Digital Voodoo
 

Hey,
Ok, here is a dumb one for you....
I got this mac g4 with voodoo64 and a aja with sdi in/outs.... how do i know all that stuff is configured right?

Michael Estepp

Do you have source material to feed in to FCP? If so, set your preferences and try to capture. If some options you need are greyed out, chances are something is installed wrong, or you need to upgrade some software etc. Are you building this system yourself? Most retailers would configure it and test it before delivery.

By reading the manual, or just test it. Sorry but I don't think anybody can figure out your computer settings but you.

Export/Media Manager Woes
 

I thought I would try a new Capturing technique for a narrative piece shot on film. I have 3 hour-long DVCAM tapes with the telecine transfer. I did Capture Now on each tape and "logged" by creating subclips from each massive media chunk.

However, I forgot to capture only the video on the first tape, so I have an hours worth of blank sound that, while taking up relatively little space, is getting in the way when I throw the subclips into the timeline.

The trouble is, I can't seem to get rid of the audio effectively (short of recapturing the whole tape). Media Mangager has no way (that I can see) of eliminating audio. However, Export and Batch Export destroy my Media Start/Media End points.

The only thing that seems to work is to throw all the subclips into a Sequence with the audio trackes locked, then drag those clips back out to a Bin. This works OK, but I was hoping to break the huge media files into a little ones.

Any ideas?

thanks,
Aaron

Hmm...one idea, off-hand, Aaron.

Use Quicktime Pro to cut the empty sound tracks off of the clips. Open QT, load one of the clips from their capture folder and then export without sound (making sure to use DV, best-quality at the original frame rate).

Then, in FCP, dump the original clips from their bin and import the mutes.

Eh?

Hm. Yeah, if I then take the soundless Quicktime file and reconnect it to the Clip in my bin, it might do the trick. It'll give it a try, but it'll take probably real time to export an hour long clip. I'll let you know how it turns out.

thanks!
Aaron

So I tried relinking the soundless QT file to the master clip, but that reset the Media In/Out points.

I really need some way to export the subclips themselves, but I don't think that's going to happen. Maybe in FCP4.

Thanks for your thoughts Ken,

Aaron

FCP Upgrade Catch-22 (Old Issue But I Need Help)
 

Hey folks,

After scouring the internet for a while, I've found that this is hardly a rare problem but I have yet to find a solution to my exact problem.

To begin: I have FCP 2 on CD and just bought my new Dual 1.25 GHZ OSX Mac.

I know FCP won't run in Classic but it did install successfully. I have my upgrade to 3.0 ready but here's the catch-22:

I can't run the upgrade to 3.0 (and thus, functionality in OSX) because it says I haven't registered/validated FCP 2.0. I can't register FCP 2.0 until I am able to at least open it. I can't open it because with the new Macs, we aren't given the possibility of booting to OS 9, just Classic.

What can I do? Am I reading the situation incorrectly? If not, is my only recourse to find a copy of OS9, install and register FCP 2 so that I can upgrade to 3.0?


Thanks for any advice you can give,


Joshua

You're in a bit of a pickle, Joshua. Sorry to hear it.

Jeff Donald and Donald Berube are our resident Mac gurus...they'll chime in soon, I'm sure. But in the meantime, try the support forums at Apple http://discussions.info.apple.com/ (do a search to see if someone has already asked the same thing).

*You'll have to register if you aren't already.

Good luck!

This starting to be more common place as the newer machines become dominant in the market place. Call Apple Care and they will provide a disk that will boot in OS X. I believe you'll need to send them a receipt for the product and the original disk.

Distorted lines on JPEG
 

Hello everyone

A friend of mine sent me some diagrams he'd done in Adobe Illustrator. They were jpeg's, 72dpi and at the correct frame size as stipulated in FCP help.

When I import the graphics, simple white lines greater than one pixel wide on black background, they look great in the Viewer and my television monitor until I hit the play button.

When the sequnce is played any line off the x and y axis appears distorted or 'stepped' as is the best way I can describe it.

Oddly enough I even saw this phenomenon after I'd filmed and then inserted as freeze frames some hand drawn images I made up during a rough edit.

It's got me foxed, any suggestions anyone?

Cheers

Simon

edited above
 

edit made in original post

Try reversing the fields and see if that helps.

FCE on a 12" Powerbook - experiences?
 

Hi all,

I'm currently using Final Cut Express on a G4 desktop, with dual 450Mhz CPUs and a 15" Apple TFT Studio Display (1024x768 resolution).

I've decided to sell my desktop, and go mobile, with a Powerbook (moving to Japan soon, so small==good in my new mijikai - i.e. compact - apartment!). Ideally, I'd like to get one of the mid-range models, 15" with Superdrive, especially if they're going to get updated soon. The screen real-estate looks great for editing, and I'm hoping that by the time I buy, it'll have FW800 and FW400 ports.

But I'm seriously tempted by the 12" models; advantages are more portability, and cheaper of course.

Does anyone here have experience of using FCE on a 12" Powerbook? I suppose my main concerns are:

1) Screen real-estate. Is 12" too pokey? I'm used to using FCE at 1024 x 768 resolution, but on a larger display. Of course, I could always hook it up to an external monitor, but its VGA-only for the 12" model, right?

2) Speed. Coming from a dual-450, I'd imagine that a single-CPU 867Mhz G4 is about the same, performance-wise.

3) Slow HDD. I'm used to 7200rpm IDE drives (Seagate Barracuda IV, and WD 8MB cache), so I'm a bit concerned that the 4200rpm drives in the 12" ( I guess this applies to other models as well). I'd use an external FW drive for storage, but initial capture would be to the internal drive.

I know that some of these issues have been touched on in various Powerbook & iBook threads, principally:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6186

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6353

Anyway, I'd really appreciate any advice here, before opening my wallet!

imovie2 and timecode breaks
 

as a novice pd150 owner, i must apologize in advance for the seemingly obvious question.

that said, thank u in advance for your patience

just shot my first series of talking heads for a client's project

the client wants the material edited in movie2 so she can have access to the rough cut

yesterday, i shot about 75min of material (1 full tape and about 15 mins of 2nd)

being a newbie pd150 owner, i wanted to take a look at the 1st tape and see the results so i can adjust for sunday's next day of shooting

but if i take out the 2nd tape which is still in the camera, won't i break the continous ttmecode?

if the timecode is broken, will that be a transfer issue using imovie2

the work-around is to have a minidv/dvcam player/recorder or use another minidv camera as a playback

unfortunately, those are not options for today.

bottomline: if i break the continuous timecode on the minidv will i incur loading issues in imovie2

any and all real world experience would be appreciated

thanks in advance

be well

rob katz
harvest film