Blog

Posted on

Problem-Solving in Adobe Premiere: Audio Glitches and Sync

(I’ve just made the leap to Adobe Premiere from Final Cut, because I HATE the new FCPX and no, I’m NOT afraid of a new paradigm.  Adobe’s keyboard shortcuts alone are reason enough to be glad I switched.  I mean – tilde (~) expands the panel you’re hovering over to fill the whole screen?!  And then tilde again puts everything right back!  Sign me up.)

SO I had this problem which I solved in Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and i thought I’d mention it here.

I imported a few camera cards full of AVCAM / AVCHD footage from my HMC-150 and edited for a few days.

Then I clicked on one imported clip and found that the audio was wrong.  Glitches, skips, out of sync, weird things happening – all nice sounding, but not in the right places.

I checked the original MTS files on my HD using VLC player.  Sound was fine, everything was in sync.

I tried dragging the files into the Premiere project window, to see if it was a media import problem.  Same thing happened when I did that – the identical glitches, which were the same every time I played the file.

So I started guessing that Premiere had imported it wrong, and had recorded some wrong metadata.  That turned out to be the case.

I went to the “PRIVATE” folder where I’d copied my SD card to HDD.  Premiere distressingly fills this folder up with metadata files associated with each clip, which violates the law of “DO NOT MESS WITH YOUR SD CARD DIRECTORIES.”  But it seems to cause no harm because it only ADDS files, it doesn’t alter or delete any.

For each imported clip in .mts format, Premiere adds a file with the same name with .xmp as the extension in the same folder.  Feeling bold, I quit Premiere then deleted all these the .xmp files for that card – though i didn’t empty my trash yet.  I re-opened Premiere and double-clicked that file.  It was dead silent, as clips often are when first imported to Premiere.  It does some meta-data-ing… and then the sound was all back in proper order, problem solved.

The XMP files had been re-produced in that folder, although this time, apparently, without glitches.

-Flick

Posted on

Something Collective earns residency at Renfrew Community Centre

My art gang Something Collective has been accepted to create a big art project in the Renfrew neighbourhood in the fall – an interactive Community Map with all kinds of art forms involved, and all age groups!

Vancouver Park Board – Artists in Communities Program.

Artists in Communities Create in Local Neighbourhoods

Footprint: Renfrew Community Centre

Whether you are an experienced local artist or just interested in meeting some neighbours and having a lot of fun, Footprint will let you discover the Renfrew area in a whole new way. Join the artist team from Something Collective, Laura Barron, Flick Harrison Juliana Bedoya, Maggie Winston and Natalie Gan to explore your neighbourhood through dance, sound, video, green graffiti, puppets and photography. Friends and neighbours will create an interactive, living picture of Renfrew that aims to puts all our favorite spots on the map. This project will take place between August and November. For more information go to http://somethingcollective.ca/

Posted on

Conservatives mix up their con-job on new internet snooping bill

Fast-moving news today about the new internet surveillance law, bill C-30.

Vic Toews, Canadian Public Safety Minister, has pulled the GW Bush card in the war against privacy: “You either stand with us, or you stand with the child pornographers.”

He denies saying this, but here’s the video:

In response, the anonymous Twitter user Vikileaks30 has launched a campaign of revealing private details of Toews’ own divorce case.

I won’t repeat any of those tweets here, since I can’t vouch for their truth.

Today, House of Commons staff handed out the “wrong” version of the new law allowing warrantless surveillance of internet traffic.  The error revealed the guts of Conservative communications strategy: accuse defenders of privacy of supporting child predators.

“The short title is listed as “Lawful Access Act.” An hour later, House of Commons staff withdraw it and replace it with the identical bill, save a new short title. It’s now the “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.””

It’s a strategy that backfired on then-opposition-leader, now Prime Minister, Harper when he accused PM Paul Martin of defending child molesters in the 2004 election.  Now that Harper has a majority government, it might be more useful for battering down the scattered opposition.

Open Media.ca has a petition against the new law, bill C-30. The law grants unprecedented powers to police, and forces ISP’s to pay for surveillance technology.

Posted on

Stop Online Spying!

