Murad,
When you do this, what position is your GRD70 in...record? stop?

I would like to do the same thing with my Canon Elura to save time.

Right now what I do is record (copy) onto the Elura from the VHS source, then capture the digital video in the same fashion as the rest of my digital video tapes (like the ones I actually shoot)

So a 10-minute clip takes 10 minutes to dub onto the Elura, then 10 minutes to capture=20 minutes total.

cheers
mike

Hey, if that XL has an MA200 or a Beachtek, just plug in your favorite mic, hopefully on a mic stand, (I like the Shure SM58, some guys prefer Sennheiser) and VO up a storm, the XL1s should be nice and quiet. (Just echoing Jeff's suggestion)

No, to the best of my knowledge FCP 4 projects can't be converted to FCP 3 projects.

A mic like the shure SM58 needs amplification. You probably want a mixer for voice-over work since it'll bring your mic to the right level and has other nice features. It can put out the right level for your camera. Check out the jay rose articles over at dv.com. Read the article about Pads and how to use them for info on the best way of hooking things up to your camera to get the best sound. The forum there is great too.

http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=227171
has recommendations for mics and mixers. The recommendations may not be right for what you need. For example, you would only need a very basic mixer with decent preamps.

The best mic for you is that one that makes the narrator's voice sound the best, not the one that is the best technically. Also a more directional mic would be good if room acoustics are poor.

Hi Mike,

This is how I have it connected:

S-video cable "out" of VCR, connected with the GRD70.

GRD70's AV cable (right, left audio, leaving the yellow video plug unconnected), "out" of VCR, connected with the GRD70.

4-to-6-pin from GRD70 to Mac, 6-to-6-pin from Mac to FW HD.

The camera is set to "play." The VCR is set to "L-1." In the camera, there's a menu choice: "S/AV INPUT." When you're capturing from your TV or VCR (or really any other video source), turn the "S/AV INPUT" to "ON."

In FCP set your external video to uncontrolled, and in the Log & Capture window you should see your video source (the TV, VCR or whatever is connected to your Elura). Then "capture now" to grab the signal.

so im pretty much screwed and completely lost the files by ocnverting them to FCP4 files?

Can your friend check his AutoSave vault for the FCP 3 project files? Apple warned about this in the manual. You can export the finished movie as QT and import the QT but you'll not have your project files.

Does anyone have any experience with the Final Cut de-interlacing filter and is it worth using (ie is it any good) on non-frame mode footage that is to be viewed on a TV. I have some footage that was shot on an XM2 in Normal mode.

Thanks

There are lots of approaches, including free ones and products you can purchase. I haven't used FCE, just FCP3. The deinterlacer in FCP3 will lower your resolution by discarding one of the fields. You might want to have a look at Joe's Filters (http://www.joesfilters.com). His package includes a nice deinterlacer and lots of other useful stuff. You can download a free trial.

Here are a few other threads to check out:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16416&highlight=deinterlace
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6275&highlight=deinterlace
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3997

I agree with Boyd and the other posts. Joe's Filters are much more accurate than FCE. Plus, the beauty of it, you can tweek the settings to your own liking and come up with even better results.
Joe's Filters aren't just for de-interlacing either. Joe's levels and Broadcast Legalizer come in very handy in all of my projects, and there are many more filters to use on future projects.

Well, I have used the sm58 and "A mic like the shure SM58"--namely, look-a-likes from A/T, AKG, etc. for interviews and other uses with my XL1 right through the MA100 and it sounded pretty decent to my tired old ears.

Now maybe the Beachtek is not everything I thought it was, I haven't had occasion to use one, so I'll hold off on recommending that item, but the MA provides me the perfect portal to the XL1 for XLR-connected dynamic mics like that, imho.

How much more directional are you suggesting, Glenn? Hypercardioid? Shotgun? The ones I mentioned above are cardioid and have proven adequate for my appications in terms of back rejection, but of course I have no idea how much ambient noise Rick is dealing with.

While I was in CompUSA this morning picking up more compact flash I saw a new NLE for Mac OSX. I think it is called Media Pro or Media Editor PRO.

It looks sort of like iMovie with additional plug-ins or maybe a cross between iMovie and FCE. Anyone know anything about it?

www.macXware.com for a few more details. Haven't tried it yet, but flagged the site pending a possible decision to buy it.

