It's doubtful that FCP would already be installed on one of the eMacs at CompUSA or Apple Store, since the focus of the eMac is towards education. It's worth a try though, but you'll probably just see that iMovie is installed.

an eMac is perfect for DVD creation. For FCP editing, though,....I would tend to recommend either a discontinued G4 tower or a flat panel iMac, like the 17incher.

Do check into seeing what price drops are available for a discontinued G4 tower, you may see that it is worth it for you and at that point you will have an upgrade path as you FCP skills increase.

Hope this helps, and welcome to FCP!

The issue would not be that of Commotion Pro. It's perfectly capable of dealing with higher resolution than that of broadcast television.

Do you really expect to have your work broadcast? If so, you'd be smart to check with stations in your area to see how they want material submissions; it's unlikely to be on a miniDV tape.

With big multi-million dollar budgets and production aimed squarely for theatrical release (movies) I'm sure the producers of "Gladiator" looked at every possible special effects package available and they chose Commotion Pro...matter of fact in the DVD there's an interview where you can see G4 Macs with Commotion running in the background- the interviewer was at his editing station and you can see the equippment and scenes from Gladiator still in their compositing setup. (look hard I don't think they made a specific effort to show this)

I'm not good with Commotion at all as I have almost no free time to learn this new software but seeing the demo CD and finding producers using it over AE and Elastic Reality was enough for me to deduce it's the best package bar none (with the exception of proprieatry packages used by ILM and such)

Quality is there- I'm pretty sure you wont see a difference in rendered footage- the whole point of special effects is to fool the viewer that what they're seeing is real or actually happened....in my brief useage of Commotion 2.0 (old version)- rendered material looked exactly like the source footage- it runs very well because it's preloaded into RAM (as you specify)....

good luck.

(I wish I knew of a Commotion class in NYC- if anyone hears of one drop a line on this thread)

everyone, for the feedback.....

Also check out Boris Red, the url is http://www.borisfx.com.

Best of luck!

I created several titles with an alpha in photoshop for import into FCP.
I have the text moving from "off screen right" to "off screen left".
At the point where the titles were placed in the time line on V2, the clips on V1 get brighter. I tried putting dissolves at each end of the title clip, but it still "pops" brighter.
I have changed my alpha setting in FCP but that did nothing.

Any suggestions?

Thanks
Kev

Hi Kevin,

Try looking under Sequence>Settings>Video Processing and the first item is RGB proecessing or rendering. I believe the box should be unchecked.

Jeff

That is unchecked.
My text was created in RGB, does that make a difference?

Kev

It might be a Photoshop issue. Read this post http://discussions.info.apple.com/WebX?14@@.3bb96c8e and also this from the LAFCPUG http://www.lafcpug.org/basic_photoshop_files.html Did you flatten the layers?

Jeff

am using FCP 3.0 I am editing my clips and making sub clips. I must have hit something by mistake since I_got wireframe on the image inside the viewer. I managed to get rid of that by going under the "View" icon and checking "Image" only. Now I got a jerky image with the audio kinda out of sync with the image! Other clips play well but this one doesn't! Anyone got an idea on what went wrong? or how I can fix it? Thanks :)

I did flatten the image by saving as a PICT with Alpha.

The articles you sent seem helpful. I'll give some of those suggestions a try.

Thanks again

Kev

In response to a recent inquiry to Matrox concerning the RTMac's functionality under OSX (currently NOT functional) I received the following rather disappointing response from Matrox today. Thought I would share with you, since I know that many of you either have this thing or are potentially contemplating its purchase.
-------------
Mr. Tanaka,

Thank you for your interest in Matrox RTMac. In response to your inquiry,
there has been a recent development regarding the OSX drivers. The following
is the official announcement from Matrox concerning the RTMac OSX drivers,
taken from the user forums:

"After hitting many road blocks and obstacles, and many months of hard work,
Matrox has reached some very important milestones with respect to OS X
drivers for RTMac. We currently have the following working:

-video capture and playback working in a test application
-effects working in a test application
-secondary computer monitor display working in several resolutions in a test
application

More coding and debugging work, however, is required in these and other
areas.

