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...  Uh, it makes the thing play back smoothly.  Yes.  Even in 9 camera multicam on Avid 5.5.

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