losing tails of a shot, or whole shot, or slipping sync, while outputting to QT

Once or twice during an export from FCP 7 to QT, a shot will cut off its tails, or will disappear altogether. The show is 95 mins long, and this only happens infrequently. I've also lost sync on an audio clip, once. Why? Exporting to an internal drive.

I've trashed preferences, copied and pasted the sequence into a clean new sequence, to no avail.

Thanks for any advice.

FCP 7.0.3 OS X 10.6.8
2.8 GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon
12 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 RAM

Did you convert the clips properly before editing? Did you edit in a Sequence with the correct frame rate and field dominance matching your media?


www.derekmok.com

I have 500+ shots from a very wide variety of media, mostly archival footage, often using Snapz, or DVcam footage, or .mov files from some other source.

What should I check for, on each shot's settings, looking for anomalies?

Field dominance is set to None all the way through. Is that ok?

> Field dominance is set to None all the way through. Is that ok?

Don't know. You didn't tell me anything specific about your media. If you didn't conform all of it to your timeline codec and frame rate, and you're using FCP7, then you can have dropouts, corruptions and field issues all over the place. You can't just drop a smorgasbord of mixed media onto an FCP7 timeline.


www.derekmok.com

Didn't conform, just dropped them onto the timeline and rendered, Derek. So I guess you have pinpointed the cause. This means re-conforming 500+ clips, or skipping that and just going w the flow, fixing things as they break down. Ugh. But thanks for your diagnosis.

Well, at this stage, you should try to fix the clips that are having problems first, and hope that the rest stay put and don't glitch. Also, if you're at picture lock and an EDL/XML isn't important, you can try exporting a self-contained movie file of the edit. Then re-import that into a Sequence and target only the glitched clips for replacement. That way at least you don't have to redo the edit, since your source clips have no timecode and if you were to replace the media at this late stage, you could end up having to re-conform every single edit by hand.

Never, ever skimp on the prep stage of editing. You pay the price later, with massive loan-shark-sized interest.


www.derekmok.com

At picture lock, yes, but must also use this 95-min piece as a basis for two one-hour versions, one for EUropean b'cast, and another slightly different version for PBS. Both of them require XML imports, I believe, for translators and for closed captioning respectively. To create spotting lists.

Didn't even realize we were "skimping" on the prep. I thot if it rendered, all was good. Lesson learned. Thanks Derek!

If you render both video and audio, and check it before exporting a self contained QT movie with same as source settings in an I-frame only format, you're usually good. But that does not stop FCP from performing erratically during the edit, and if FCP needs to do a render on output, you may run into issues too. Always best to prep your footage properly before the edit and monitor with a properly calibrated broadcast monitoring system before and during output.



www.strypesinpost.com

Thanks strypes. Must research I-frame format, having never heard of it. Also, I've been cutting for years and have never prepped my footage at all. Must research what that even means. Thanks for pointing me in those directions. - M

> Also, I've been cutting for years and have never prepped my footage at all.

Very dangerous practice...in older days, you would have needed an assistant. If you want to do it yourself, you need to be trained, work with a professional editor in an assistant capacity.

The modern trend in editing will push even more people towards the blissfully ignorant category, as NLE software becomes more and more adept at handling multiple formats. But software can't help you when it fails, and if you don't understand the theory behind proper file management, assistant-editor practices and troubleshooting, you will have a meltdown eventually, and meltdowns love the night before your career-making deadline.


www.derekmok.com

Meltdown eventually? Already happened, Derek! Several times, right on deadline as you predict. What would be the time and $ involved in hiring a pro to come teach me? I will put that in my next budget.

>Must research I-frame format, having never heard of it.

Basically use ProRes, not HDV/XDCAM EX and certainly not H.264.



www.strypesinpost.com

Ok thx. Interesting that Vimeo compression settings request H.264. [vimeo.com]

Basic Editing Rule #1: What codec you edit with has nothing to do with what you make for web deliverables.


www.derekmok.com