Video Frame Rate and Codec Issues

Unfortunately, problems with video frame rates and codecs are not that uncommon and can become quite desastrous in the film world when not detected early on.

Whenever you’re scoring to picture, there are things that you should always do before your start. First of all, make sure that the video file you receive has a visible time code printed into the picture. If it doesn’t, request it as this is highly important. Secondly check that your DAW/Scoring programme’s time code runs in sync with the one on the file (Also make sure that it is still in sync near the end of the file).

All this seems to be a no brainer but unfortunately it is forgotten way too often or detected halfway in the working process causing quite a bit of stress in best case scenarios and unneccessary rewrites or similar problems in worst case scenarios.