Warning: Serious timecode bug in Compressor?

[Mel Matsuoka]

I seem to have discovered a pretty showstopping bug in Compressor (at least in versions 3.04 and 3.05), and I'm wondering if anyone else here has experienced this.

I was using Compressor to convert a drive full of ProRes'ed R3D transcodes into DVCProHD (for our purposes, ProRes transcoding is overkill for offline editing). I used Compressor's built-in timecode burn-in filter to stamp a few clips with the source TC, and to my horror, I found that the TC was not matching the timecode of the original ProRes files! The new files had timecodes that were offset 3 seconds and 12 frames behind the original TC. You can see this by opening the clip into the Compressor Preview window, and looking at the start timecode entry field.

This isn't a Edgecode vs. ToD issue, as far as I can tell. After further testing, I discovered that the problem only seems to happen with 23.98 sources. 29.97 QTs seem to work fine. Super wierd, and super annoying!

I've done all the requisite preference trashing, permission repairing, rubber chicken swinging, etc., and nothing seems to fix it.

Can anyone else confirm this behavior? If so, methinks a mass submission to the Apple BugReporter is in order.

My system specs:

Early 2008 8-core MacPro
Kona 3 (6.0.1 drivers)
OSX 10.5.5
Quicktime 7.5.5
FCS2 (ProApps Update 2008-04 not installed)
GlueTools (i thought this might be causing problems, but uninstalling it didnt fix it)

 

[Peter Savage]

this may be related to your problem though it's not the same: I do most of my work at 25fps and find that FCP insists on interpreting my preferred still import duration as if it is 30fps (ie i import a still expecting it to be 15sec long and find it is 12.15) I too have the Kona 3 on a mac just about the same as yours and wonder if it is connected to that. I am at a loss to explain why this happens, but I noticed the Kona 3 presets seemed to be primarily 30fps based so...
anyway, I just worked around it for my last big project which was output to HDCAM and have not had to deal with it lately.

sorry of this adds a layer of confusion rather than point to a solution...

p

 

[anymountain]

Still a problem

Still a problem

I have a problem exporting directly from a clip, if I use a timeline the compressor t.c. is correct but when the T.C. come from the clip it's wrong.
Studio2. compressor version 3.04 intel Mac Pro

 

[Reditor]

Compressor TC errors

Compressor TC errors

I'm having the same problem making QT h264 viewing copies from exported files, self contained and not self contained. I started using a utility QT sync, to add a burn-in that was correct instead of compressor. The problem with that is the timecode QT sync insert distorts the picture just a little, which is making it rough on my effects artists.