Thanks -- That's what I ended up doing. I wasn't sure what it would do, but I figured it couldn't get worse.

Kyle, is it an important paying project or some personal stuff where resolution isn't super critical? IF it's a paying/distrubition job then I would have it converted professionally as going from NTSC to PAL there is a resolution difference of nearly 100 lines. Many people have said that footage that originated on NTSC and then "upconverted" so to speak to PAL looks very soft and washed out. There is also the problem of what to do with the extra 5fps, as they are simply discarded by some software conversion functions the footage can appear jittery, especially in fast motion sequences.

Most, if not all, PAL DVD players can play NTSC DVD's. You may be OK with regular NTSC. But, like Adrian suggests, if it is a paying client get the conversion done professionally. Quicktime conversions are only fair quality, in my opinion.

Thanks guys,
Yes, this is a paying client, but they ordered 4 DVD's of their wedding. They didn't say anything about NTSC or PAL. The Brides parents live in India, so I thought I'd give them a PAL version in addition to the NTSC version. Mostly as an experiment to see if I could do it. If they want it convereted professionally, that's up to them. I'm not being paid to do it.
If the PAL version doesn't look good enough, the parents will have a NTSC version as well.

I need to purchase a new font to add to a project I'm editing, and one thing I've never understood is the difference between TrueType and PostScript fonts. I looked through my current system font folder and it looks like all of them are TT.

What's the difference? Are PostScript fonts okay to use?

I dont know if there are any Corel users here but i am having a problem when I import a .psd with layers made in Corel and open it in the timeline of FCP3 all of the colors basically turn semi transparent or purplish blue in other words its all screwed up on every layer.If i save a .pict of the same file and import it to FCP evrything looks fine.I assume this has something to do with the layers when i'm saving in Corel but I cant figure it out.

Any suggestions?

Matt,
I just tried importing a multilayer Painter 8 file, saved as a .psd and had no trouble. All colors on all layers appear true. I saved the Painter file in RGB color format with alpha preserved.

Ken I still havent figured it out.I saved the exact same way.Is there a FCP setting that i need to change to import layers llike this?Basically my reds will turn blue my blacks will turn blue and it has a photo negative style look to it as well - if this makes any sense.

Check your email, Matt.

What's the process like going the other way, from an analogue video in PAL to digital NTSC? Is this also a job best left to a pro facility, or is it possible on a Mac (with what as a front end?)?

Linc Kesler

Ok I've never been on a chat board, or edited on fcp, so forgive me if i'm outta line here, but here goes:
I've been making 16mm films for 17 years and now finally got a g4 and fcp3. I need to learn about options to import composite ntsc into fcp. I'm also interested in ways of bringing in still images. I know i can borrow my girlfriend's dv camera and use it as an I/O and come in on the firewire. OK, but what are other options? I'd love to eventually work with a less-compressed signal, but all the options I've seen (like Kona) cost thousands and require more computer than I have. In the meantime, is there a low-cost card (and driver--if necessary) available that will do the same job of (digitizing, compressing, encoding--what ever it is that happening in there) that a consumer dv camcorder will do? Is there one that will also bring in stereo analog audio?
I greatly appreciate any advice that will spare me from trying to "decode" this info from salespeople. Cheers, bill

Hi all:
I'm cutting a project on my FCP 3.0.2 based Mac (G4 1GHZ Dual + 40 GB internal 7400 HDD + 80 GB internal 7400 HDD + 1 Gig RAM). While playing my project off the timeline, I'm noting frames skipping every now and then. Rebooting doesn't make it go away.
Could this require a defrag of the media HDD (that's the 80 GB disk)? Went through a lot of footage in Offline RT format before I deleted the unused media and recaptured my rough cut in HiRes. I assume that means the media files may be fragmented across the HDD... documentation on the Apple site says their file system ensures defargging is rerely needed.
...Any ideas? Need to sort this out fast - I'm nearing the end of my edit, and if I need to recapture everything or something, I'd like to know soon!
Best,
Ram

How full are the drives? Do you have media on both drives or just one?

