Issue with media manager?

Hi everyone,

I'm just finishing my film and I am having problems with footage that I've upconverted & consolidated with media manager.

The film was shot in DV and 8mm film. The 8mm footage was then transfered to DV (not sure how this was done but I'm certain it wasn't scanned frame by frame). We used FCP 5 to cut the film and recently upgraded to FCP studio 2. All the below was done in FCP 6.0.3.

I used media manager to upconvert the media from DV to 10 bit uncompressed SD with the intent to grade the film in "Color" (the application). When I play the upconverted footage in the new FCP project there's some pretty funky stuff going on particularly in the 8mm footage.

When I compare the 2 projects in their FCP timelines (uncompressed vs. original DV) the aspect ratio looks slightly different (the upconverted one is slightly squished vertically). In some cases the 8mm footage looks like it's a frame or 2 out of sync (perhaps FCP took footage from the handles instead of using the correct edit points?). The footage just looks weird - I have noticed horizontal bands across the picture with the image from a previous frame (in the 8mm footage).

When I consolidated my media I asked media manager to give me handles - not sure if this might be creating any issues (e.g. if there is no handle or not enough of a handle). All help is appreciated.

thanks,
John



System specs
OS 10.4.11
FCS 2

PowerPC G5, Dual 2.3 GHz
2.5 Gb RAM
2 x 250 GB internal drive
1 x 320 GB WD Firewire 800 drive (uncompressed media drive)

Decklink SP out to Sony PVM 1402 via RGB cables
ATI Radeon 9600 - 128 MB VRAM

>When I compare the 2 projects in their FCP timelines (uncompressed vs. original DV) the
>aspect ratio looks slightly different (the upconverted one is slightly squished vertically).

You're in NTSC! NTSC SD has 6 vertical lines (720x486) more than NTSC DV (720x480). Okay. I'm in PAL. It's all the same here.

>I used media manager to upconvert the media from DV to 10 bit uncompressed SD

I need more details here. Are you doing a telecine of the film at a higher resolution?

The sync issue MAY be caused by media manager, but it's unlikely the handles. FCP follows timecode.

>We used FCP 5 to cut the film and recently upgraded to FCP studio 2.

This is something you need to avoid as much as possible. Never upgrade in the middle of a project. If you want to use Color on the project, install FCP 5 on another machine (maybe a portable station like a MBP)... That way, you can export the XML off FCP5 and use that to grade in Color. Or alternatively, you can have 2 copies of the project file, one in 5 and another in 6. Or at the very least, drag FCP5 to another location (not as adviseable).



www.strypesinpost.com

i cant help much other than to say it might be an NSC issue, as strypes suggests.

but i will sugest you convert to ProRes rather than 10bit Uncompressed.
file size will be much more friendly.


nick

Hey guys, thanks for the help I really appreciate it. I'll follow Gerard's advice and export an xml from FCP 5 and I'm going to redo my media mgmt. from 5 too.

My first post was a little unclear - The aspect problem seems to be the opposite of what it should be (ie. it's actually squished the opposite way - so going from DV to SD I'd expect to see the image increase in height where it actually decreases Is this perhaps because of a sequence setting?

I've up-resed the image so I have better color space in which to work. Obviously the original DV color will limit me but any effects / color I add will be at the better compression ratio. Ultimately if I could just work with the original footage and output uncompressed would the results be any different? I'll be outputting to Digibeta.

Thanks Nick for the suggestion about pro-res - my drives are hating me. I'm not familiar with the format. Can you tell me more about how it handles color?

John

[file size will be much more friendly. ]

Exactly-- you're asking your G5 CPU to do a lot, and it's easy to lose synch temporarily when it's challenged. One way to narrow the cause would be to park the Playhead in the middle of the timeline and see if it's in synch when you begin Play. It may not be drifting at all-- the bandwidth may simply be too much to keep V/A streams supplied steadily. Even worse with multiple V streams.

FCP has always relied heavily on your hardware for best performance. Pamper it with RAM, multi core CPU's, and friendly codecs.

[I've up-resed the image so I have better color space in which to work.]

Don't see anything wrong with that reasoning. This is becoming a common strategy and it really does allow you to do things you cannot do in 4:1:1.

But with the uprez come the dangers of CPU stress. Nick knows what he's suggesting-- the ProRes422 HQ codec is something of a lightweight miracle, at around 220 mb/s.

