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Showing posts from August, 2013

Protip: Making HD Playback Smoother in Multicam

At my old office, we edited everything in 10:1m after a real-time capture because that codec is fucking good at its job. At my new office, we edit everything in MPEG-4 from the XDCam proxy files, and that codec blows hairy goat sphincter. In addition, because we deliver in HD, people keep wanting to work in an HD project.  I understand their belief that this matters, but they're wrong.  In fact, yellow/green mode in an SD project is every bit as good as yellow/green mode in an HD one as long as you're talking about multicam 9-split playback. Which I am. SO... If your producer or editor is having trouble with a group that's lagging during playback, losing audio sync, or otherwise doing that thing that Avid calls "functioning normally," the solution is often as simple as changing the format of their project from HD to SD.  That does an automatic downconvert on all playback footage, and stops stutter in its tracks.  Erm, starts stutter up again.  No.  Hmm...

Exception: AUTO_COMP_NO_SYNC

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Well kids, I've "upgraded" to Avid 5.5 at my new office, and that means there's a whole host of new issues for me to bitch and moan about. Chief among them is this bullshit: Exception:  AUTO_COMP_NO_SYNC This is what happens when I try to multigroup by doing exactly the same fucking thing that I used to do in Avid 4.0.5.16.  Fucking Avid 5.5 is bullshit. I guess there are some minor differences here:  I'm working in a 1080/23.976P project.  Okay, so there's one minor difference.  Fucking Avid, of course it goddamn breaks. Let's start at the beginning (because it's a very good place to start) (and also because I like making Dad Jokes, apparently):  The group I'm making has a lot of pretty basic flaws.  First, it's eight hours long - that's actual media length, not the time spanned by that media.  Second, there's both XD Cam footage and imported GoPro clips.  Third, there's also iso audio.  Fourth, that iso audio is actua