garageCube

[caneron]

Wow stupid question.

I have two assets. Same frame-rate and duration. I want them to start at the same time, I.e., play from 0.

I recognize there will be a little drift.

How do I make sure they start at the same position?

Hacky Method:
Cue 01 - Paused content at 0 for all surfaces, timecode position locked to scene
Cue 02 - Play content for all surfaces, timecode position inherits from previous
Cue 03 - (Check drift) Inherits timecode position from previous and pauses all surfaces

Is there a better way to do this?

[mad-matt]

If you're using the FFMPEG Player there should be no drifting, maybe a little bit if you are activating audio playback and different movies audio tracks have different sample rates.
There only case where drifting should occur is if you're using AVFoundation on macOS (with Enable Hardware Acceleration checked on H264, ProRes or other codecs handled by AVFoundation)
To me the Cue 03 is not useful (btw I don't understand what's in this cue)

[caneron]

Cue-03 is there to check drift. It forces a pause and I can check the frame number. For my grids, I embed TC in the video so I can check that stuff. Or I can just take a picture - but automating the check is a little more fun

But just curious - the cue system I outlined is the best way to do a simultaneous g-o, yeah?

[mad-matt]

Yes, you can use
- a first cue to set all movies position to "0" and "Play Mode" set to "Pause"
- a second cue that just contains the "Play Mode" with value "Forward"

You could also just have one cue with the "Restart" setting active (enter edit cues mode and click the "rewind" button for all your movies)

Movies should not be drifting (with FFMPEG player) since they are working with the computer CPU clock.

[caneron]

Good call on the restart option. Installs already built but good for the next one.