The next important milestone will be to get video playback working in Final
Cut Pro. We should start to see progress on this front in the coming weeks.

While we wait for more news on how integration within Final Cut Pro
proceeds, we invite current users to submit their candidatures for beta
testing. The initial testing program will be a closed beta, and as we
progress to more stable and useable software, we will proceed with a public
open beta. Please see below for instruction on submitting your candidatures
for public beta.

At this point, depending on how progress on coding and debugging goes, we
estimate a closed beta in 1-2 months, with an open public beta to follow.

We are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. We appreciate your
patience and continued interest in Matrox RTMac. Another update will follow
in a few weeks to let you know how the integration within Final Cut Pro is
progressing.

Please note that our immediate focus is on OS X support for Final Cut Pro.
Matrox has not evaluated the amount of work required to support Adobe
Premiere under OS X.

To have your candidature considered for OSX beta with Final Cut Pro, please
send an email to OSXbeta@matrox.com and provide the following information:

- Complete contact info (name, address, phone, FAX, email)
- Complete description of your RTMac system configuration (software and
hardware)
- A list of video equipment at your disposal (decks/cameras, outboard gear,
other NLE)
- A brief description of any beta testing experience you may have (omit if
not applicable) and your background
- A guesstimate of the number of hours you can allocate to beta testing per
week
------------------
Yulian Pugachevsky
Macintosh Video Products Specialist
Technical Marketing Team
Matrox Video Products Group"


Until the time we do release the RTMac drivers for OSX, please keep in mind
that the RTMac is completely functional under OS 9.2.2. Combined with RTMac
and Final Cut Pro 3, working under this OS gives all the functionality
offered by Matrox hardware.

The following link has a description as to how the RTMac complements Final
Cut Pro 3:

http://www.matrox.com/videoweb/products/enduser/rtmac_benefits.htm

If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact me.

Regards,

Mark Kelly
Channel Marketing
Video Products Group
MATROX ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS LTD.
1050 St. Regis Blvd,
Dorval, Quebec, Canada, H9P 2T4
Tel: 1-800-361-4903
E-mail: video.info@matrox.com
Visit www.matrox.com/video

---------------------------------

Offhand I say that toggling the wireframe display option is completely unrelated to your stuttering clip display. Are you certain that the master clip ever played smoothly? Perhaps you inadvertently changed the display resolution on your sequence (just below the sequence name tab).

hi ?en,
The master clip worked normal and I was in the middle of doing sub clips when I hit somehing by mistake I have a feeling it is a display resolution type of problem but have no idea how to fix it since I have the clip in the browser and not in the timeline. I can't find the display resoluation tab in the browser! sorry if my reply sounds stupid :)

Well it's got me stumped. I'd be inclined to delete the sub-clip and then re-mark it from the master to see if the phenomenon disappears. Or build a new sub-clip that duplicates the problem clip. How do your other sub-clips (from the same master) look?

The other sub clips look fine! it's just when I proceeded to make a sub clib, I apparently clicked on something else instead of the usual "apple key and letter U" to make a sub clip. I got the wireframe, I got rid of it, but apparently the picture got affetced and now it looks as if -AS IF- it was shot in progressive mode: it is jerky and therfore the sound seems to be not in sync with the pic. I repeat it was normal prior. I made 5 sub clips from it and they all work fine. When I proceeded to make the 6th sub clib, I must have hit some key or something that made it appear this way. Now if I try to make a sub clip it will look as if it is in "progressive mode"
All other clips and sub clips are fine! and this particular clip was fine up till I did something to it ! :)

I solved it! basically I deleted the clip and I imported it again from my hard drive. IT WORKED :) I love the MAC.

That's very good news...but still a bit of a mystery, eh? Well whatever worked is good. Thanks for reporting back and putting closure on this puzzle for everyone.

It's not that disappointing as far as news. Although they apparently are strapped for moving forward with the drivers (it seems a financial issue to me), they do appear to be proactive about OS X support via their pending beta program.

By chance, did you layer this graphic over a video layer that had been filtered and rendered?