Saw that software in CompUSA also- it's available as a "demo" at the site listed above......with it's paint over video feature- seems like a good buy at $79

I just stumbled across this site

http://www.livetypecentral.com/

which isn't listed under "Resources" on the Apple site, so that got me wondering if any of you know of other sites that offer plug-ins for FCP 4.0, Soundtrack, and LiveType?

Specifically, I'm interested in:

- More sound samples/loops for the Soundtrack library
- Anything available for LiveType (the templates on the site above are pretty nice)
- Any other plug-ins for FCP 4.0 (several of the sites listed under "Resources" on the Apple site have disclaimers saying their plug-ins don't work with FCP 4.0 yet)

John,
I've not (yet) used LiveType. But I have used Soundtrack. Basically you can add any of the Acid loop libraries (http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/loop_libraries/default.asp) and darn near any other compatible sound files to the Soundtrack library.

I bought a couple of libraries and was able to add them with absolutely no problem. Even the libraries' metadata imported for categorization sorting.

You could also use the CMI cds as well for SoundTrack

FCP filters

www.nattress.com
Good and solid
http://www.joesfilters.com/
these are good

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

go there and look at the filters that he shows and also he shows where to get free ones

http://www.virtix.com/
One of the best also they post samples and freebies
http://www.kafwang.com/EUREKA/EurekaMain.html

this where you can EUREKA and there are freebies there also they are cool looking ones

By the way I like your website...please don't look at mine as I have a professional doing it over as it was done by a rookie being me. By the way I like your website...please don't look at mine as I have a professional redoing it over as it was done by a rookie being me.

This is a rather strange question. The program IDVD has a "theater" front were you can load films or photo's to. I want to know who wrote or composed the tune you here. It is something which came with the program. I captured it with a program called wiretap and used in an item that will be broadcast on tv. Naturally rights must be paid, so I must know who made it? any suggestions? is it from a film or something apple had made by an artist?

Does anyone know whether Joe's Filter stuff also works for PAL (such as the de-interlace and Broadcast Legalizer)?

Yes, I'm pretty confident that they are all PAL-compatible.

Joe Maller, the suite's author, is a mamber here at DVInfo. Hopefully he'll respond directly.

I currently have quite a bit of tape I am working with that was shot on a Canon GL2. I edit so far on OSX 1.2.6. Final Cut Pro 3.0.2, and Quicktime 6.3. So far I have avoided the dreaded Canon sync problem that has been the subject of past postings by not updating past FCP 3.0.2 ( I think it was the next update that killed sync with anything beyond QT 6.2+). It does seem, from some other more recent posts, that FCP 4 has not really solved this problem, at least for a couple of people. I'd be interested in any other people's experience with the GL2 and FCP 4 for long takes (mine are often hour long interviews), but I'd also be really interested in knowing if Panther plays any role in this problem. If not, I'll upgrade to Panther, but stick with FCP 3.0.2. I'm happy with FCP 3.0.2 for my purposes if that is the key player. Real sync problems would kill me (or at least force a major reinstall). In every other respect, by the way, the GL2 is a great camera, at least for what I do.

thanks in advance for any advice,
Linc Kesler

In the absence of a response here, I can only suggest that you try apple/support/discussions/idvd, as one of the helpers in that forum might know. Or try apple directly.

A couple of simple questions pls.
1.What is the best way to get a list and the properties of clips that are in a particular sequence?
2. Is there a more efficient way to note on any clip that is has been used in a seq. I have been just putting a note in the description or comment colums of the browser?

I didn't realise I had so many short wildlife shots, and after logging and capturing them, I wanted to make sure that I include all of them in a sequence somewhere.
Thanks
Rick Banfield

As always when I finish a video project and backup, I Trash everything on my Video Capture HDD and then using NORTON SYSTEMWORKS 2.0 I Run Disk Doctor on it AND my Startup Mac HDD. Then I proceed to do Speed Disk (Defrag) on both drives too. Be good to your Hard Drives and they be good and fast to you, Right?

No! Then OSX 10.3.1 Panther won't boot up.

I had to reinstall Panther again.

In future I might use Dosk Doctor and Speed Disk but only on the Capture Drive. Never again on the boot up HDD.

When Apple upgrades the OS, they always make sure that each and every developer has to upgrade all of their apps to work correctly with it. This is especially true of disk repair apps that have the OS built into them so they can boot from the CD. Norton will have to release a new version and you'll probably have to pay an upgarde fee I am guessing.