Stop Online Spying | OpenMedia.caStop Online Spying | OpenMedia.ca.

Please circulate and sign this petition.

The government is about to push through a set of electronic surveillance laws that will invade your privacy and cost you money. The plan is to force every phone and Internet provider to allow “authorities” to collect the private information of any Canadian, at any time, without a warrant.

This bizarre legislation will create Internet surveillance that is:

  • Warrantless: A range of “authorities” will have the ability to access the private information of law-abiding Canadians and our families using wired Internet and mobile devices, without justification.
  • Invasive: The laws leave our personal and financial information less secure and more susceptible to cybercrime.
  • Costly: Internet services providers may be forced to install millions of dollars worth of spying technology and the cost will be passed down to YOU.
Posted on

Hébert: Radio-Canada’s days as talent incubator may be over

“…While talent is an undeniable part of the mix, nurturing has a lot to do with the result. And the Quebec film industry’s success is due in no small part to Radio-Canada’s role as an incubator.”

Hébert is one of Canada’s most astute political writers.  Today she does a really good analysis of how arts funding, including public broadcast funding, lead indirectly to impact around the world and commercial box-office success. Continue reading “Hébert: Radio-Canada’s days as talent incubator may be over”

Posted on

Signal Out: Remote Artist Talk from Newfoundland!

So without much more than a crashed Macbook to slow us down, Something Collective‘s first presentation of “Signal Out” went off great.   Liz Solo and the Black Bag Media Collective presented Flick Harrison‘s films in St John’s, Newfoundland while we showed Liz’s music-video and machinima work here at our studio at Moberly Cultural Centre.

After the screenings, we did live Skype chats so the audience could Q & A.  I spoke a lot about Final Cut Pro vs Adobe software and the future of independent video editing. Liz, for her part, talked about Second Life and the combination of joy and horror she feels in that phantasmagoric shopping mall.

Liz got to bed VERY late – the time difference is 4.5 hours – and a good time was had by all, at both ends of this giant country.

 

Posted on

After ‘The Wire’ ended, Sonja Sohn couldn’t leave Baltimore’s troubled streets behind

“We are talking about a throwaway population that adults think are too far gone,” Sohn says later. “We’re talking about kids that people have given up on over and over and over again. They don’t feel like anyone is there for them. They may have parents who love them, but they’ve been falling back on themselves for so long that if you come in front of their faces talking, and not backing it up with action, you just become another one of the people who have disappointed them.”

After ‘The Wire’ ended, actress Sonja Sohn couldn’t leave Baltimore’s troubled streets behind – The Washington Post.

Posted on

Flick’s photos featured on Etsy blog

So I’m starting to get into photography lately. Since video and stills are converging I might as well stop resisting…

Etsy featured my shots of Laura Treloar, a cool jeweler (of Specimental Design) with whom I work in her capacity as a high school art teacher… If the next paragraph doesn’t make you feel lazy, all I can say is “yeesh!”

“Apart from creating things, what do you do?
Specimental keeps me as busy as a full-time job. I am a single mother to three small children, who are now 4, 6 and 7.  I am also a full-time high school art teacher here in Vancouver, Canada. I live in a 100-year-old house which is nearing the end of a five-and-a-half-year complete restoration of the interior and exterior. When I am not busy with any of these pursuits, I am often found vacuuming. It’s how I relax.”

Featured Seller: Specimental | The Etsy Blog.

Posted on

UBC and SFU welcome $1.7M Videomatica film collection « UBC Public Affairs

 

UBC and SFU welcome .7M Videomatica film collection « UBC Public Affairs

UBC and SFU welcome $1.7M Videomatica film collection « UBC Public Affairs.

An exceptional film collection valued at $1.7 million will be housed and preserved by the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University.

Videomatica – a long-loved video rental store that opened in 1983 and specialized in rare and esoteric titles – is donating the bulk of 28,000 DVDs, 4,000 VHS titles and 900 Blu-rays to UBC. The collection will be housed at UBC Library with more than 5,000 duplicates available at UBC’s Dept. of Theatre and Film. SFU receives about 2,800 documentaries from the collection.