you need to stretch it from 4:3 proportions to Square pixels (1:1). Usually by stretching it from 720 in width to 768.

I'm wondering how usable it is on one. I have an iBook 600 combo drive. It would only be for home use; I don't ever plan on trying to make any money on it.

I was reading about FCX, but I think I can get the educational price on FCP. Thanks.

Kirk

Kirk,
I have an 800 mhz iBook and edit with FCP 3 on it, I use it mainly in RT Offline mode. So far it has been okay. If I was to edit with it using the full resolution DV, then I would get an external firewire hard drive to hold all my media. The only thing about using FCP on an iBook is probably waiting for it to render, it might be a little slow.

i have an iBook/600 with 640MB of RAM and a G4/500 (single) with 1gb of RAM. they perform about the same. i've done photoshop and ae and fcp tests, and they both run pretty much neck and neck *unless* there's a lot of disk activity. which is why i use the g4 that has more disk space. but i think the iBook would be fine if i plugged my firewire drives into it. one thing to note is that if you're capturing, some people have had problems using only one firewire ( i.e. capturing to an external fw drive on your iBook ). i haven't had those problems, but i've seen them noted on the board before.

If y'all need more info let me know. I hope this is not what to expect for the future in terms of responses.

Your description of the problem doesn't mean much to me. Try and be more precise about what is going on and how you have things hooked up and exactly at what step in the process the artifacts appear.

Do you mean when you attempt to transfer the video back to the camera, you have the artifacts? Where do you see the flashing B&W images and when. All the time? It may be that you need to ask this question on the Macintosh Editing Forum where I"m transferring this thread.

You posted on the weekend which is always a bit slower in terms of action.

being flat screen shouldn't make a difference but you do need to squish the picture by changing the image size in photoshop then save it. then later when it is played back on a tv the image will be stretched back to the proper look. Depending whether you use PAL or NTSC the number of pixels will vary too. .

and if I use images from the DVcam and I edit them together, will the final peice look "streched" when it plays on a flat screen TV with ratio of 16:9? Sorry if the question seems dumb but I am trying to learn as much as I can :)

This is going to be an AMAZINGLY simple question for 99.5% of you but does the GL2 come with the proper firewire cord needed for me to capture video through FCP 3.0 on a Mac laptop (667 mhz)? I have the cord that is firewire to USB (for the card, right?) What am I missing? or nothing? This is my first attempt at it and I am stuck at the start. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Again thanks.

Vito

The GL2 doesn't come supplied with a firewire cable. I was a bit upset when I brought mine home and found that out :) You can pick up one at the apple store among other places. I believe it's a 4 to 6 pin type.

Just received this in the mail today. It has very short interviews but they are very interesting definitely worth the free price tag!

I posted a link about photoshop before and Jeff was kind enough to send me a tutorial link about it. I'm trying to do the Main Titles and end titles for my Documentary.
The book "Final Cut Pro 3 And The ARt Of Filmmaking" says FCP can not handle more than 10 Layers. The Tutorial (a reprint from KenStone's page) says nothing about that. I have a photoshop file with 25 layers. The book says to create the pixel ratio at 720X540, rasterize the layers and then resize to 720X480. The tutorial says to change the height settings from 534 to 480 and leave width at 720 (something the book does not even mention.) One source says to save as .PSD. Another says to save as Targa!?
I transferred my photoshop layers into FCP and the titles were jagged and looked very amaturish. I hit the book and the tutorial again looking for solutions: the book says in order to avoid such problem I need to make sure the colors are set for NTSC monitor by changing the setting for each layer (the tutorial doe snot even mention that unless I missed it?. Maybe I did. I'm highly stressed out anyway :) So I did that and discovered that a rasterized .PSD file is not being accepted at FCP!. Whenever I try to Import the rastorized file it gives me an error message saying: not enough memory. I have 89.9 GB left on my hard drive and when I Import the regular (unrasterized) .psd file it gets imported fine into my Browser (with jagged edges around the titles.)
I am going NUTS. My deadline is this Friday to submit my documentary to 5 festivals. Can Anyone help? Or at least tell me what is wrong with what I am doing? Is there a way you can walk me through the process? I can call you anywhere in the States. Any help you can dispense is GREATLY appreciated. Please HELP.
Thanks :)

Great. Thanks a lot Kirk for your help. I will go down to the Apple Store tomorrow and pick one up.

Take care,
Vito Zarrillo

Most cameras don't come with firewire cables, but all firewire cards do. At least, they should!

What version of FCP and Photoshop are you using? How much ram is on your computer? If you don't know, go to the Apple menu in the upper left corner, select about this Mac and it will show you.

Jeff

Dang, Jeff! Another thing we expats can't get. Wouldn't want to forward yours over here when you're done with it, would you?

The error message you're getting is most probably due to a lack of RAM rather than HD space. What do you have? 512 probably? If you can juice that up to 1 GB that would take care of your memory problem.