If quality is an issue (and when isn't it?) then use QT. It looks OK going from PAL to NTSC. The other way looks pretty bad to my eyes. Just do and import and export through QT and you have it. some people claim better results using After Effects, but from what I've seen it isn't worth the effort.

Almost all PAL DVD players can play NTSC.

I have a question about how can I speed up editing in FCE. My main concern is with the transitions. I am a self taught user because this is what they use at work, but they don't seem to have manuals anywhere, and I think I've gotten what I can from the apple user site.

In FCE I use the viewer to cut up footage and assemble in the Timeline and then I add transitions, but each transition takes forever it seems.

What I do is pull a dissolve down from the effects tab and drop it in place, and then the same for the audio, then I adjust the duration. then over and over again the same way for each transition.

How can speed this up? Is there a way to save transitions with audio crossfades somewhere for quick access? What methods do you guys use?

any help is greatly appreciated. thanks.

Jeff, thanks:
The media files are all on the larger (80 GB) disk. The 80GB disk has about 45 GB of data on it; the 40 GB disk has about 15 GB of data on it (software etc.)
I'd have thought I'd only see playback detrioration after filling up about 75% of either HD...
I'm running a Norton Utilities defragment on any fragmented media files in the meantime, just to see whether any of the media files are fragmented.
Best,
Ram

There are several low cost boxes that will convert analog video and audio to DV and back. The Dazzle Hollywood Bridge is one, Canopus makes a fine unit also. You will still end up with DV and the inherent 5:1 compression. If your looking to go uncompressed, then you will need a card like the Kona. They are not cheap, but nothing about uncompressed digital video is cheap. Uncompressed media requires many large hard drives and other support media. In other words it's expensive.

Welcome to the forums and make use of the search function that will allow you to view the over 11,000 threads and over 75,000 responses. It's a pretty amazing archive of information. But if you can't find exactly what your looking for post back and help will be on the way.

you can make a transition a default, then you can right click between two clips in the timeline to automatically place that transition, alternately you can drag from viewer into the canvas and overwrite or insert with transition so it is done on the go.

if you are looking to use FCP then you will be working in DV so it's not going to matter if you bring it in using a DV camera or a deck, except for the fact that you probably have a lot of footage to bring in and a deck will be a much faster, easier process and it won't wear down the heads of your camera. Not all camera's have analog in, you know, but I'm fairly sure all or nearly all decks will have analog in. that's all you need.

I have something that is letterboxed on DV at around a 2.30:1 aspect ratio. I would like to make a Quicktime of this for the net, but I don't want the black bars in there. I may answer my own question as I type this, but is there a way to crop out the black bars and just have a wider Quicktime? The only way I could think of would be to take the DV file into FCP and somehow "stretch" it vertically, and then export to the Quicktime codec of my choice at a resolution that fits the aspect ratio. I have no idea, but that might lose a bit of quality being stretched and distorted back and forth like that. Only one way to find out I suppose.

Any other ideas/suggestions?

Curtis,

I use Cleaner to do this. It allows you to crop it at 16:9 or whatever setting you want. You have complete control of the cropping...so it's possible to not only crop out the top and bottom letterbox bars, but also the annoying black lines on the left and right that always appear with Quicktime.

I don't think you can do this directly in QuickTime. I've used Final Cut Pro to set a custom size for a sequence, then drop the movie into it. FCP will scale it automatically to fit in the new sequence, but not the way you want. Turn on wireframe view and stretch the image so the active part fills the frame. Then export back out as a FCP movie (which is actually a Quicktime file).

Thanks for the tips. I am not sure if I have Cleaner or not... does that generally come with FCP?

Anyway what I ended up doing is importing the movie into the timeline and adjusting the "disort" options until I had a perfect anamorphic image. I should of stretched it a wee bit to the left and right as well to get rid of the black XL1 bars (I have only seen these bars on the XL1 for some reason... not sure if any other) cameras do it. Then I exported at a resolution of 400x189 (2.1:1) and it worked out well.