- Loren
Today's FCP keytip:

Toggle your Timeline Filters bar with Option T !

Final Cut Studio 2 KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

i cant tell you a lot of technical detail about ProRes,
but it is almost indistinguishable from uncompressed,
with a lot smaller file size.

read about it here:
[images.apple.com]
[library.creativecow.net]
[arstechnica.com]

i think it would handle a generation in color work without any noticeable hit


for what it;s worth, i don't think this is a problem with going from FCP5 to FCP6,
but you could certainly try going back to 5

ProRes is an FCP 6 addition,
but if you have FCP5 and FCP6 on the same machine, you will get ProRres in FCP5


nick

Firstly, there is a possibility that the sync issue may be caused by the upgrade (it is now an added component to troubleshoot). Usually, that isn't the case.. An XML export off FCP 5 is an option. Do you still encounter sync issues working with an XML export on FCP5?

Next, if you have options to retelecine the footage, you may want to get the 8mm footage in a 4:2:2 codec (dvcpro50/prores/uncompressed). An option to consider next time when doing a telecine.

Also, you don't have to uprez the footage to a higher quality codec prior to Color. Rendering to ProRes in Color/FCP yields the same result as having the initial footage transcoded to ProRes/Uncompressed. Why? On hitting the render pipeline, footage is decompressed to uncompressed YUV 4:4:4 data and the bitrate is upped to 10 bit/ 32 bit floating point for more accurate calculation. Recompression occurs only at the end when the image is recompressed back to the sequence codec (in this case it now becomes ProRes/Uncompressed). For DV workflows, there are houses who prefer to recapture DV as Uncompressed via SDI. The difference is in the hardware based chroma smoothing that is applied on the capture.

For working in ProRes, here's a test on ProRes you can read up on:

[www.fini.tv]

I'll also like to add that working Uncompressed in SD still remains an option (depending on how long/complicated your project is). Many houses work SD in Uncompressed, and it's only recently that some houses have started switching to ProRes. ProRes was created mainly for HD and roundtrip work (Uncompressed HD is is still unimagineable in many houses due to the immense size).



www.strypesinpost.com

You guys are awesome. Strypes thanks for the explanation. One more question; My sequence works fine in FCP 6 as long as I use the original DV footage. If I send the DV project to color but want to output uncompressed SD where does this happen; on output from FCP or on my render from color? I guess I'm a little unclear on what information the XML contains (e.g. is it basically an EDL with extra information like "turn up the red x%"?

What I will do is to "promote" the sequence to Uncompressed. You could also try ProRes (I'm not sure if it is lower field dominant in the NTSC world).

Basically what I do, is I'll copy the contents of the entire sequence into an Uncompressed timeline.

Then, I'm in the PAL world, so this part may be a bit different: I drop a shift fields filter onto all of the DV/DV50 clips (DV to SD in the PAL world requires a shift in fields). Then I'll run through the sequence, drop all speed ramped clips into a separate timeline where I will remove the speed ramps, export and reimport them as Uncompressed, and reinsert them back into the timeline with a fit to fill. This is because FCP can't handle speed ramps with field order differences. Then continue standard Color prepping procedures like baking, removing titles, etc...

As you're working in NTSC, things may be a bit different, so you will want to run some tests like sending sections out to color with a little 2 pop at various places to check sync, and to also check the 480/486 frame differences.



www.strypesinpost.com

I figured out the issue. It was in media mgr. When I up-resed the image I asked it to preserve the aspect ratio from DV and that seems to have caused the weirdness on screen. The only issue now is in the clips with speed effects. I'd take your advice above except some of the speed effects are very complex. Is there a way to copy the speed changes from the old sequence?

I've removed titles and effects is there anything else I need to know for prepping the sequence for color? My understanding was I just went: File / Send To / Color. If you can point me to anywhere in the forums where I can get this info.

best,
John

>Is there a way to copy the speed changes from the old sequence?

Copy (apple c), paste attributes (option v).

Speed effects is the bane of FCP. Media Manager is not fantastic with it.

> If you can point me to anywhere in the forums where I can get this info.

Yep.
[www.lafcpug.org]
And also, it may be time to get Walter Biscardi's "Getting started with Color" DVD.



www.strypesinpost.com