render audio -- why?

hi all. irregular poster, frequent lurker. i sincerely apologize if this has been answered thousands of times. i have searched to make sure this is not a repeat...

i've recently switched from FCP3 to FCP4 and i think it's been doing something new and unwanted: whenever i through DV footage (captured via iMovie) onto the timeline, i have to render the audio.

why is this happening? i don't remember this happening in FCP3.

im using FCP4.0 on the default "DV NTSC 48khz" setting. i also duplicated this and made a 44khz just in case in, but the same problem arises. the only thing i can figure is that my sequence says the Aud Format is "32-bit floating point", but my clips seem to be "16-bit integer."

i looked to change this setting in the A/V settings, but couldn't find an option.

(sidenote: could it be a capture problem? i am just playing with previously captured footage. it was captured on iMovie 3.0.3)

thanks so much,
i don't have a super fast system so cutting down on rendering time will be immensely valuable.

andrew chiu aka paranoidrewy
paranoidrewy@gmail.com

<<whenever i through DV footage (captured via iMovie) onto the timeline, i have to render the audio.

why is this happening? i don't remember this happening in FCP3.>>

Oh, but it did. Does with my FCP3. iMovie captures differently than FCP, and the audio will *always* need to be rendered whenever you do anything to it. It's not a good workflow. Might be able to export the audio then reimport it, then it will be independent but will be in a more compatible format.

Scott

Just out of curiosity, why didn't you capture through FCP in the first place?

Thanks for the quick reply Scott! Now I feel better.

Derek: This was just footage I imported for fun one day, so I used iMovie. I also think my FCP3 was starting to not recognize my DV camera at that point. Plus, i like how iMovie separates the clips according to the different record points when importing and i have no idea how to do that in FCP...

...can FCP do that? i'm assuming it can and this is a huge n00b question.
also, does importing footage through FCP automatically bypass this rendering time (i was going to assume that's what Scott was inferring, but now i'm outwardly asking)

paranoidrewy

Yes, FCP can do scene detection, split clips at scene changes just like iMovie. Tools > DV Start/Stop Detection. Puts markers at scene breaks, and then you can turn them into independent subclips.

FCP and iMovie capture into very different formats in terms of how audio and video are handled. It's still DV, so they are compatible that way, but the way audio is captured by iMovie is different, and FCP was made to handle its own format natively. So non-native needs rendering.

Make sense?

Scott

Just to add my Stock Answer, most of which was covered in previous posts...but might offer more insight...

#20 Using iMovie to Capture for FCP edit

Shane's Stock Answer #20:

iMovie handles the media differently from FCP, specifically where audio is concerned. So it is not a recommended workflow. Here's why...

iMovie captures using DV Stream (.dv) standard which does not use timecode. That is a big disadvantage over the way that FCP captures in that you can't go back and recapture the material at a later date if you need to revisit a project.

The DV/NTSC specification (the one FCP uses) also calls for seperate tracks for audio and video, even if you capture it as one clip. iMovie' DV stream format is muxed audio and video, which means that they are tied together (I can't get into specifics because I ain't no engineer or programmer). FCP is a bit more demanding and captures the seperate audio/video tracks, either in a single media file or as seperate video and audio files. With FCP you could capture video only or audio only because each is defined by the DV specs. while with iMovie you can't.

Also, if you drop the iMovie footage into the timeline, your will get the RED render bar forcing you to render the footage in order to see it...

Scott and Shane,

Thanks!
Great, you answered my followup question!

I guess it's a good idea to capture soley in FCP now.
Hopefully it'll recognize my camera...

Thanks again,
paranoidrewy

hello there..

sorry if i am repeating what has been gone over a thousand times.

i have final cut pro 4 and am working on an apple G5 imac. logging and capturing footage onto a 500BG g-drive hard drive.

what i'd like to know how to do is have fcp do automatic scene break detection while logging the dv tapes. i would like to just press 'capture' and then have it save separate clips for every time the camera has a stop from when it was filmed. is that possible? it looks like someone in earlier notes said it is possible but i can't seem to find out how..

can anyone tell me?

thanks very much,
amber

Amber, youi're bringing up a really old thread! I only saw it because I was set to be automatically notified when this thread was updated.

What I said above is how to do it. FCP does not break the clips by scenes as it captures (like iMovie does), it captures exactly the way you have logged it. If you're just doing Capture Now, it captures as one long clip (not a good way to work). However, after you have captured, load one of those long clips in the Viewer and click on Tools > DV Start/Stop Detection. FCP will put a marker at every scene break, and then you can turn any or all of them into subclips.

If you have more questions, it might be best to start a new thread so more will see it.

Scott

I don't recommend the method you're trying to do -- while DV Stop/Start Detection will subclip the clip according to camera breaks it can detect, your master clip file itself will still be as long as the whole tape if you'd logged it that way, and that's bad news for media management, storage space and editing stability.

Do it the professional way -- log manually. At the very least, log clips of 10-15 minutes apiece and then break them apart. You'll save yourself a lot of grief during editing and at the finishing stage.

I'm an Avid Editor, and am just about to start a documentary in FCP. I felt that this DV Start/stop detect feature would be a real time-saver.

According to the notes, you should be able to log in any format of tape as one clip. (we're using mainly Beta SP although miniDVmay feature). Then use the DV Start/stop detect to sub-clip.
I'm assuming I'd then have a bin full of little clips relating to every separate shot the cameraman took, based on the principle that he would pause his camera between shots.
Sounds terrific.

However, you're saying that the master clip will still be as long as the whole tape, and this is bad. What exactly happens ? Do you now have two sets of media, or something?
And is this going to affect the conform stage, where I'd expect to dump out all the low-res clips in the show, and then re-digitise them 1:1 for a final ?

Thanks

(we're using mainly Beta SP although miniDVmay feature)

DV Start/Stop detect only works on DV material shot with a camera, not on dubbed material. The function is looking in the QuickTime metadata for the date/time stamp that's on every DV recording (if the clock is set) to see where there is a sudden change in the clock time to detect when the camera was started and stopped. This obviously doesn't happen on dubbed material.

"What exactly happens ? Do you now have two sets of media, or something?"

No, you don't. FCP doesn't handle really long pieces of media very well in some instances, especially if you're doing slow motion. That said many people capture long chunks of video, 20-30 minutes or more and break it down in FCP. Material that needs to be slowmoed can be handled separately, either captured in smaller pieces or exported from FCP and brought back in for speed changing.

"And is this going to affect the conform stage, where I'd expect to dump out all the low-res clips in the show, and then re-digitise them 1:1 for a final ?"

Read the manual thoroughly on media manager, and search the forums for MM issues. It can be problematic with complex edits, particularly with speed changes, nested sequences with speed changes, freeze frames, double system sound and other oddities. If you have to go the offline/online route I would not wait until the very end before doing the full res redidge. I'd do it when the rough cut was fixed, you somewhere around there, while the edit is still relatively straight-forward. Then go to full res and finish the project at full res for color correction and effets. BTW, do NOT dump the lo res material before you run Media Manager. Let it do its recompress function while the low res material is still online and available to it.

Thanks for the reply. This has been immensely useful to me.

By the way I did mean DigiBeta, not Beta SP. I used to prefer it when the choice was just 16mm or 35mm ;-)

IndioBlack