tips and tricks from pre-production to post

So you’ve arranged your composition, you’ve calculated the intervals and set up the ISO and shutter speed. When You get your completed sequence back play it… what’s this annoying flickering?
The time-lapse flicker is the Bain of most photographers and filmmakers. So first off, why does it occur? Well it could be a number of things. Firstly it could be the artificial lighting in the scene where the 60Hz (or 50Hz) power frequency produces a corresponding fluctuation in the light output of the lamps. It could be the cameras mechanical aperture where for each shutter press; the camera activates a mechanical device that moves the iris to the desired aperture. The aperture cannot be exactly the same size every time because of friction and other factors so there are differences in exposure.
That’s very interesting I hear you say but how do I fix it? Well The first (free) answer is to use After effects and its built in plugin called “colour stabiliser”. This plugin works just fine as long as you have a fixed light and dark point to which you can allocate the plugin’s markers. If however your image is constantly changing (as time lapses do!) then you will find it difficult to set two markers on fixed light and dark points. At this point I would recommend navigating towards granitebaysoftware.com and looking at their (not free) plugin GBDeflicker. This clever plugin utilizes a luminance graph and histogram to locate the relevant light sources to place markers that produce colour stabilisation. To see a more in depth explanation take a look at Granite Bay Software’s GBDeflicker PDF.
Here is an example of a time-lapse with the left side raw and the right side with the deflicker.

Transferring and editing your Sony xdcam footage into final cut pro can tricky best the best of times! In this article we are going to look at how to successfully download all the necessary drivers and the correct workflow process to log and transfer your footage into final cut pro.

First things first we need to ensure we have a couple of applications and drivers downloaded and installed on our edit machine to ensure we can properly view and log the footage.

Download Log and Transfer   Utility for MAC Version 1.00, XDCAM Transfer for  Mac FCP Version 2.51, and SxS_Device_Driver_v1045050.dmg.

For more information on the above downloads visit http://www.sony.ca/xdcamex/software.htm and http://www.sony.ca/promedia/drivers.htm

Download and install the above software, afterwards restarting your machine.

Now either put the SxS card into your express34 card slot, your edit deck or direct connection to your camera via USB.

Open Final Cut Pro, and go to File, Log and Transfer.

In this new window we can view and browse all recorded clips, as well as log them to your hard drive.

The clips will save to wherever your scratch disks are set, so ensure you have those set correctly. We have a generic scratch disk that we save all our raw ex3 footage too.

Now once you have chosen the clips you wish to transfer, drag them to the clip queue in the bottom left corner of the log and transfer window.

Once the clips have disappeared from here, you can close this window, close Final Cut Pro, and unless you want to copy the raw files from the card, eject the card in the finder, and finally, right click the SxS card icon on the menu bar, and click Power off Card.

Now you can safely eject the card, and format it so it is ready to be recorded onto again.

We need to conform all footage to ProRes 422, Open Compressor, and drag and drop all the files from your Final Cut scratch disk to the droplet window.

Select ProRes 422 from the Settings tab and drag and drop on all of the files in the droplet window.

Select a destination from the destination tab, and again drag and drop across all of the files in the droplet window.

Click submit and wait for the files to now be processed into ProRes 422.

Open Final Cut Pro, and start a new project.

Click Final Cut Pro from the menu bar, and select Audio/Video Settings. Here we will set up a preset so we no longer need to set up our timeline each time.

On the Sequence Preset tab, scroll down until you find Apple ProRes 422 1920*1080 25p 48 kHz, and select duplicate. (select one for appropriate fps if different)

Change the name on this new window to Sony xdcam ex ProRes 422 25fps 48kHz, hit ok, and ensure on the sequence preset tab that the preset we just saved is selected and again hit ok.

Now every time we open Final Cut we can simply select the preset we have made.

Drag all your processed files from Compressor into FInal Cut Pro and begin to edit to your hearts content, without having to pre-render your footage, or having to worry about having the wrong sequence settings.

Once we have finished our edit and want to export we will be selecting our in and out points on the timeline, go to file, Sent to, Compressor.

With the sequence in Compressor again select ProRes 422, and a suitable destination from the appropriate tabs, and hit submit for your finished edit.

I thought i’d go over our workflow for working with 5dmkii footage, and getting it into an easily workable state, as well as how we export after edit.

Copy all files from your CF card to your hard drive, place them in a new folder.

Open Cinema Tools, click File, and Batch Conform.

In the new window select one of the files in the new folder you just created, and Cinema Tools will automatically select all files within that folder.

Conform all files to 29.97fps, Cinema Tools will process this straight away.

Now we need to conform all footage to ProRes 422, Open Compressor, and drag and drop all the conformed files to the droplet window.

Select ProRes 422 from the Settings tab and drag and drop on all of the files in the droplet window.

Select a destination from the destination tab, and again drag and drop across all of the files in the droplet window.

Click submit and wait for the files to now be processed into ProRes 422.

Open Final Cut Pro, and start a new project.

Click Final Cut Pro from the menu bar, and select Audio/Video Settings. Here we will set up a preset so we no longer need to set up our timeline each time.

On the Sequence Preset tab, scroll down until you find Apple ProRes 422 1920*1080 30p 48 kHz, and select duplicate.

Change the name on this new window to Canon 5dmkii ProRes 422 29.97fps 44.1kHz, and change the Rate in Audio Settings to 44.1 kHz, hit ok, and ensure on the sequence preset tab that the preset we just saved is selected and again hit ok.

Now every time we open Final Cut we can simply select the preset we have made.

Drag all your processed files from Compressor into FInal Cut Pro and begin to edit to your hearts content, without having to pre-render your footage, or having to worry about having the wrong sequence settings.

Once we have finished our edit and want to export we will be selecting our in and out points on the timeline, go to file, Sent to, Compressor.

With the sequence in Compressor again select ProRes 422, and a suitable destination from the appropriate tabs, and hit submit for your finished edit.