Full Open timeline

Allow different codecs of the same frame size to be played in the timeline at full RT quality, since QT can handle the decoding of the different codecs anyway.

While we're at it, a "conform clip to sequence frame rate" would be a nice addition within FCP.



www.strypesinpost.com

Hmm. This reminds me of something I got into briefly with Andy Mees like a year or two ago. We were both wondering what Final Cut's internal data format is when you're playing back from the timeline. Like, if your timeline is ProRes and your source material is uncompressed 10-bit, then obviously the uncompressed stuff gets encoded to ProRes and cached on disk when you render. But when you're playing back unrendered material, what does Final Cut do? Obviously it has to decode the source material, but does it also do a real-time, low-resolution encode to the timeline format as you play back?

If I remember right, we didn't get anywhere with our investigations. But it's still a very interesting question. If the answer is that yeah, Final Cut has to encode to your timeline format in real time, that answers the question of why you can't play back anything and everything at full resolution.

I can imagine a situation where you've got, say, 10-bit ProRes 422 material at 1920x1080 at 23.976, then a shot of 8-bit uncompressed at 1920x1080 at 23.976, then a shot of XDCAM EX at 1920x1080 at 23.976, and so on in that fashion, mixing codecs but keeping rasters and frame rates the same. It's easy to imagine that Final Cut should be able to play back that timeline in real time at full quality ? since obviously it can play back all of those formats in real time at full quality (assuming your system can handle it) and you're not doing any conforming or scaling or anything. I imagine things would be different if you mixed 1920x1080 ProRes with 1280x1080 DVCPRO HD, though.

As for breaking the conform feature out of Cinema Tools and putting it into Final Cut, I say hell yes. And while we're at it, can I use your idea to piggyback my own request for adding and removing 3:2 right in the timeline? Make it an effect, the way Media Composer 4 does. When you drop 23.976 stuff into a 29.97 timeline, it defaults to adding 3:2 pulldown, but you can change it to 2:2:2:4 (if you're crazy) or 2:2 (if you're changing speeds) or whatever. It doesn't even have to be a real-time effect! I don't mind rendering it!

And as long as I'm wishing, have it attempt to do a pulldown removal if you cut 29.97 stuff into 23.976. Let it barf on broken cadences; you shouldn't be working with a single shot with a broken pulldown cadence anyway. And again, real-time is not a requirement. I don't mind rendering. I'm just tired of having to build whole workflow pipelines around 3:2 addition or removal.

>As for breaking the conform feature out of Cinema Tools and putting it into Final Cut

The furthest we've got is a 25-24 fps conform feature. 24 fps full integer. I don't know why it stopped on the PAL side.


I'm just looking at full RT preview. Obviously if you've got something like Uncompressed and you're working in a DV sequence, the footage is going to look worse after rendering. Thing is, they sorta did it with HDV/XDCAM EX's "render to Prores" function and it's capable of playing back both HDV and rendered ProRes files in real time, full quality.


>I imagine things would be different if you mixed 1920x1080 ProRes with 1280x1080 DVCPRO
>HD, though.

The hardware's more than capable of handling it. We scale up/down stuff in Quicktime Player all the time. QT doesn't need a render. I don't need super sharp edges when I'm doing an offline cut, and that quality's good enough for preview when all i'm doing is trying to tell the story. Of course, after rendering, I'd want to know the quality i'm getting.



www.strypesinpost.com

>The furthest we've got is a 25-24 fps conform feature.

Let me take that back. I tried it out, and it conforms my source files. I'd like to have it as a filter rather than have FCP mucking around with my source files.



www.strypesinpost.com

that's what conform does: modifies the original file by re-writing a line of code in there.

maybe there is some way for it to conform the clip only.
you CAN conform a reference movie, made either in FCP or QT.
and given that reference moves are just pointers to original media the way an FCP clip is, maybe it's possible.

(be very careful, however: it has to be ONE piece of media in the ref move ONLY.)


the 25>24 thing was brought into FCP as that's the most common, i imagine.
certainly it's a big part of the Film to PAL to FCP workflow

i cut my fist FCP feature back when that feature wasn't in FCP.
when i explained the workflow to avid editors the reaction was like "why do you bother"


nick

>that's what conform does: modifies the original file by re-writing a line of code in there.

I've had one case where a couple of frames turned into digital noise when i sent it through cinema tools to 23.98.

I had a duplicate of the source file, so I made a copy and sent it through cinema tools again and I that digital noise thing still occurred at that exact same point. I tried conforming it back to 25, and that noise stuck to the footage.

In the end, I sent the source file to Compressor to conform and encode. I've learnt to always back up my stuff before doing anything to it.

Having it as an option in FCP to alter your source files in any way, is kinda risky. I'd prefer it if FCP was to create a second clip and play off that (eg. through a "render" process).



www.strypesinpost.com

Maybe I'm being stupid here, but it should be possible to pull the frames off the disk, decode them and play them back at a different rate. Maybe you'd have to render audio, for obvious reasons, but video only should be real-time and non-destructive.