Most of our students usually shoot 1080/50i or 1080/25p flavour of High Def whether using HDV, AVCHD or XDCAM Ex format cameras, so I first asked him what flavour he had used for the shoot. On investigation, it turned out that he had just taken the camera out of the bag and started shooting without bothering to check the camera settings beforehand and when I fired up the camera to see what settings he had been using, I found that the camera was not only set to shoot standard definition but was even in good old fashioned 4 x 3 aspect ratio. Oh deep joy!!!! I'm not sure why the previous user had set it up for a 4 x 3 SD project but I'm quite sure this guy will check his settings before hitting the record button next time!!!!!
The incident reminded me of another disaster that I was called out to, some twelve months previously when a student was struggling to edit his project. The Mac was struggling to play his sequences without dropping frames and falling over. When I looked at his project I found that he to had not checked his shooting format before hitting the record button, and had even used several different cameras overs several shooting days, such that he was trying to mix AVCHD shot at 1080/50i and imported at full fat Apple ProRes, with XDCAM ex shot at 1080/25P and XDCAM ex shot at 1080/30P and Standard Def material in DVCAM mode, all on the same timeline. Needless to say he was having to render every single edit and the whole job was grinding to a halt. That was a very dark day indeed........Oh how we wept! Not quite sure if they were tears of laughter or tears of despair but there is rather a large hole in the wall of the edit suite that is shaped something like my forehead!
......and then there was the student who did a two camera shoot using two EX 1s, one of which was shooting 25 frames per second, whilst the other was shooting 24 frames per second. Ooooppps!!! Several years of rendering later........a finished project eventually emerged.
But the worst format related disaster I tried to rescue was several years ago when a student edited his project at home on his Premiere suite but couldn't export it in time for his deadline. Editing at home made it impossible for me to help the guy out and it was only later that I discovered that he had set his project up in NTSC mode. Whilst he somehow managed to convert UK flavoured PAL to US flavoured NTSC on the way into his PC, he struggled to get the finished piece out onto tape for submission.....a costly experience.
The moral of the story - Check Your Bloody Camera Settings!!!!!
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