the clips accordingly. Anyone have any idea how to do this????
Any help is appreciated,
Thanks,
Aaron

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if some text has "regular" fontstyle, i apply to it Bold style. And if it have mixed fontstyle (both bold and regular) i would like apply the Bold Italic style. But i discovered, that property FontStyle of text with mixed style is "Regular"! Then how can i recognize mixed format of text?
Thanks.

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Matching Free Run time code in FCP...

Hi, I just shot three dance shows with three different camera's for each show. We set the camera's on Free Run and reset both time codes at the same time but now how to I find and match up this timecode in FCP?
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Alex

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-DH

Mixing formats, free-run TC

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