Hello,
I just purchased Cubase 8.5 Artist but I don’t see a setting for 23.98 FPS. When I clicked the button to match the settings of the imported video, it sets it to 24FPS but still complains about the mismatch. Does 8.5 Artist not support 23.98FPS? I don’t think I can ask the film makers to convert their film to 24FPS, so how should I deal with it?
Steinberg DOES NOT advertise this in the differences between Pro and Artist, but I can confirm after having upgraded to Pro, that Cubase Artist DOES NOT support 23.98 FPS. But Pro does. If I had known this, I might not have gone with Cubase since Cubase Pro was always out of my budget range. Now, since I had already spent money on Artist, I’ve had to upgrade to Pro. So, I guess the bait and switch tactic worked. Shame on Steinberg. I love the product but the lack of transparency in the differences is not acceptable.
If you’re working for hire and doing stuff like film you should probably be using Cubase Pro, it’s as simple as that.
That’s true, but letting people know ahead of time that this is a key difference is important. I actually didn’t need any of the other features (at least not at the moment).
Well, now that it is sorted, may it be a memory. Shame it isn’t listed though.
http://www.steinberg.net/en/products/cubase/line_up.html
Good luck with the projects!
There used to be a more detailed feature comparison PDF document but it seems to go missing with every update, and in any case I don’t recall it ever going into that level of detail. It is however mentioned as a “Cubase Pro only” feature on page 983 of the current English 8.5 manual, but who reads manuals, right? Especially not one that weighs in at some 1400 pages, and certainly not prior to purchase.
Not to defend the absence of detail in the feature comparison, but I suppose the marketing people need to differentiate somehow between the “Pro” and “non-Pro” editions, and this feature is unlikely to crop up very often amongst the Artist target audience. The clearly intentional exclusion of some NTSC-based framerates in Artist does seem like a bit of random discrimination though.
I suppose the thing to remember is that as far as video is concerned, Cubase (even Pro) seems to be the poor relation of Nuendo, the flagship post tool. IMHO it’s an issue for the placement of the various products that Nuendo wouldn’t necessarily be a musician’s choice for composition, yet Cubase has very limited video playback (and no export!) capabilities. There’s a re-write of the video engine taking place at the moment to eliminate the use of QuickTime, so perhaps we can hope for better in the future.
As a possible workaround, the conversion of 23.98/23.976fps to say, 29.97fps for use as a guide track is quite straightforward using external tools, and remember that a soundtrack usually needs to be temporally correct and not necessarily frame-accurate, so it is possible, though not optimal, to work with NTSC-based footage in Cubase Artist as long as it’s all in the box, and no sync with external devices is required.
Yeah, I suppose I could have converted to 29.98FPS and worked using that. I haven’t tried Nuendo but I like composing in Cubase. But I might have looked elsewhere since the other features of Pro are not all the compelling to me (at least, not at the moment).
How interesting to see that it’s cheaper to upgrade to Pro from Artist than to buy Pro from scratch…
Steve.
I know right?!!
Dont stress on that Just work at 24 . If a producer wants change they wont ask generally about your synchronisation it will be about the sound or your music they dont like. Concentrate on doing great music… Cause then you may end up with the perfect synch music that everyone hate and youll be replaced by a better composer
As you have a Cubase USB dongle you could download the Nuendo Trial or Cubase pro Trial and use that to do your video. I know it is not a long term fix to your problem but it will help get your project finished and also confirm if you want to spend the extra money on the upgrade from artist to pro or even Nuendo.