Know of a cheaper alternative to Glue Tools? (DPX in FCP)

[Mike Barber]

I'm wondering if anyone is at all aware of a plugin for FCP similar to Glue Tool's Cineon/DPX Pro. Glue Tools looks like a great component, however is overkill for my needs—especially at the price. All I want/need is to be able to open DPX image sequences in FCP.

Yes, I have Shake and I know I can convert the DPX sequences to QT movies—but conversions are the exact thing I am trying to cut out of the workflow. I'm looking to streamline a process and conversions are the bottle neck and a bit redundant. (I'm not going to get into specifics of the workflow, it's complicated and not really relevant anyway.)

Is there anything else out there—some obscure plug-in or component—that can give FCP the ability to natively play DPX sequences?

[James Brill]

AJA has one. I have only played with it but as long as your not planning on doing an offline with it or anything beyond opening the images and pushing them along your workflow it should be fine.


I love free stuff.
http://www.aja.com/ajashare/AJA_DPXT...lator_v601.zip

[Mike Barber]

Thanks for the link James. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to do what I need. I just gave it a whirl and it appears to be a stand-alone app that will wrap or convert DPX frame sequence to a QT movie. For simple playback/review of sequences, I have Iridas' Frame Cycler Pro; for conversion, I have Shake. What I need is a way to get the DPX sequences in a Final Cut Pro timeline quickly. I want to bypass the lengthy conversion process in order to streamline the workflow. Also, such conversions would only be useful for a short time, which really amounts to much wasted time (lots an lots of sequences).

I'm syncing up lowres QT dailies and fullres DPX plates with some additional material. I would do this in Frame Cycler if its QuickTime support was worth a damn (serious weakness of the application, among others).