I agree that, at face value, the reply seems "proactive". And, to be fair, the reply to this, my 5th, inquiry did appear to have been assembled by a human, albeit 3 weeks after my inquiry.

The "disappointment" for me stems from nearly a year of inquiries into this matter followed either by no response or robotic "real soon now" responses. For over seven months Matrox's site indicated that the drivers were imminent.

Nobody likes to see $1,000 of equipment sitting in a box on the floor, idled by the vendor's lack of support. But the stinger is this continuing "real soon now" position that Matrox is spinning. Clearly FCP is heading down a path that overshadows much of the RTMac's sizzle. OK, I can accept that the RTMac's days are finished. But I'd be happy just to get the RTMac's damn break-out box to function under OS X.

Oh well, no point grousing. It looks like I should more earnestly consider how to integrate that RTMac box into my office's decorating scheme. Hmm, let's see, it's a nice pale blue...maybe some dark gray accent pillows on the sides...

Are there any plugin for FCP that will let me do optical fades inside FCP? I know AFX has a few that does this process but are there any for FCP?

/Henrik

Yes I did.

Kev

Do you mean a more film-like dissolve like:

http://www.digitalfilmtree.com/Large%20Binary%20Assets/Plugin%20Sits/Eureka!%20FilmDissolve.sit

from Digital Film Tree?

You can check out this and their other FCP plugs here:

http://www.digitalfilmtree.com/Eureka.html

HTH,
Clayton

Thanx Clayton. Those plugins have pretty much what im looking for. Now there is only one slight problem. I'm cropping much of my source material to get rid of unwanted things outside the white background. But when i use these filters, they think the now transparent parts are black (even though i have a white image as lowest layer in the composition). Just like they are only seeing the current layer and nothing else. Is there any workaround for this? I don't want a big black field to pop up in the transition.

/Henrik

Congrats!
Just got my G4 a week ago, and my wife is starting to complain.
Today I found a good price for the Western Digital 120 GB hard drive.
It was a little more expensive because of the 8 Mg buffer, but everyone I talked to said it really boosted the performance.

Check with <http://www.pricegrabber.com> to compare prices on the
Western Digital 120 GB 7200 rpm ultra ATA100 120GBX drive ($161.00)

I purchased it from newegg.com.

Good luck and enjoy!

Jeff Patnaude

I'm not sure I exactly understand your setup, but it sounds like you need to nest the layers of clips on either side of your transitions. (Then add the transitions to the nests themselves.)

HTH,
Clayton

<<<-- Originally posted by Ken Tanaka : Mike, that's great news! I'm confident that you'll have a long positive experience with this Mac and the next, and the next,...

After nearly 20 yrs in a PC-only world I was skeptical. No more.

Have a blast! -->>>

That qualifies you as a Switcher, Ken.

;)

<<<-- Originally posted by Mac Daddy : Congrats!
Just got my G4 a week ago, and my wife is starting to complain.
Today I found a good price for the Western Digital 120 GB hard drive.
It was a little more expensive because of the 8 Mg buffer, but everyone I talked to said it really boosted the performance.

Check with <http://www.pricegrabber.com> to compare prices on the
Western Digital 120 GB 7200 rpm ultra ATA100 120GBX drive ($161.00)

I purchased it from newegg.com.

Good luck and enjoy!

Jeff Patnaude -->>>

If that is the 8mb buffer version, then that is a great deal. I paid $206 for mine via Other World Computing. Very nice drive, I have it in an OWC Mercuruy Elite enclosure.

Hi!
new to the mac scene I just hooked up fcp 3 and i'm trying to use a dazzle hollywood dv bridge. In trying to capture, fcp hangs on 'allocating disk space' where it sits until i force a close. I contacted apple, they say talk to dazzle. I still haven't heard from dazzle and have been surfing the web for answer to no avail. any thoughts? thanks for any and all help!

Dan,
It's actually worse than just being a "switcher". As head of technology and/or chief information officer for several sizeable financial organizations during my career I've procured and directed the implementation of countless millions of dollars worth of gear, much of which was MS-platformed. In many respects I was a poster boy for Microsoft technologies.

