Media manager problems

[chocblu]

Hey all,

right so we're doing our first feature. 90mins, very exited and frustrated, isnt that always the way. Using a HVX, editing on FCP 5.1.4, colour grading and effects on a PC in combustion and AE (i kow i know, we've pretty much done everything wrong here, but our colourist and affects guy work on those sooooo). We were previously using the avid DNxHD codec to get it out of FCP and onto the PC. However our effects guy noticed that it fell apart badly with any keying, and the footage looked bad after a colour grade. So we switched to sheer codec, happy with the codec, but size is an issue.

Our previous workflow was to output all video as full clips, colour and render the entire clip and then relink with an offline sequence. Now this was wastful on space but simple, and easy to do. We had space with the DNxHD codec, We dont with the sheer. So that lead me to using media manager to put handles on the video, this seemed to work ok on small chuncks, but now its started to encode, SOME of the files to DVCPRO HD 960x720 but with square pixels. Which means we loose the sides AND its not transferable to a PC.

So my question is..

1. do any of you know why it is encoding some of the files to DVCPRO HD.

2. If you dont, how do you handle getting the footage out with just the edit points, and then back in. IE a post production workflow. I know about automatic duck, but in this case this only oes half the problem, its doesnt export the idividual edit points out of FCP that we need to do to conerve space.

Thanks for all your help!!

[VaricamLife]

Find a way to increase your budget and get more space then. Hard drives are dirt cheap now. Either that or buy your effects person a Mac and AE for the Mac.

If you're going to be flopping back and forth and playing around with codecs like that, then you are going to have to deal with needing a lot of space. The codecs that have smaller file sizes have better math algorithms/better compression. Those didn't come out of nowhere. People worked hard to make them, so hence they aren't open codecs. If you want to flop around computers then you have to work with the open codecs. Open codecs, that aren't going to degrade your footage, are uncompressed (or have worse algorithms) and need a lot more space. Its just part of the reality of what you're doing.

Why only some files are exporting as DVCPro HD and not all, or not all as something else, is odd. No clue myself as to why that would be happening to you. But all of your HD footage should be sqaure pixels I believe. I believe all HD is square pixels.

Cheers.

[adkimery]

As Varicam suggested, HDDs are dirt cheap so just grab some that you'll only use for the on-line. Just out of curiosity, which DNxHD codec where you using? AFAIK the higher bit rate versions should be good for on-lining. I'm not sure why FCP has started to encode only some of the clips as DVCPro HD, but I'd try the usual things:
Trash FCP preferences, if that doesn't work...
Create a new Seq and copy/paste your edit into the new Seq, if that doesn't work...
Create a new Project and copy/paste your edit into the new project, if that doesn't work...
I'm out of ideas short of re-installing FCP.


Varicam,
I think only full raster HD codecs are square pixel while codecs like HDCAM, DVCPro HD and 1080 HDV are un-square pixel.


-A

[chocblu]

Cheers for all your helpful info. DVCPRO-HD has a 1.3333 never ending pixel aspect ratio. total pain.

The stuff about hdd space and all that i realise. The question was more about media manager, and if anyone else has found it buggy. Ive read some other posts around the traps that are not very flattering. The bug with the DVCPRO-HD footage is actually that it renders out the files fine, but then links to the original footage. Very wierd. as well as the changing pixel aspect ratio.

So am i right in that media manager is buggy or is it just me?

Cheers
Mark

[adkimery]

Yes, the Media Manager has garnered the nickname "media mangler" by some and it's definitely a part of FCP that has room for improvement.

In your MM options under "project" do you have it set to "duplicate selected items and place into a new project"? I use the MM to archive the short form projects and I've never had a problem w/it relinking to the "old" media files instead of the new ones, but I always have the "duplicate selected items and place into a new project" checked though.

-A

[chocblu]

Yeah ive got the duplicate selected items and place into a new project ticked. I was just thinking that it would be goot to be able to ave a third party app that took an XML sequence and did all this for you. Just a simpe one. then it would mean that FCP wouldnt be taken up exporting and stuff. Anybody else thought of this?

On top of media managers settings, what else would you like it to do?

my first thing on the list would be to put .mov's on the end of files, and when sliptting up clips, to use a standard naming convention.

Or alternativly, surely there is some other package out there that will do this?

CHeers

Mark