Tried to fix footage EDITED in WRONG TIME-LINE. PLEASE HELP!

Hi everyone,

I've tried a few fixes on the forum to this problem, but no luck. Hoping you'll all be able to help!

Here's the situation:

Directed a 15 minute short on the Panasonic HMC-150, HD, 24p. Footage was transcoded to Apple Prores.

The editor accidentally edited the footage on a SD, 720x480, 29.97 time-line.

Last night I created a new time-line in the proper format (dragged an original clip onto the new time-line and chose "yes" so the sequence setting is correct at 1280 x 720 (HDTV 720p (16:9), square, 23.98, Apple ProRes).

I then pasted the incorrect sequence onto the correct time-line, selected all and used Remove Attributes (Basic Motion and Distort) and this is where it gets weird.

About 50% of the time-line is now correct and easy to tweak with minor Slip adjustments. However, the clips on the rest of the time-line are either completely in the wrong place on the clip, or, the footage is "frozen" and seems to have become a still frame.

When we double-click on any "frozen" clip on the time-line to bring it up in the Viewer, it has motion at the beginning and then does freeze. When we bring up the <b>original clip</b> from the bin, it's fine and we can replace the frozen one on the time-line with the original one, but obviously we'd rather not have to do that for ALL those clips.

I know there are tweaks when doing this kind of fix, but this seems very strange to me.

Help us, Obi-Cows, you're our only hope! :-)

Many thanks in advance and Happy Holidays to all you fellow editors, producers and creatives out there!

Best,
Daniel Scherl

What happens if you do it this way

Make a new sequence with the settings you want.
Drag the old sequence from the browser to the new timeline - holding it over the new timeline but not dropping it yet.
Hold the command (apple) key to break the nest back into clips.
Drop the clips into the new sequence.

Not sure how this will work with the fact that you've rendered in a different frame rate, which I'm assuming is a big part of the problem, but it's worth a shot. If it's still a problem, you'll probably have to re-source everything with the f key, which isn't so bad. Select clip, hit f, hit f11 to replace with the original, select next clip etc.

Try copying the actual clips from the old Sequence (not the old Sequence itself) and pasting onto the new timeline. I haven't done this very much -- editing in the wrong frame rate is a massive no-no -- but I don't think frame-rate artifacts carry from Sequence to Sequence once the settings are changed.

How the heck did your editor "accidentally" edit in the wrong frame size as well as frame rate? All the red render bars didn't warn him...?


www.derekmok.com

"How the heck did your editor "accidentally" edit in the wrong frame size as well as frame rate? All the red render bars didn't warn him...?"

Ha! I know... new editor. A little green, but heart of gold and a phenomenal eye for story, so I understand the mistake. They didn't check the settings before editing and their FCP station was set to default on SD. We fixed that. :-)

Jude, I tried it your way first and we're going to play with it, but at first glance, the timeline did the same thing. So WEIRD that some of the clips are coming up as frozen. The in and out points are all definitely wrong, which is a pain, but better to only have to slip edit a bunch of stuff than redo the entire project.

Derek, if I do copy the actual clip, it seems to eliminate the "frozen-ness" of the clip, I just have to re-do the in and out points with the slip tool, so it's looking like so far, worst case is that we have a few hours of copy and pasting and re-lining things up. Again, better than having to re-do the entire film.

Why can't FCP read our minds? Maybe that'll be in Version 8. ;-)

Thank you both SO very much for getting back to me so quickly, especially being the holiday season and all.

Best,
Daniel

Yea, the in and out points will definitely be off. You may have gaps too. Perhaps FCP is too efficient at handling multiple formats.



www.strypesinpost.com

Have you tried copying the clips to the new timeline and then Match Framing to the master clips? It's a lot more convenient to Match Frame, Overwrite Edit, repeat than to Match Frame from one timeline and then edit into another.


www.derekmok.com

Match framing did the trick and saved us hours of work, so thank you EVERYONE and happy holidays!

Best,
Daniel