New PC Betas

[Stephen Armour]

Originally Posted by David Newman

Stephen, the fix for the old files is engineering work that we just can't justify at moment. Particularly as in is not an issue going forward and mostly cosmetically impacts a minority of users (PAL users can't use timecode burnin accurately.) It requires that we have a post encode metadata insertion tool that is file based, i.e. not using the database. This might happen for other reason, is so, we can consider the old file timecode patch.

Could it not be possible to "re-encode" older CF material, correcting that problem simply by detecting the true framerate and inserting in the rewrap/encode just as you did before? I would have no problem whatsoever running batchs back through HDLink again just to gain that feature.

If it's simply too much hassle/cost/pain for too little gain, I'll quit whining and live with it, but if there's any way possible to bring older mastered CF material into line, it would be nice.

This is my last complaint on this, thanks for answering.

[David Newman]

It you converted again, using existing AVIs as source, it will fix it, yes.

[Jay Bloomfield]

Originally Posted by David Newman

We still seem to be talking across purposes.

No, I understand what you are saying:

Native format metadata --> HDLink--> Identical metadata in CFHD AVI

What I was asking, but you answered it, is:

Original metadata in CFHD AVI ---> 3rd party metadata editor ---> Original + added metadata in CFHD AVI.

The "added" metadata do not show up in FL, at least for me. No matter, it's not that important.

BTW, Adobe's XMP metadata is added to the video clip and isn't located in a sidecar file. XMP metadata shows up in ExifTool in read mode (see attached text file from exiftool), with some bogus passive metadata that I added to a CFHD AVI file with both CS4 (XMP) and abcAVItag (EXIF metadata).

I have looked at DVMP Pro 4, I should probably see if I can convince them to make a shell version that HDLink can call, so we can append its data in addition to all the ExifTool data. We don't want to reproduce their work, I would rather up-sell a script-able version of their tools through integration. Do you know anyone behind that tool?

Sorry, no. The author's name is Colin Browell and I'd bet that he'd be interested. I've used it for several versions now, since HDVDataMon was no longer supported. DVMP Pro 4 is a handy tool to parse out the per frame gain settings, especially. It's only a single exe file with no additional DLLs, so there are no exposable entry points to possibly call. But that's a great idea to contact the author.

Also, a cool (but not free) metadata editor that works with AVI files (both read and write, unlike ExifTool) is MetadataTouch

[Simon Zimmer]

Hello,

Is there a metadata editor that works with .avi's that also allows you to add in and out points to various points in the clip and save them in metadata?

I am looking for software like Lightroom to organize all my clips but have yet to find anything remotely close.

Any ideas?

Simon

[Stephen Armour]

Originally Posted by David Newman

It you converted again, using existing AVIs as source, it will fix it, yes.

I re-wrapped an older 1920x1080p CFed AVI to be a CF MOV and then used local layout and TC overlay in FL to check it and it reset the TC for the 30 frames.

But, I could NOT get HDLink to re-convert the CF AVI to CF AVI under any circumstance. Is there a trick I don't know about?

EDIT:
Cancel that last statement. It suddenly decided to cooperate and works fine. I am happy...almost.

Now for that pesky CS4 RT engine... :)

[David Newman]

It just worked for me. AVI in, AVI out.

[Stephen Armour]

Originally Posted by David Newman

It just worked for me. AVI in, AVI out.

Me too, now.

Thanks David, I'm a happy camper! Ahhh, you saved me many hours of work!

[Bruce Gruber]

Originally Posted by Simon Zimmer

Hello,

Is there a metadata editor that works with .avi's that also allows you to add in and out points to various points in the clip and save them in metadata?

I am looking for software like Lightroom to organize all my clips but have yet to find anything remotely close.

Any ideas?

Simon

Hey Simon, Try using Adobe Bridge I think you can do it from there. It also os very east to batch rename files.

Bruce

[Stephen Armour]

Originally Posted by David Newman

It just worked for me. AVI in, AVI out.

I have one more question about FL after converting older CF material.

When I converted the CF material, both in FL (or any other viewer like Veedub64, or MPC), the timecode window only shows every other frame. It tracks correctly, but only updates every other frame.

Is this a bug or by design, or something to do with the conversion?

[David Newman]

If you use IP structured files, you only get metadata updates every second frame. If you select "Smart render" you get I-frame only files, which can have metadata on every frame.

[Stephen Armour]

Originally Posted by David Newman

If you use IP structured files, you only get metadata updates every second frame. If you select "Smart render" you get I-frame only files, which can have metadata on every frame.

Can you give a quick summary of what implications that would have for these reconverted CF masters and editing?

Most of our material is still coming from up-rez HDV, or direct-from-HDMI (like V1) recording via Intensity Pro, and the reconverted material is used as masters for various target outputs (DVD, BR, direct download HD, flash, satellite direct broadcast[middle east])

[David Newman]

summary: "Zero impact" ;)

[Stephen Armour]

Originally Posted by David Newman

summary: "Zero impact" ;)

Except space-wise, I-frame came out a lot bigger (15% bigger, but was much faster to re-convert).

[David Newman]

Yes, I expected you to work that out. These days that 15% is not an much of an issue -- 7 years ago when we first designed the codec core it was very important as drives were much slower.

[Stephen Armour]

For sure that 15% is no biggie today. Everything else seems to be as you stated: zero impact. I tried some AE conversions of NTSC to PAL and also Flash and it was the same. So the difference in the keyframes are what determines the TC reading?

Are there any "gotchas" to watch out for with any other scaling or color conversions, or is it simply a non-issue? If that is true, the speedier conversion and TC frame rate alone is worth it to me.

Tnx