It's off-topic here, but I should add that I still admire Microsoft and still have MS-based systems at home. They never let me or my organizations down when I needed their help. But for my current post-war needs and interests Apple provides the most innovative and rich platform. (Not to mention a platform that's just plain fun to use.)

So I don't think you'll see me standing in front of a white background lit like a police line-up giving testimony any time soon (even though Apple would probably like to hear my story), <g>

I'm in the same boat, Ken. We're (FAA) loaded with DOS/Windoze based stuff, plus Ultra, etc., so I have to come home to have my MAC experience. Been using 'em since my beloved SE-30.

I was in Boston last week to get my son settled in for his second year at The Boston Conservatory, and took the opportunity to make a pilgrimage to a "real" Apple store out in Lechmere. Question -- Are all the Apple reps typically as clueless as the one I chatted up? I felt like I was in Radio Shack or the Apple section of Comp-USA! (Cool looking store, though.)

Cheers

Yes, that would have worked (and i tried it) but then it wouldn't allow me to use the transitions on the nested ones.

The setup is, a set of clips (source clip is 40 min long continously) from the same source, white still image as background, the video material cropped. To try the nesting, i cut up the background to fit the length of the clips, then nested each clip.
but then the resulting nested clip had a fixed duration and you could not lengthen it even though there are more sourcematerial.

Hm. just thought of one thing, maybe i can go into the nest and manually extend the source material there.. i'll try that when i get back home.

/Henrik

In my experience, the Apple stores are either very good, and extremely knowledgable or the exact opposite. I've been in 7 stores and 4 of them had clueless help. The 3 other stores were very good. Unfortunately the Tampa store is one of the former, clueless stores.

Jeff

Clueless personell can be found in many stores, pc or apple =)

A very funny episode with a colleague of mine who went into the computer store to buy DAT tapes for his audio gear. And asked the guy behind the counter if these tapes were good quality for audio recordings? And the guy looks at him and says in a patronizing tone "No, these are for DATA, thats what the DAT stands for". =) My friend just looked at him, shook his head, pointed to the "Digital Audio Tape" labeling and left.

Some people should just not be allowed to work with customers :P

Oh btw, for the record. I has been a Unix based system administrator for 12 years, and profient in systems development in both Unix & PC systems. And when it came to buy my own editing suite, i didn't hesitate two milliseconds. A nice shiny G4 :) Can it be done on the PC? Of course! Do i want to do it on the PC? Nope :) The G4 is much more fun :P And FCP doesn't come for the PC. And having bled myself working with Softimage|DS (v 3.x) on a PC platform, the FCP is a lot of bang for the bucks. (Especially with it's FXBuilder feature and its expandibility. Brilliant stuff =)

/Henrik

I'm not folloiwng the visuals here at all but the remedy for most of these conundrums is to render the nested sequence (add some handles first) and then import the rendered QT file as a clip.
You may need to experiement with the QT or FCP export settings for a self-contained movie or just force the rendered file. Sometimes the renderdf ile doesn't have all the pieces you thought it would, that's why I usually use a self-contained movie. Just like pre-rendering prepcomps in Æ.

BTW: I've cut my share of 16mm film for a/b printing and I understand optical fades and I'm conversant in Æ but I'm not sure I know what an optical fade effect would look like in After Effects.

david

I know of a couple of things to try. What OS are you using? How do you have your drive partitioned? How full is your drive? How are you trying to capture and how long is the clip? If the box *limit capture to 30 minutes* is checked, uncheck it. I used the Dazzle Hollywood Bridge recently for a review and it worked fine. But it does seem to be the most problamatic for users (also the least expensive).

Jeff

I need to try and clean up some audio from a shoot and really do not know what I should use to do it with. For instance, we had a shoot in an alley and there were air conditioners running, I would like to try and take them out if possible or bring the noise level down without dropping the voice levels . looking for some suggestions on audio packages for the Mac that will allow this type of operation among other tools.

If all else fails I may have to go back and do VO's.