FCP is resolution independent and can edit in virtually any format. The limitations are more hardware based and the budget to allow all the necessary peripherals. There are at least 6 boards available that will allow for uncompressed video. If you have additional questions, post back with your proposed budget and I'll make various recommendations on boards, drives etc.

Having media split across several drives can be a problem, especially the way you (and FCP) manages media. For best results under OS X the system and FCP should be on an internal drive. All the media should be on a different drive. This drive should be a separate drive and not a partition of the internal drive. Drives may suffer performance loss at around 80% if not fragmented. Try defragging and see if it helps.

Cleaner came with one of the very early versions of FCP, I think. But now it is a pretty expensive program. Sounds like you found a good work around.

Just got the FCP 4 upgrade and am suffering huge problems of confusion due to move from OS 9 to OSX.

I note that in the extras folder on the installation disk there is what seems to be a plug in which deals with the DVX adio sync problems. As far as I can tell there is no information about this in any of the documentation that came with the upgrade. So can anyone help with the following problems? I am sure that these are pretty basic but whilst I know OS 9 and FCP 3 I am tearing out what little hair I have left.

1. Where on earth do I install this? I can't figure out what folder all the plug ins have gone to. The FCP4 manual still talks about the old Final Cut Pro/plugins folder but in the Applications folder there is only the application and no folder. So where on earth are all the plug ins?

2. What does it do? I have the PAL 25p version so don't need any help with 24p. Does this plug in have any relevance to the PAL version?

3. How do I use it? What setting do I use to select it.

Sorry if this is very basic but again I can't find any clear answers in the 12 inch thick mass of documentation.

Go to the applications folder, click on the FCP app while holding down the ctrl key. A menu will pop up, select Show Package, go to plugin folder.

The PAL version may not need the plugin. It works automatically and there are no settings to select (the best of my knowledge).

I have a bunch of miniDV tapes of concerts and outdoor events where the audio sounds really good, but in the background there is slight noise problems: popping and crackling a bit. I'm sure you've all heard something like this when the camera isn't held still or the audio is loud and then soft. Or the camera man has no idea what he is doing.

What audio filter gets rid or reduces these noises. I tryed a couple in FCE, but I soon realized that I have no idea what parameters to change or why. They did significant damage to the audio and clarity, which is what I don't want.

Does anyone half any ideas? Is there a noise rule of thumb setting out there?

thanks.

For low frequency rumble from microphone handling or some wind overload noise, try a low shelf filter at 75 Hz or so.

To keep the audio at a constant level, try the compressor.
This will amplify the quieter sounds.

For removal of occasional microphone pops, try the de popper.

For removal of excessive hisssing on Sssss, try the
de-esser.

For removal of a single frequency, try the notch filter at a narrow setting.

For hum removal ( with harmonics), try the hum remover.

Today's filters are not smart enough to know what you want to keep in your audio program. So, you may want to apply these filters on segments of the audio. You're in for a lot of work in audio cleanup.

Hi,
I have an older dual 800 with 2 internal hard drives & 1 external firewire drive. I want to add inexpensive, sort of fast, disk space. I've looked at adding FW800 with striped drives and multiple channels - which sounds way cool, but I'm still in the poor cash flow stage and that is a little pricey for a older machine... So I see these adds for ATA PCI cards and I'm wondering - if you add a couple of cards, where do you put the drives? Is it safe (power wise, floating grounds, etc.) to run IDE drives to a external enclosure? Like maybe an old pc tower with a blown mobo? If not external, what do folks do?
Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,
Mark

I transferred mini-dv/compressed files to a G4 FCP 3 system (that does uncompressed). When I playback, only audio is playing, not video, when going to tape. When I open a regular UNcompressed project, no problems with video or audio. Never had this problem before with transferring mini-dv/compressed files with playback before...

