NLE Mac / Final Cut questions from 2004

[Kevin Wild]

Hmm, not sure I understand. I thought I've seen plenty of QT's that are rendered out 16 x 9. Many of the movies you download from Apple's movie trailer site are 16 x 9, aren't they? That's all I was trying to do, unsuccessfully.

Any ideas?

[Boyd Ostroff]

Leaving the Log and Capture window open will also slow things down...

[David Slingerland]

I know little about the deinterlacing except that FCP4 has a filter to do that. Its function would probably be to create a sort of filmeffect. It does not slow your footage down there is a simple slowmotion possibily in FCP4 called slowmotion, works much better I think. As for the lenses, I own a manual 14 zoom lens, if you are going to buy one I would get the 16 because it has a servo motor for the ZOOM. The 14x has not. But if you have never worked with that kind of lens (manual lens) you would be crazy to spend all that money. I would advise you to buy the wideangle instead, its a great lens and easy to use

[Rob Lohman]

Benjamin: I've moved your thread to our Mac editing forum since
it really has nothing to do with the XL2, but everything with FCP.

[A. J. deLange]

When importing into FCP be sure that you set up the capture preferences for anamorphic video. If you forget to do this you can later change the pixel shape to convert to anamorphic.

Similarly when you create a new sequence make sure that the preferences are set to create an anamorphic sequence (sorry I can't be more specific - I don't have FCP on this machine).

If you have captured with another program and you just want to look at the files in Quicktime go to Movie > Get Movie Properties. Under the Movie menu in the window that opens in response to Get Movie Properties select Video Track. In the other menu (will say Annotations when the window opens) pick Size. Now hold down the sift and Apple keys while dragging the lower right hand corner of the frame. Each time you release the mouse the new size will appear in the window. Adjust until the aspect ratio is 16:9 (i.e. 1920 x 1080; 960 x 540 etc. While you are here be sure to set quality to high. Now save the file. In the future it will be displayed in the proper aspect ratio. Note: All this requires Quick Time Pro

[Scott Anderson]

I'm on FCPHD, a 1st gen. dualie G5, with 500Gb internal SATA and a Lacie Bigger Disk (1Tb) external Firewire 800.

Before moving to FCP, I used Media100, and I used Retrospect to backup entire project files on DLT tape, programs: bins, media, graphics, AfterEffects projects and renders - the works. The thinking was that if I ever needed to revisit a project, I could just copy it back onto a drive whole, and start editing again as if I had never left.

The first problem with that was that the DLT IV tape only held between 20-40Gb of data, they are fairly pricey, and they are awfully slow. It could take 2 days just to archive a project, and just as long to bring it back.

My plan was that I would use Retrospect to DVD-R's for archiving, as they are cheap and fast. But I'm running into a few problems. My last few projects were 20, 50 and 60Gb, so I'm spending as much time swapping DVDs every 20 minutes or so, days on end, to archive these projects. I also didn't realize that a Retrospect backup isn't viewable in the Finder, so you have to use Retrospect to bring back even an individual file.

I'm starting to think that I shouldn't include DV footage that is still on the field tapes. As long as the timecode is still solid, I should be able to use FCP to batch digitize the footage back into the bins and reconstruct the program. That will cut down the size of the archive quite a bit, and still allow me to resurrect an entire project.

So, here's the question to all you FCP/OSX users: Do any of you do this same kind of archiving? What software/hardware do you use? What is your strategy for making a complete backup?

[Boyd Ostroff]

It really is a problem. My only solution has been to buy more and more firewire drives (total of 8 so far), and eventually accept the fact that a project is "done." Then I export the edited final copy to tape.

The last 500gb drive I got was a bit over $200 and will keep me going a little longer... :-)

[Ong Wan Shu]

hi all,

After playing around of Livetype, and the text effects stuff in FCP HD, i came up with the following conclusion. Please, let me know if I understood FCP correctively...at least in the workflow for adding 1000 lines as subtitles.

1) Use Razor Blade too, make cuts at points where I want subtitle to appear, disappear, or change to next line
2) Use lower Third text, since it automatically puts text within title safe area at bottom. I read from other posts someone suggested using 3D text instead but i never figure out why(finding X,Y position, etc etc). Let me know what i am missing out
3) Then, with a lot of paitence, type the lines in the viewer, and drag them into those little "cuts" in the time line. since i have aredy cut them up into where i want the lines to appear, just dragging a line into a cut will save me a lot of time, RATHER than adjusting how long a subtitle going to appear after i drag the line into timeline.

Is the the most efficient way of adding subtitles? I just need good old school subtitles...no fancy jumping and color changing words. i am talking about 1000+ lines...

thanks!!!

[Rob Lohman]

A lot of people seem to export the finished movie back to DV tape
and save all other work that can't be re-captured from original
tapes (like project files, masks, music mixes etc.) to CD or DVD.

Some people also buy a harddisk for a client or project (or a large
one for several) and once it is full put it on the shelve.

I have mostly worked on medium to small things, so I'm backing
it all up to DVD+R at the moment.