"ClipWrap" m2t to Quicktime HDV wrapper NOW AVAILABLE!

[Mike Woodworth]

Originally Posted by David Knaggs

Great to have you aboard, Mike!

To explain:
Say you have a clip (.m2t) captured on DVHSCap which has 5 different takes on it (and therefore 5 different "timecode breaks" for every time you stopped recording). Even though your actual timecode on the tape is continuous, both FCP and MPEG Streamclip register a "timecode break" at each point you stopped recording - presumably due to some sort of disturbance to the GOP structure at each of these points.

We haven't specifically tested this situation. Do you have one of these problem clips? If you contact me offlist (mike@divergentmedia.com) I'll give you details on how to upload the files to our ftp server. We have a fairly large library of various clips we are testing against, but I'd love to add something like this to the test suite so we can be sure it works.

Thanks,
mike

[Mike Woodworth]

Originally Posted by Daniel Weber

Any ideas on what your product will cost?

We haven't finalized on a price quite yet, but I promise we'll be announcing everything very soon. We're finishing up the store and squashing a few bugs, we hope to push this out very soon.

Also, I don't know if everyone found it by way of the blog post on divergentmedia.com, but we've posted a screen cast that shows colin, our QA guy, batching some files. You can find it directly on youtube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLQjXKKsSiM

Thanks,
mike

[Marc Colemont]

Mike, Hopefully not too expensive so everybody can start using a good conversion tool for the M2T files?

[David Scattergood]

Great news.
I'm assuming (hoping!) that although there is no direct mention here, 720p25 will be covered here too?

[Mike Woodworth]

Originally Posted by David Scattergood

Great news.
I'm assuming (hoping!) that although there is no direct mention here, 720p25 will be covered here too?

David, we have tested with every flavor of 720p JVC. They are all supported.

-mike

[Michael Wisniewski]

Will the files that ClipWrap creates be compatible on both the Mac and Windows NLEs?

[David Knaggs]

Originally Posted by Mike Woodworth

We haven't specifically tested this situation. Do you have one of these problem clips? If you contact me offlist (mike@divergentmedia.com) I'll give you details on how to upload the files to our ftp server. We have a fairly large library of various clips we are testing against, but I'd love to add something like this to the test suite so we can be sure it works.

For those who have been following this thread, I sent one of the aforementioned clips to Mike and it only took them about 60 minutes to work out how to handle it and add the new feature to ClipWrap. So that's great news!

I think this feature will probably be handiest for nature videographers and event videographers where, at times, "every frame counts". They can simply rewind a few seconds before the clip they actually want, then capture (with DVHSCap or HDVxDV) the last few seconds of the previous clip plus ALL of the new clip. And the new QuickTime generated by ClipWrap now won't freeze when it reaches the "timecode break" at the point where the new footage begins. (I hope that makes sense.) Nice!

[Tim Dashwood]

Originally Posted by Michael Wisniewski

Will the files that ClipWrap creates be compatible on both the Mac and Windows NLEs?

m2t files are already directly compatible with most Windows-based NLEs so the idea here is to make those same m2t files just as usable in FCP on Mac by wrapping them into Quicktime.

[Chris Harris]

Does this program only work with 720p files? I have some old 1080i .m2t files from my Sony HC1 that I captured on my PC a few years back and I'm hoping that this will work for me too.

[Mike Woodworth]

Originally Posted by Chris Harris

Does this program only work with 720p files? I have some old 1080i .m2t files from my Sony HC1 that I captured on my PC a few years back and I'm hoping that this will work for me too.

Chris, ClipWrap is not limited to just 720p. We are testing with 1080 files from Canon and Sony.

m2t is a funny standard, with many permutations of how things may be handled in the files, but we are striving to support nearly all HDV camera formats. Granted we don't have access to all of these cameras, so a few of the more obscure files may not be addressed in the initial release - but the plan is to push releases often as we add support for new cameras.

-mike

[David Scattergood]

Originally Posted by Mike Woodworth

David, we have tested with every flavor of 720p JVC. They are all supported.

-mike

Excellent. Thanks Mike.

[David Knaggs]

I'll gladly pay for the latest beta! Because I've just figured out (today) how to save myself about 20 weeks of work. I've got an old feature project (120 minutes long) where I'd batch converted the m2ts into AIC QuickTimes with HDVxDV (with out-of-synch audio). I'd recently "re-captured" the 35 tapes natively with FCP, filled with mid-clip breaks and shaving the beginning and ends off certain clips, etc. Then I was re-cutting from scratch, trying to find each clip (with no matching timecode to go by). Each clip was a bit like trying to find a needle in a haystack and, after a week, I'd only re-cut about 6 1/2 minutes (before I got swamped again with corporate work). I was really in despair. Then I saw Tim's post in another thread about how the TC is only metadata and can be changed, which inspired me to pull out the FCP manual and study the TC section.

All of my AIC QuickTimes were given a timecode by HDVxDV, albeit the wrong timecode! (And MPEG Streamclip, of course, automatically gives each clip a TC starting at 00:00:00:00.) So I've just completed an experiment where I batch converted 5 m2t files with HDVxDV and stored them on a separate drive, imported them into FCP and cut them into a sequence. Then I selected each clip in the Browser and modified its TC to start at zero in each case (Modify>Timecode>Set to First Frame>change the Source TC to 00:00:00:00).

Then I batch converted the same 5 m2t files using MPEG Streamclip (usually not recommended by me because Streamclip gives repeat frames with 720p24 - but I was simply using Streamclip to simulate a batch conversion by ClipWrap with each clip starting at 00:00:00:00) onto a separate drive from the HDVxDV conversions.

Then I disconnected the HDVxDV drive and, when FCP asked me to reconnect, I guided it to the drive with the Streamclip conversions (which all had the same names as the original m2t files due to the batch conversion) and reconnected. Voila! The sequence played exactly the same footage. With everything where it should be!

So now I have one new request for Mike. And hopefully this feature will be very simple to add. Can we have the option, when ClipWrap adds the wrapper to the .m2t, to have the beginning of the clip start with 00:00:00:00 TC?

So you would have the option, when batch processing with ClipWrap, to have "First Frame Set To:" and then you can select either: "Original Timecode" or "Set to 00:00:00:00".

This feature would be very handy for those wishing to upgrade the quality of earlier projects where transcoding was used. (Hey, maybe I'm the only one!)

Originally I was just looking at using ClipWrap for future corporate work (so I can work in full native quality WITHOUT those darned mid-clip breaks). But a lightbulb has just turned on above my head regarding this other project and I'm desperate to get my hands on a copy. As I said, I'll gladly pay for the latest beta! Thanks.

[Tim Dashwood]

David.

FCP doesn't relink based on TC or any other meta data such as tape name. (Avid had always done this BTW)
FCP simply relinks based on file name and counts the number of frames from the first frame of the file. It doesn't care about timecode.

If I were you I would avoid 00:00:00:00 timecode at all costs because it serves no purpose if you ever want to recapture from the original tapes.

[David Knaggs]

Thanks, Tim. You've just saved me a lot of unnecessary work! I guess my test was unnecessarily elaborate.

And in that case, Mike, I withdraw my request to have the ClipWrap option of re-setting TC to 00:00:00:00. (But still urgently requiring ClipWrap itself!)

[Mike Woodworth]

I just wanted to post in this thread to let everyone know we are now shipping ClipWrap.

It is available at ClipWrap for $49.95. You can download a trial which will convert the first minute of each clip, and purchase an unlock key from our online store if you're happy.

If anyone has any questions of feedback they can email me directly at mike [at] divergentmedia [dot ] com.

mike