Any clues out there? We're using OS 9.2.2 and FCP 3.0.2 (don't ask why we're still on OS 9.2.2).

HELP!

heath@mpsdigital.com

This article explains how to add more hard drives to your G4:

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/install_third_ata_drive.html

I got 5 hard drives in mine, installing them is very easy, good luck.

Hey Guys,

Not being a Photoshop Pro and long since gave up winning the Nobel for Math, just curious about creating a Photoshop file to later be imported into FCP for some 16x9 work I am editing.

Thanks
David

Check FCP preference for monitor of playback. I don't remember them under 9.2.2. But playback of video can be changed. It is probably not active over FireWire at the present time. The uncompressed system doesn't use FireWire for playback.

I've done this by creating an 854x480 photoshop file. In FCP make sure your sequence is set to 16:9 anamorphic. It's actually been awhile since I tried, so I can't remember whether it automatically adjust to the right size in FCP or if I needed to stretch it. You might need to use the distort property on the motion tab if it doesn't look right.

Thanks. I had no idea that there was a plugin folder there. Trying your suggestion did work but if anyone else is interested see below.

Well, moving from OS9 to OSX was more of a headache than I had anticipated. I still have virtually no idea where anything is or should be and suddenly feel like I purchased a windows machine. Its all alien!

In fact the answer to my question is buried in the late breaking news about FCP4 available either through the web site or on the online help. I missed it. But in fact what it says is that this should be installed in the Library/Application Support/Final Cut Pro System Support/Plugins folder. It is then available from the Tools menu under offset audio. It works very nicely.

Hi,

OK, got a Sonnet Tempo ATA133 card and a couple of WD 80gig drives. I put one on each channel (1 drive per Ultra ATA Cable). When I go into drive utility it shows one as master, one as slave???? I tried cable select, single, and master (no slave) jumper positions and it makes no difference. I striped them together and see no apparent speed increase (just copying a 10 gig file). Am I doing something wrong (went back to single jumper position)??? Also both cables are hooked up the same, blue to sysem, black to drive. These are the only drives in the stripe set.

If you want a really fast and inexpensive way to add storage, do this:


1. Go to http://www.newegg.com

2. Add these two items to your cart:
a) WESTERN DIGITAL "SPECIAL EDITION" 80GB 7200RPM EIDE HARD DRIVE MODEL # WD800JB (currently $90)
b) External 3.5"/5.25" (USB2.0 & IEEE1394) Enclosure - ( Supports 250GB Hard Drive. With a COOLING FAN. ) (currently $68)

3. Get Fed Ex 2 day, which will probably be under $15

4. Assemble it when it comes (really easy; just screw it in with care)

5. Format it and voila - 80GB of really fast firewire storage for around $160.

Can't beat that with a stick, and the drive I mentioned is faster and has more cache (8.9ms seek time and 8MB cache) than any packaged external drive you'll find for almost a $100 more.

BTW, I don't work for or make any money by endorsing NewEgg.com. They are simply a very reliable vendor I've used for some time, and I recommend them to everyone.

Here is a link to their hard drives page, and each drive has a link to their external cases page:

http://www.newegg.com/app/manufactory.asp?catalog=14&DEPA=1

The reason I recommended 80GB is because, having worked as a tech, I just don't trust any hard drive with all my data. Don't put all your Gigs in one basket. Get yourself an external case such as the one I mentioned, and you can stack them on top of each other. Unless you really need it, I would never recommend getting one of those 250 or 500Gb drives unless you just like to say you have one, or unless you have it set up with RAID and know that you will not lose data in the event of a failure.

