Hey, guys. I got some upcoming commercial projects... They're going to be shot with the 5dm2. I have a dual system, recording audio separate with the h4n. I transcode everything to prores typically. But anywho, these are the requirements for delivery (they're going to timewarner, by the way)

Spot specs should be the following:
One mpeg-2 file with combined audio and video.
720x480 or 640x480 screen size is fine. Most of the spots come as 720x480.
Audio should be encoded as 48kHz.
Frame rate is 29.97.
Bit rate should be between 8 and 10.
Audio must be two channel audio, as our current encoding equipment can't record stereo. (lame-o)

2 things... Will I just have to slow down the audio by .1 percent, since I'll be working with a timeline of 29.97, and not 30p? I use Compressor... I was looking around, and I couldn't figure out how to put out audio as two channels? I don't think there's an option. I feel really dumb not knowing how to do this. I am not an audio guy by any means. I friend who works at a recording studio, I suppose I could ask him. I have no idea why I even just mentioned that. Hahaha. Whatever.

So, yeah... If you guys got any advice on what I should do before delivery, let me know! That'd be so sweet. I don't want a headache, depression, or any of that jazz a few weeks from now.

Thanks, you're all rockstars. Wooooo.

I just finished a project with some similarities, shot on the Canon with audio run to the Zoom H4. I used Plural Eyes to sync everything, that set me up with one video and four audio tracks. Turn off track 1 & 2 (the camera mike) after syncing, make sure the sequence settings have "mono" audio checked, then output as needed through compressor or quicktime converter.
The picture specs they are requesting are 4x3, I suppose they want the 16x9 video anamorphic (squeezed) but you might want to check on that.
Based on the recommendations in the Phil Bloom tutorial on importing to FCP I'm back to using XDcam instead of ProRes, the Pro Rez files are just too big to be dealing with for me, they jam up my already jammed drives.

Thanks for this info guys, I have a job coming up in September in Canada and this info is handy for me.
I also use the XDCAM EX transcode for editing in as it's easier to grade the smaller (than prores) files on my MacBook Pro. I did a visual side by side test a couple of months ago Prores and XDCAM EX and couldn't really tell the difference.

Avey

Why not ring up their engineering dept?

I'm sure they would be more than happy to help.

Cheers,
Ben

I used Plural Eyes to sync everything,

Hi Denis, how does Plural Eyes work?? I do manual sync which is easy most of the time, but sometimes I have the odd un-syncable stuff... ;-))

Here's a demo on pluraleyes: PluralEyes (http://www.singularsoftware.com/autosync/index.html)

So, does anybody know if I have my sequence set to 30fps and export to 29.97, will that effect anything for broadcast delivery? I wouldn't think it would... I should be in good shape. This is the first time I've gone through this whole process. It's been-- interesting. I tried contacting the engineering department, but the guy who's in charge of thatwasn't in... I'm gonna try back this upcoming week.

Plural Eyes works so well it is jaw dropping spooky. check out the HD WARRIOR tutorial on it....

FCP seems to automatically conform seamlessly between 30 and 29.97, but if you want your H4n audio to sync properly you need to start the project with a custom preset that has a true 30fps timebase before importing your audio - details are here on the pluraleyes blog:

25 Hour Day: DSLR Dual-System Audio: The 99.9% Solution (http://brucesharpe.blogspot.com/2009/06/dslr-dual-system-audio-999-solution.html)