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

Help Help Help
 

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.

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