Forgive me if this has been covered, but searching the board has not turned me on to anything as of yet.

Thanks for the help.

JayT

Thanks to everyone who responded,

My followup questions are:

1. Where would one find a discontinued G4 Tower (my local apple dealer said that they were not available anywhere anymore when I showed up to buy one)

2. If its an 800Mhz processor, with the same RAM, and hardware...what is the fifference between the IMac, EMac, and tower? To me it seems like the same computer in a different shell.


Thanks

Bad audio can only be fixed on Star Trek.

There are some things you can do with some of the packages by filtering the audio. You can use pass-band filter restricting the pass band in the range of the voices you are interested in.

I think the problem you are going to run into to is that the compressors are probably producing noise right around the bottom of the human voice range.

There are several key differences between an iMac and a G4 tower. You can only mirror with a second monitor on iMac. G4 allows the second monitor to expand the desktop, giving you more working space (needed for FCP in my opinion). G4 has internal expansion, you don't have to rely on FireWire for all your expansion. The G4's have better video cards, with more memory. It frees up the processor to allow it to do effects, rendering etc. quicker. These are just a few of the differences. Apples site http://www.apple.com/powermac/ will got into detail for you. I would try Small dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com/ I've purchased used, refurbished, discontinued and new equipment from them in the past and have had great service. You might also try Zotz digital http://www.zotzdigital.com/ one of the sponsors of this community. They are Apple dealers but i don't know if they deal in used etc.

Jeff

Hi guys :)
I have two different takes where the main subject's skin tone is different on each take. Is there a feature on FCP that allows me to pick the correct skin tone from one take and apply it to the other take? (maybe by clicking on the subject's face and automatically adjusting his tone to match the other take.) If so, how is this effect achieved? Thanks :)

I don't know of any feature like that in FCP or Avid Xpress. Do you just want to correct skin tones and not the entire scene? FCP has correction filters that you can apply to a scene, then render. If it's just the skin tones I'd probably do it in After Effects, but it wouldn't be click, click.

Jeff

If you have anything white in each scene you could use FCP's color correction filter to white balance (via the eye dropper for whites) each scene which would theoretically help to normalize your skin tone between scenes. Otherwise you're into the dark, mystical world of the colorist. You certainly -can- balance color between scenes with FCP but, as Jeff noted, it won't be "click-click".

i just installed FCP3 (upgrade) in 10.1.5 and i installed the supplied QT . however when i opened QT in OSX and registered it still says that i have vs. 5.0.2 instead of 5.0.4(in the "about QT" window)? is the X version of pro still 5.0.2? i have opened a project and everything seems fine i just dont want any problems down the road because of a QT error

thanks for any info
matt

If you've registered the Pro version as perscribed you should have no problems. See if QT now shows the correct version (after entering your registration) by looking at QT's "About" information. Either way, don't sweat it.

I saw some impressive color correction Demos with FCP 3 when I
was at IBC this weekend. Now I'm trying hard to remeber if they
did what you wanted or not, or if it was one of pinnacle's
professional products. I do know that FCP 3 has some amazingly
power color correction tools. Try to learn as much as you can with
them and I'm sure you can do a lot more than you though. I do
believe FCP 3 CC supports color masking/selecting (ie, only effect
a particular color), so that should perhaps do what you want.....

Fiddle with it!

thanks ken . i did that and it still reads the same. i wont sweat it.

Hey!
thanks for the reply, but I might have solved it. i was out of town and ran into a buddy who said to just try a different set of rca cables and keep an eye on the automatic switch (d to a, etc) so i did that and it works. Basically with my set up, I just need to cycle the bridge through the three different positions (d to a, pass through, a to d) and then it works fine. Thanks for the reply and if you know a way to simply this process, I'm totally open to it!

On a side note, I tried my friends sony dvmc da2 and it works flawlessly with my set up because you don't have the auto switch on the bridge, so I might go to that just for convience.

OS X has been updated and FCP boot up was listed as an improvement with many others. Ken, some printing improvements are listed also. It is about a 17MB download and I had no problems with the install. I downloaded it here http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/

Jeff