Scenarist project setting; drop or non drop project, settings, frame, assets

andy

Hi all,

Is there a way to validate the timecode from a video stream (m2v)? Cause i’d like to know if it’s a drop or non-drop frame.

Normally i’m using Maestro, which tells me after parsing if the video assets are drop frame or non-drop. So when preparing the subtitles in maestrosbt, i choose an output fps of 30 in case of a non-drop frame and 29.97 in case of drop frame.

In Scenarist you have to choose the right setting in project settings, so how can i find out what to choose?

Thanks in advance

quot;Drop Framequot; is really nothing more then a setting (as far as scenarist is concerned) ... All NTSC material should be set to dropframe

Maestro use to set it based off if the asset had the flags in it however that's not needed in Scenarist....

I gotta disagree with that. For editing purposes, and in DVD, non-drop timecodes are the most reliable. The problem is just when does drop-frame timecode drop the 2 frame numbers. In a running realtime system that's not a problem, 2 frame numbers dropped at the start of every minute except those evenly divisible by 10. But in non-realtime, and especially when the clock is frequently reset, or for relative time values, that becomes a problem that leads to errors. In non-drop there is an exact mathematical relationship between timecode and frame number that does not exist in drop-frame.

btw ALL timecodes in the DVD structures (ifo files and NAV packs) are non-drop timecode, so using drop-frame requires conversion on the part of the authoring system.

Yes I would agree for editing purposes... however in my experience with scenarist, if you don't select quot;drop framequot; from the start, you a) can't change it and b) does wierd things especially when dealing w/ subtitles

Scenarist 3.0 especially... if it's NTSC, then it auto assigns drop-frame when importing whether you like it or not

Thanks for the reply's.

It's actually more about the subtitles, i need to know if it's drop or non-drop cause else i end up with out of sync subs.

If your using vsrip/vsconv to get your subtitles the time codes that are present have drop-frame applied

For most accurate (other may disagree) I'd have your assets set for drop-frame

That's true, you can't change it either way from what I've seen. I've not seen anything strange with subs so long as they too are non-drop. What I have seen is 2-frame errors in placement using drop-frame, usually if the asset start time to video was not a multiple of 10 minutes (like 1:05:06:21).
Scenarist 3.0 is another story altogether with timecodes - definitely not the original author working on it anymore. Double conversions from drop to non-drop?

I'd summarize it this way, and I think D3s7 will agree. Non-drop is the most accurate for editing and authoring, as it is unambiguous which frame is meant. But you asked about Scenarist, which has quirks concerning timecodes, and works better overall if you use drop-frame for NTSC.