It should be OK to defrag the drives, just don't run Disk Doctor. I'd recommend against Disk Doctor on a general basis anyway as I always hear tons of horror stories abou it in both the Mac and PC world.

Norton is only a shadow of the product and company it used to be. I would caution against using Norton products with Macs. Unix disks, in general, do not need defraging. If you fear directory issues I recommend Disk Warrior and it's suite of tools. Disk Warrior no longer contains PlusOptimizer because it really isn't needed in OS X.

Same goes for their internet security software...can't remember the name. It was causing all Flash files to be blocked in Safari for some reason...so I trashed it.

Jeff Donald wrote:
Unix disks, in general, do not need defraging.
Is this true of HFS+ formatted discs, or just UNIX File System disks? Why does it not need to be defragged? How does it write to the disk in a linear fashion each and every time? Does the OS 9 portion of an OS X installation get fragmented?

Viewed graphically in DiskWarrior's PlusOptimizer, it does indeed seem that OS X drives become quite fragmented.

If your drive only stores video files you likely will not need to defrag it. Fragmentation is caused by files that are constantly created and deleted and files that shrink or grow.

If you have lots of space on your system drive (more than 15% free) then don't bother with defragging.

2- A very quick way to defragment a drive is to erase everything on it. After you delete everything there's no point in defragging.

I wantr to purchase a apple mac g4 for edting purposesand I would like to know how much gig/mega bytes and other specs,I should be looking for when shopping-More then likely I'm buying a used one also.

Can you provide a little more details as to what software you want to use and what your primary use of the computer will be? If your doing this as part of a business, get the fastest, biggest etc. etc. because time is money. I prefer the dual processors over singles for work in FCP.

Yes, this is definetly for business purposes--I will be using fcp(learning slowly) and my budget is kind of restricted, can I still get something affordable-I really just need the tower--flat screen not neccesary yet-budget is like $650 & up

Hmm, $650 is pretty limited... I'm using FCP3 on a 1.25 ghz single G4 with 1280MB RAM and it runs very nicely. But it also ran quite acceptably on my 733 mhz single with 768MB RAM and even on a 667 mhz PowerBook G4 with 512 MB RAM. Not sure how FCP 4 would work on any of these however.

I think the 1 ghz eMacs are going for about $800 new, that might not be a bad choice on a tight budget, but of course very limited expansion possibilities. You should also plan on getting a second hard drive for video, either firewire or internal, it's a bad idea to use the system drive for your files.

eMacs are a bad choice for FCP in my opinion. I would try to get something in the Dual 1GHz range with 1GB of ram or more. These are newer machines and would be serviceable for several years (probably). I would really urge you to wait until after MacWorld SF (first week of January) and the new G5's are introduced. The older models will get a good discount and a lot of G4's will end up being sold (probably cheap). If you can hold out until January or February, you'll get a lot more computer for your money.

Move files from photoshop , or iphoto into a project on imovie?
I am doing a presentation on WWII and iit would be very helpful if I could just move picture directly into imovie.

Thanks
Michael gibbons

Dual processors are nice to have. The 2nd processor adds about 70% extra rendering speed (you can spend a lot of time rendering :( ).

RAM you need at least 512MB. 1GB is preferable.

The G4 towers are nice because:
A- you can use internal drives (cheaper, faster) instead of firewire
B- they can have dual processors
C- you can use dual monitors with most of them. dual monitors give you a lot more room to work with and are cheaper than a single, larger monitor.

I wouldn't really wait to buy a used Mac because prices are always coming down. With new Macs you should sometimes wait if you know a price drop is *right* around the corner.

Does any one know were I can find a free download of I-Move2?

Thanks
Alex

Not sure where you can get iMovie 2 anymore, but you can download iMovie 3 at http://www.apple.com/imovie/download/

We are a community access media center running IMovie and FCP on IMacs.

We have recently started seeing problems with 2 of our DSR-11s that when they are plugged into the IMacs, the external Firewire hard drives become unavailable.

In all other respects the systems work normally.
When you power down the DSR, the Firewire hard drives become available again.
This is now occurring on 2 of 6 drives.
4 other DSR-11s, and other DSR-2x/4x work fine and do not exhibit the problem.

Any insight would be appreciated

Thanks,

Todd Thayer
Executive Director
CAPS-TV

What are the versions of OS, iMovie and FCP are you using? When the drives disappear do they still show up in the Apple System Profiler? Are the drives formatted HFS+?