As for the number of layers, is it absolutely necessary to have that many layers? Are you animating all of them? If certain elements will appear simultaneously, just merge those layers together.

It is a Sony Trinitron Model # CVM-1271 color receiver monitor BNC line in Composite. Trying to get from my FCP timeline tp the DV cam Firewire and then from Dv cam to Monitor via Rca cables. What Kind of a Video Capture card do I need for OSX That has Composite and S-Video in/out.

You use the monitor hooked up to view the video footage being passed through your camera. You use the color controls in FCP to make adjustments. The monitor is used to evaluate your adjustments for accuracy. The images on a computer monitor will not match the images on a NTSC monitor. Why do you need an analog capture device?

Well, o.k. What do I need to do? I was able to get the image from FCP onto the Monitor by using teh camera as a medium in between. But whenever I do that some cuts become renderless (red line above the cut) and when I disconnect the camera and start FCP again, the red line dissapears and I get my renders back.! Weird huh!
To simplify it, do you have any solution on how I can see FCP timeline playing on the NTSC monitor so I can judge the color correcion I do?

I installed an Orange Micro FW/USB combo card into a Beige G3. I had no problems capturing or writing DV to my SONY TRV103. I haven't tried FCP.

Well I spoke with Ken Stone (yup, I emailed him last night after being really desperate, and he was kind enough to give me his number to call him) and he explained to me that it was not the Ram or anything else but the fact that the Book that I bought, listed some wrong info about how to trasnfer photoshop files to FCP. Apparently, by adding an empty layer at the beg of the PSD file -as the book suggestes- will cause FCP to freak out and give the error message: not enough memory!. He told me to get rid of the empty layer and few other tips that exist on his tutorial at kenstone.net. I did just that this morning and it worked fine :)

Now, the only problem that I have is that the titles have jagged edge in FCP. They look SOLID when the playhead is placed on one frame. Not sure what his solution will be on this (he hasn't gotten back to me on this.) If you guys know of any solution don't hesitate to reply. Thanks to all of you and your kind replies :)

As far as the 'file format' of miniDV, digital 8 and DVCAM, they are the same. I move freely between these three formats, going in and out of iMovie and FCP.

I use a 1 pixel motion blur on the text, as suggested in Tom Wolsky's tutorial (http://www.lafcpug.org/basic_photoshop_files.html).

In your A/V settings make sue your set to view external video, CMD + F12.

maybe i'm offering redundant info but here's how mine is set up:

dv -> ( firewire ) -> macintosh
dv -> ( composite ) -> monitor

seems to work for me.

Not sure which forum this question goes in so I threw it here for now:

OK - I'm finding that my 240gig machine isn't big enough. What's the deal with adding new internal hard drives? I've been building PCs for a number of years but this is my first Mac and I'm not reallly sure what's what. Any hard drive will do or are there specific Mac drives? Do I need to worry about partitioning and formating? Any help?

Mark what Mac are you using and what OS version? Depending on the Mac you can have 3, 4 or 5 internal drives. Newer macs use IDE/ATA drives. Generally speaking, 7200RPM drives are preferred. The maximum size depends on the OS version your using. Older OS's don't recognize drives larger than 137GB. They can be used, but the OS only sees 137GB. The rest is wasted.

It's a PowerMac dual 1.25 running OSX (not sure what version though)

Mark,

You can find out the version of your OS by clicking on the Apple in the upper left and selecting About this Mac. The window that pops up will display the version.

You can probably use any size drive, including the newer 180Gb and 200Gb size drives. Why are you getting larger drives? Are they for media with FCP or iMovie? Are they for MP3's? If they are for media, I don't partition them and I only put media on the the drive. The drive fragments less and I see fewer problems with dropped frames etc.

If the new drive is going to be the system drive I definitely do partition. I use a small partition (2GB) for OS 9xx, a large partition for OS 10.x.x and it's applications (depending on drive size 30GB to 100GB) and the remainder for MP3's, digital image files, etc.

I'll check my version tonite, I'm at the 'day job' right now.

Yup this will be a FCP media drive. I was hoping to head to CompUSA or something at lunch to pick up a drive. Is this just a plug and play kind of thing?

It is pretty much plug and play, except be sure to have the drive set to "cable select". After that you can boot back up and use the Apple Drive Utility to get the drive ready, which takes all of 5 seconds if you are slow (maybe not that quick, but it SEEMS quick if you are used to building Windows PCs). It doesn't have to comb the entire drive surface like it does when you add a drive to a Windows PC.

... I wanted to replace a current 2 second audio file that's looped repeatedly in a sequence with a new audio file of exactly the same duration?

The original covers a couple of minutes total in a sequence by placing the same 2 second file end to end on one audio track repeatedly. I'd like to use a different audio file and have ensured that the duration of the new file is exactly the same as the original. So, if I simply delete the original file and replace it with the new file...and name it exactly the same name as the original...will everything be kosher? Or will that gum up the works?

