Making DVD from 16mm A & B roll tele cines

I couldn't find this one on the search and I'm scared you guys may not have a solution to it :
I'd shot a film on 16mm fifteen years ago. The neg is now in a shambles but I have a good
digi-beta telecine from the negative from which I've captured the entire film onto my FCP 5.
Now I've run into a slight problem : the film was edited on A & B negative rolls ... with one blank in between each shot on each roll. That worked perfectly to give a 16mm print without 'flashes'. But when I try to make run both rolls parallel on my FCP - I am unable to see the image on A when the blank of B is running and vice versa. So, how do I get a complete film on my timeline ? I could do a laborious cut and paste ... knocking out each blank and inserting each shot ... or do a horrible tampering with the opacity of the shots ... (will that help ... ie make every alternate shot on each roll opaque ... without affecting quality) or can someone suggest a better solution ? Surely hundreds of you would have run into this problem by now ?

The real editors will jump in here, but the word "MultiClip just forces itself past my lips. That's the technique that lets you switch hot between two or more cameras all on the time line at the same time.

Now it's up to the real editors to tell you how it's done.

Koz

cut the blanks out and line up all your shots on one track -- use the razor tool.

For a quick view without any editing and depending on the color of the blanks you may use a "composite mode" for the upper track.
If the blanks are black then use "lighten"

Regards
Andreas

it's pretty much a manual job

line up the A & B rolls on 2 tracks,
cut out the blanks of the top track (V2) using the razor tool, or better yet, control v
(disable the V1 autoselect button to make control v affect V2 only)

--- i know of people who do this all the time for re-building old tv shows for DVD release.
they use CAT DV which will analyse the clip and generate an EDL.
they bring that into FCP as a guide for where the blanks are, then very quickly cut them out.
CAT DV is one logging program that will do this.
there are others.
i had a quick play with TOKI shot and thought it was better than CATDV for this,
[www.tokitest.com]
but i haven't used CAT DV PRO, which has more controls


if it's cuts only you can then simply select all of V2 and shift-drag it down over V1.
if you have overlaps for dissolves, it's a bit trickier.
maybe set V2 to half opacity and when you see the overlaps, put those shots on a V3 & V4 (or something like that) then you can deal wth hte cuts in one move, and fine tune the dissolves.

hope that helps,
nick

Thanks, all you guys ! As Nick says, it's very much a manual thing ... so I've reconciled
myself to working shot by shot. It'll take a day or two but it's something I find free of potential trouble. Was hoping for something that was labour saving but will live with this.

could be a lot quicker than that when you get down to it...

i did a project a few years a go where i had to replace a manually switched live event with higher res versions of the shots.
it was a rock concert, so lots of cuts to find and blade.
each song took about an 40mins to an hour to blade.

Why should you have to do all the work?

Export each layer out to mpeg2 via compressor and make the A roll the main angle and the B roll the alternate angle in DVDSP. Then make the lazy, processed food eating, no edit experience having, good for nothing audience SOBs switch the angle when they see a white flash. Warn them they might strain a thumb if they don't warm up first.

Less work for you + more involvement for them = the quintessential 21st century interactive media experience. (smiley goes here)

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

It is ... I've gone through 25 % of the film in about two hours ... not bad.
> Can finish in a day. What I'm doing is letting one roll stand ('A' roll) and
> placing shots from roll 'B' on the white blank leader ... on my monitor that
> doesn't seem to make any difference to the placed shots ... ie ... I presume
> the white leader below the cut and pasted shots will not need to be
> eliminated because it affects the brightness in any way.
> I've tried to look carefully and so far it makes no difference.
> Thanks for everything....
> Pankaj

Thanks Andrew, followed your advice, the museum curator sprained his thumb,
and promptly rejected a film he'd been so keen to screen. With friends like you ...
we can go far. But thanks anyway. I think he misunderstood my intention because I forgot to enclose the smiley.

glad it's working out for you...

if the opacity of the top track is 100%, which it would be unless you deliberately changed it in any way,
then you will not see any of the lower track at all.

are you cutting & pasting from one timeline into another?
if you have dissolves the overlaps may get you confused.
keep an eye out for sync.

i'll going to edit my original suggestion a bit...

if you set V2 to half opacity, you wont know which layer you are looking at.
better would be to reduce the size of the V2 image, so its a smaller box sitting on top of the whole-frame V1.

also, no need to blade, as you could just set in/out points as you go around the "blank" on hte top layer, and delete.

back to your dissolve issue:
i would suggest that whenyou are done, you do as i describe here and set your top layer to be a smaler size image,
tghen watch hte whole film though.
that way you would catch any overlaps you may have missed.

to do that:
set canvas to "image & wireframe" in it;s "view" menu (3rd of the little pull-downs at the top of the canvas)
select the first clip on V2 in the timeline.
in ht canvas, you'll now see the clip's wireframe, so grab the blue border and drag it inwards till the image gets smaller.
you can reposition the image by grabbing the wireframe and moving it if you want.
now copy that 1st clip
select al the clip on V2 (either lasso them all, or use the track tool (key command is T for Track))
Option V to paste the attributes of the 1st clip. choose to paste "Basic motion"(all top clips will go same size as 1st one)

when done select all top track, and option apple v to open the "remove attributes" window.
choose "basic motion" to rest all.


cheers,
nick

Multiclip is definitely a way through this... but you will have to add every edit point. Adjusting opacity makes no sense.. you'd have to set four keyframes per edit.

In a linear room we could emulate the A/B printing by using a NAM (non-additive mix) between the two reels. I only did it a couple of times, but the result always looked pretty good. Mostly when we needed to do this an EDL was provided.

In FCP, in the absence of an EDL, you would need to sync the reels on 2 video tracks and apply the NAM to the top layer. The NAM should pass the highest level between the two pictures - so ignoring black levels in the spacer between shots.

Now good luck finding a true NAM plug-in for FCP. may work.

I played with the 'included' Non-additive dissolve in FCP but that doesn't seem to be correct - it does some kind of 'lighten' between the two tracks depending on the ratio set. I guess 'lighten' should work (and maybe would work with a true A/B roll with no overlaps) but didn't seem to truly pass only the brightest pixel when I tested it. It seems to pass the highest value for each component. But I guess that would be ok for you as your spacer is black.

Unfortunately keying doesn't work because the top layer (rather than the brightest layer) always wins.

Alternatively, you could try shot detection software included in The Executive Producer or CatDV logging apps provide and generate an EDL for either roll - then replace all the black edits with cuts to the B Roll at the correct timecode. Bit fiddly but should give you the EDL representation of the cuts you need to make.

Me, I think I'd get an assistant to mark up the edits for me. It'd be great training for them!

HTH

I'm overwhelmed by the responses. Am through with 75% of the film ... need to go through the last 21 minutes this morning ... will handle the dissolves after I've lined up all the shots ... shouldn't be a problem. In fact I may be able to improve on the quality of dissolves because they exist as complete shots on the two rolls and give me a flexibility which dissolves on neg film never really gave.
Cheers ... and thanks a lot ... all of you.

Great thread all. Some really creative ideas. Thanks from all of us.

Michael Horton
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