Jeff,

We're on OSX 10.2.5, IMovie 3, Final Cut Pro 4.
We have one external Quest 80GB drive on one port, and the DSR on the second port on the IMac.
We can boot the systems, power up the drives and see them. As soon as we turn on the DSR, we lose communications with the Quest. The drives still appear on the desktop, they simply stop responding (spinning wheel icon). As soon as you power the DSR down, they respond immediately. I haven't checked the profiler, and the properties of the drives say Mac OS Extended (begging your pardon, but I'm a PC guy not a Mac guy and still getting up to speed on the Macs) If you need more I can check the partition and volume info at the Unix level.
It appears that something in these two decks (we have 3-4 others as well as DS-2x/4x that work fine) is killing the Firewire bus, but the local service depot (broadcast transports they do great with video, audio & alignment and everything else, but they're not up to speed on the data portion) hasn't been able to isolate the problem. I thought I'd float this out there and see if anyone had any thoughts before I bundle them off to Sony.

Thanks for your help,

Todd

There might be two ways. The first is checking if your program
has it. I don't know that because I don't use a Mac. Vegas on
the PC can make a list of all Clips with the properties of them.
You can then copy this to a spreadsheet program like Excel
to add some more information etc.

The other way is manual, which you must do anyway. When I
had shot all my footage for my Lady X (www.ladyxfilms) episode I made a
spreadsheet in Excel where the capture filename was in the
first column (which I autofilled from a DOS script. The captures
were split on each scene automatically by the capture software
and then renamed by me to indicate scenes & takes before this
process started) and other information like notes and quality
of the take in other columns.

I then watched all my footage on the TV (through Vegas' firewire
output through my camera) and dotted down the information.
This was invaluable for me to write down my notes and see
all the footage. Now if you are doing this anyway it won't be too
hard to note the details of the clip as well. If you watch it on your
computer (or have it at hand) you can enter it digitally directly as
well which saves even more time.

What is the best way to convert vhs footage to edit in FCP. Is something like the Canipus ADVC100 or recording to dv tape then to FCP about the same? Is there any difference in quality between the two ways? Which way would be better?

The easiest way to check the decks is to swap a deck that isn't causing trouble with one that is. If that solves the issue then you know it is the deck. But if the problem continues then your drives or the OS are the probable cause.

How old are the drives and are they using the latest firmware? Check with the FireWire (Quest?) vendor for the latest firmware. You may want to try upgrading your OS to 10.2.6 or 10.2.8. The middle OS versions have some FireWire issues. The upgrade is free from Apple and all you need to do is download the Combo version of the upgrade and run the installer.

Linc, I think FCP 4.1 has solved many capture issues people had with 4. I'm sure there are still a few, but that will always exist. Trying to guarantee compatibility with tens of thousands of 3rd party hardware devices and software is impossible. See if you can try your camera on someone else's FCP 4 system. Are you near an Apple Store?

I would try the Canopus convertor. It may offer better quality and it saves time, over recording to other tapes. You can try passing the signal through, E-E, if you have two cameras. Not all cameras will pass through the signal

Thank you Rob,

FCP has great logging properties that I use, but I can still find no way of getting a printout or details in the browser of all the clip details AFTER I have made a sequence. Is this possible in FCP?
The clips are not listed in the browser,under the newly made sequence tab.

Rick Banfield

Ok - im learning day by day.. .

I need some clear cut info on exporting & what codec is best to work in ?
I have been using dv pal for everything ie: capture the footage from pc105 pal - edit then export the clips as dv pal for use in after effects - then add filters such as magic bullet & export as dv pal , ready for fcp again.
Anyhow - by reading some post's - this is not the method for retaining good quality - I just found out.

So what is ?

I read that maybe I should - log & capture as dv pal - then make new sequence as either "uncompressed 8 bit" or "photo jpeg" then render & export as qt reference movie (not sure how ?) ready for use in AE.
once finished in AE - I then export as dv pal thus only rendering & compressing once.

I understand that a bit but can someone really post some nice clear cut instructions & info on this ie: whether this is the correct procedure for good quality & settings etc ? ie : I dont even know whether I should use compressor or QT or use qt settings for export to AE ?

Cheers

What is your target/output format? If it's DV then work in DV in Final Cut.

For transferring files between FCP and AE, use a lossless codec. Ken Stone's Final Cut Pro page has a tutorial for that.