We have 3 internal 120 gig drives on one dual gig processor G4, plus the 120 gig system drive, and then some 120 gig external firewire drives. You want to get 7200's. I was told there is no need to partition with OSX, but you can if you want to.

I'll send one to you as soon as I get it.

It can be done but you will need to delete the file (or move it) and fire up the program, it will ask you to reconnect the media. Then you can navigate to the new file, and you will probably need to rerender the whole sequence.

p.s. make sure the new file is EXACTLY the same duration as the original.

Or you can just close FCP and overwrite the current file it uses
with a new one with the exact same lenght? FCP should never know
you replaced it with another.

When he opens the FCP project it will reference the OLD render files and display those instead. I have done this before and it seemed like Voodoo to make it dump the old shot, but rerendering the file "forces" FCP to replace the render file so you can see it properly.

I have a 867QS single G4/1.25 GB ram/10.2.3/FCP3.0.4/Geforce2 MX and was wondering if it is possible for me to replace the Geforce with a Radeon 9000 for the S-video connection etc that it provides.Would i be able to utilize the s-video for an external NTSC tv while using FCP?
Would there be any compatibility issues with my G4 and this current video card?
Thanks for any info.
Matt

The version that has S-Video out is a PCI card so you could use it AND your Gforce (as far as I know the AGP version only has DVI and VGA), you could also buy the less expensive Radeon 8500 instead if you so desire, or for that matter any ATI Radeon PCI that has S-Video out. The problem with using the Primary card for video out is that it mirrors your desktop so the desktop resolution would have to be set at 720x480 60Hz (not very nice looking).

Ahh i get it now. I wasnt sure if it mirrored the desktop or could display a seperate image.Thanks for the info. I will continue to use the pass thru on my sony pc-110 which i currently use as a deck. Can long powered(AC) on times cause any type of damage to a camera?

I have a G4/733 with a Radeon 7000 Mac Edition in a PCI slot. Have been very happy with this setup as it lets me add a second computer monitor as well as s-video out. Each screen can have its own independent resolution and color profile. The "ATI Displays" control panel gives you lots of control over the s-video and I generally set this as my external video in FCP. Am able to get nicer output for s-vhs tapes this way by tweaking the color, brightness, screen size, etc. You may want to look into this option as I think its cheaper than the 9000 or 8500.

hey, i've been thinking about upgrading from my g4/500 single to a new 15inch 1ghz powerbook. my question is this, in that setup, how do people usually capture their dv? i currently have my deck-cam plugged into one FW port, and i capture to a 7200rpm Western Digital FW drive plugged into the other port. i've read that it can be sketchy daisy-chaining the cam and drive. does anyone use this same setup and have any advice for me? also, do you think i'm safe for the single processor or will i need dualies to run all the tricks in FCP4?

- brian

Hello Brian,
I have the 1GHz PowerBook and have not had trouble capturing DV footage from a cam to a daisy-chained FireWire drive. I've used both a 5400 rpm and a 7200 rpm drive for capture with the PowerBook and had no trouble with either.

Hi guys... i have a powerbook g3 with firewire ports. I use a sony dcr trv103 and canon xl1s. I can capture but i cant play back to the cameras via firewire. Do you guys know of a way to do that? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanx

Vince

Vince,
I'm not sure what the trouble may be. But I suspect it may be related to the cam's certification status (http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/qualification.html) with FCP 3.x. Generally this indicates a camera's full compliance with the IEEE 1394 protocol.

Leapfrog Productions has just released Closed Captioning software for OSX. A free demo is available here (http://www.ccaption.com/nmain.html).

Is this the standard resolution the GL2 captures video in? If I save a frame in iMovie3, it defaults to 640x480. I've seen this 720 x 480 number used in several threads, and assumes it was the NTSC standard, but I just happened to notice these settings for new images in PS7:

720 x 540 Std. NTSC 601
720 x 534 Std. NTSC DV/DVD
864 x 486 Wide NTSC 601
864 x 480 Wide NTSC DV/DVD
768 x 576 Std. PAL
1024 x 576 Wide PAL
1280 x 720 HDTV 720P
1920 x 1080 HDTV 1080i

No option for 720 x 480. Any ideas? Thank!!

Kirk

To my knowledge, the only thing that NTSC demands is 480 lines. It isn't concerned with the resolution of each line (720, 640, etc.) because it is analog.

Digital NTSC (DVDs) is supposed to be 720 x 480, as is the DV format, so that's where the number comes from. The pixels have an aspect ratio of approximately .9 for 4x3, and 1.2 for 16x9.

I'm assuming you mean Photoshop when you are talking about
PS7? What people generally do is manipulate pictures in Photoshop
at a different resolution than video. The resolutions you name
for NTSC should be resampled/resized to 720x480 in your NLE
which will result in a 0.9 pixel aspect instead of the computer
default of 1.0. Just use it at that resolution and have your NLE
resize the images (Premiere -> Lock aspect ratio).