Help: Relinking Steroscopic Clips to a 2D Edit.

[Sierra Haworth]

SUPER UPDATE: In case anyone ever finds this string and wonders what happened, the epilogue is here.

UPDATE: I got a hold of someone else with the same problem. They received an email from AVID support confirming that you cannot relink 2D clips to 3D clips at this point. I'm going to call AVID and find out if they plan on releasing an update anytime soon with this feature. All progress I make with this can be found in my blog.

I have a feature edited with ProRes created by KiPro Minis. I need to relink it to the 5K FF R3D raw shot on EPIC. I'm fairly new to AVID and have been successful with relinking the raw R3D footage back to the prores edit and getting a 5K 2D version, but now I need to relink the stereoscopic clips and get a 5K 3D version. I'm completely lost on how to do this. I have the tape names set to match the prores Tape names that the edit was done with (left eye). The console tells me "Warning: the path conversion from UTF16 to MBCS Failed." What other details am I missing? Can anyone give me decent step by step instructions on doing this? Any thoughts or help would be greatly appreciated!

[MichaelP]

AMA uses the full filename if that is what you are using to link to the R3D files. Is the TAPE name value the same name?

Michael

[Sierra Haworth]

AMA uses the full filename if that is what you are using to link to the R3D files. Is the TAPE name value the same name?

Michael

Yes, file names of ProRes, R3D, and stereoscopic clips all match the tape name. I can get the R3D to relink, just not the stereoscopic clips I've created in AVID using the R3D. If you want a longer explanation of what I've been doing/trying, you can read my frustrated blog post about it here.

Do you have any experience conforming a 2D edit to 3D? The biggest lesson I seem to be learning is the editor should have been editing in 3D from the get go.

Also, nice signature quote.

[MichaelP]

Have you tried "relinking to selected". rather than a straight up relink?

Michael

[MichaelP]

I'll need to check into this. It may very well be that they needed to edit with stereo 3D clips to start as those clips can start off with only Left or right, or monoscopic, or whatever and be populated at any time. But having started as full left, the Media Composer just thinks it's a straight up 2D edit... This came up on "The Great Gatsby" and there were many discussions about starting on v5.x with the "2D" mode of editing frame compatible stereo 3D and moving to stereo 3D midway... it was recommended at the time to not try that as it wasn't planned for and all in the v6 release feature set. I will ask and see if anything new has transpired with this particular workflow.

Michael

[Sierra Haworth]

Thank you so much! I'm getting no help from the AVID Community forum. Feel free to reach me by email. SD.Haworth@gmail.com

[Blair Erickson]

I'm working with Sierra on this project and for the record, the official solution from Avid is to "manually go in and use replace edit on each individual clip on the timeline, one by one typing back in the matching timecode for each one."

Got about 10 minutes into the 2 hour feature timeline when the constant crashing began. Unsure how to proceed. This AVID software is a nightmare of instability, but we're a small project so we cannot afford to leave it.

[Bruce Allen]

May I ask what your plan was if MC6 didn't get released? I mean, what was your plan back when you were doing this in MC 5.5?

To me the problem was that you started this project without figuring out exactly how you were going to finish.

I'm working with Sierra on this project and for the record, the official solution from Avid is to "manually go in and use replace edit on each individual clip on the timeline, one by one typing back in the matching timecode for each one."

Got about 10 minutes into the 2 hour feature timeline when the constant crashing began. Unsure how to proceed. This AVID software is a nightmare of instability, but we're a small project so we cannot afford to leave it.

Well, there isn't exactly a better solution that you can leave it for - it has the best 3D support by far of all NLEs.

It's still bleeding edge stuff though. At the moment, there are 3 groups of users:

1. Folks that worked on stereo projects on previous version of Avid but but mostly relied on their finishing app to handle 3D workflow issues <- MAJORITY

2. Folks that are trying to do stereo projects on Media Composer 6 from scratch <- MINORITY, BUT GROWING

3. Folks that worked on stereo projects on MC 5.5 but have no finishing apps to help and are now trying to convert to MC 6.0 stereo project <- REALLY REALLY SMALL NUMBER THAT WILL NEVER GET BIGGER SINCE THIS WORKFLOW ISSUE DOESN'T EXIST FOR PEOPLE STARTING ON MC 6

Sadly you guys are in group 3...

If I were you, I'd just take my 2D edit into a finishing program with good stereo support. Or recreate the project as a fresh MC 6 project (what Avid suggested) if you feel like taking a chance with v1.0 workflow.

Personally I'm waiting for like Media Composer 6.5 or so before attempting doing anything 3D in Media Composer alone. But I'm just cautious... well, at least they have probably gotten it smooth by then, whereas Premiere, FCP X might just be beginning buggy version 1 of native 3D support!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Blair Erickson]

Bruce, had it never been released, we would've continued 2D editing in 5.5 and gone the traditional route which obviously has its own downsides (blindly editing without seeing what the 3D output will actually look like till much later). There's obviously some risks and costs associated with that as well.

You expect bugs and some instability, certainly, with any new software release. What we did not expect was quite the level of "doesn't go more than 5 minutes without a complete crash" that we've been seeing. If these features and this version wasn't ready for prime time, it should not be released or advertised or sold to customers. While I understand people can make the argument that customers deserve what they get, MC6 on initial trial testing appeared to be sound.

We were convinced by many old school AVID supporters that the stereo and 5k support featured and hyped in MC6 was going to be a big improvement that was going to save our project time and money. To date, it has been the opposite. MC6 was promoted as offering features that would make editing a stereo project much easier than past methods. We assumed that was overall going to be true. So far, it has not been.

I hope that the software improves soon, but I'm obviously greatly frustrated to see how much time and money we've spent with software we were hoping would help us greatly, only to discover that it simply wasn't ready. Yeah, I know buyer beware and such, but my past experience with other companies updated version release software has not been quite like this.

[MichaelP]

We were convinced by many old school AVID supporters that the stereo and 5k support featured and hyped in MC6 was going to be a big improvement that was going to save our project time and money. To date, it has been the opposite. MC6 was promoted as offering features that would make editing a stereo project much easier than past methods. We assumed that was overall going to be true. So far, it has not been.

Blair - MC6 is leaps and bound better for S3D editing than any previous version. What was not clearly defined in your conversations with Avid supporters was the compatibility to move from pre-v6 S3D to v6 functionality. That is a question for Avid sales or product management - If you were lead in the wrong direction by Avid - then that is another issue and needs to be addressed at the source.

Michael