Timecode tracks and swapping from streaming to local shotgun media

Quirky bit of behavior that sits on the intersection of shotgun and RV’s review ecosystem. Our uploaded movie files in shotgun generally contain timecode tracks to identify start and end frame in shot context. Upon transcode to mp4/webm proxies by shotgun the track is stripped. Since both SG review and Screening Room allow for swapping between this “streaming” (no timecode track) to local (yes timecode), we find the movies to be out of sync with one another. Arguably RV is doing the “correct” thing in respecting the timecode in the local and defaulting to a start of 1 in the case of the mp4. Are we missing some piece of meta-data that notifies RV to offset the mp4 in the timeline, or is this a known limitation of the swapping mechanism? including @JDArredondo

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Hi Nico!

Have you tried setting sg_start_frame and sg_last_frame? Screening Room should respect these Shotgun fields to set the correct ranges.

Also, do you by chance have your media start at an offset range like 1001 instead of 1?

Thanks,
Alexa

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Correct Alexa. By convention our shots (and timecode) start around 1001. I’m assuming sg_start_frame acts as an index and not an offset, so it wouldn’t be of any help in this case right?

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I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that. However, if your local movies have an embedded timecode that converts to starting at frame 1001, you would want your sg_first_frame on the version to match the first frame timecode of your local (therefore 1001).

This is a version field, so if you render less than (or more than) full shot range on a version, you can give it a different sg_first_frame.

While I would recommend putting in a feature ticket to have our transcoder maintain the timecode track on uploaded movies, setting the sg_first_frame should get you to what you are looking to do.

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