I bought two different enclosures for around 50-70 buckos each this year and put in 7200rpm drives. Each came to about $400 Cdn. I consider that a decent way to expand your space. I try not to dump straight to those external drives though as I don't trust Firewire over capture speeds. Just my feeling.

i had my firewire drive (which i made myself) turned off for a few days, and when i tired to turn it on the computer would not recognize it again. i tried doing what i did to initilize it and erase it but then it went to this thing that said "unmounting old volume" after about a few minutes my computer seemed to be stuck so i turned the harddrive off (probably not the best idea) and then restarted and i have no clue what to do. after it restarted i tired letting it go through that remounting thing all night and it still wont work? any ideas? please i need help fast! should i take the harddrive out of the mount and reinstall it into the hardrive enclosure again? any ideas please?

Alfred,
It sounds like you've already walked through the Mac OS disk utility trying to reinitialize it.

When you say you "made" your Firewire drive what do you mean? Did you buy an empty enclosure and a separate drive? If so, what brand of enclosure and drive are you using, just for the record here.

Two ideas. First, try changing Firewire cables. I know it may sound like a long shot, but we've had a few similar experiences that have been traced to a faulty cable.

Failing that, try to connect the drive to your Mac's internal ATA cable to see if the drive is actually dead. If you can't initialize and mount the drive internally then it's probably a goner. If you can, then the enclosure may have a problem.

Good luck.

Well i was going to take your advice and install in into my mac, but when i opened the box the harddrive was hot and i looked at the connection and the flat ribbon cable was a little loose so i connected it tight and it works again. i was so happy i could have almost cried!

can the 17" apple studio display work with a pc thru adc to dvi converter??
i know there are products for converting adc display to dvi and i've also seen it worked with the 20" cinema display on a pc; but i am not sure if the 17 will work or not. since, the apple stores or retailers do not have a friendly return policy, i am affraid to buy it and try it out.

currently i am saving up money for a low end G5 (or possibly a price dropping G4 .) i am also in the need of a good lcd display. i am thinking that while i am saving money i could get a apple display first, then when the mac arrives i would have the display ready. so there came the problem with competability . i am really in love with the apple display; however i don't know if it will work with my pc . so if the adc to dvi connector works, i'll be able to shoot two birds with one stone .

any body have experience on this?

i am using a p4 2.4 with Gforce Fx5200 VS
canon optura pi

thanks

The Apple LCD displays will work with a PC. You will need the adapter. I think they are in the $150 dollar range.

Bravo Alfred! What a relief, eh?

thanks jeff.

there are several after market adapters seem to serve the same purpose and cheaper (even the apple one cost 99 bucks now). i don't know if those connectors/ converters affect the image quality thou. (because some of the company claim that their connector is better and no pixle lost)
hope that apple store or resellers have a better return policy, so that i don't have to take that risk.

Hey Ken,

Nice to see another FCP user here. I have a question that veers a little from Ambarish's original post, but maybe you can help. I have had my GL2 for about a month now and also just upgraded to FCP 4. I have captured several hours of footage shot in frame mode on the GL2 (using ZR40 as my deck). Everything looks great, but on all my captures (using firwire basic preset), the audio is consistantly 2 frames out of sync. I have heard that Canons sometimes have sync issues with FCP, but I thought this was cleared up with the GL2. The only workaround I have found so far is to drop my entire clip into a sequence, slide the audio two frames, set the sequence timecode to match the original clip, then export the sequence and reimport into the exported clip into the FCP project. Not a deal breaker, but definitley a hassle. Just wondering if you have any info or ideas why this is happening or how to solve it?

Thanks,
Chief

Matthew,
This is something of a Canon DV issue, rather than specifically a GL2 or an FCP issue. Audio and video can drift apart during long captures.

In your User Preferences, be sure that you select "Synch audio capture to video source if present" under the General tab. This should help keep your a/v tracks lined up.

Ken,

Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately, FCP 4 has gotten rid of the autosync preference. Apprently it is supposed to be automatically incorporated into the software now. I did try a capture last nite in FCP 3.0.4 with the "sync audio capture" option selected, but still no luck.

I guess I will just have to keep syncing the clips manually and exporting and reimport. Luckily, the sync is not drifting, it is just consistantly 2 frames off.

Chief