NLE Mac / Final Cut questions from 2004

[Drew McElvain]

I have tried this before and I get a mesage that says you can't take stills from dvds how do you get it to work?

[Edward Natale]

Hello all.

My work has recently purchased a new Final Cut Pro 4 system to replace the 12 year old turbocube that luckily for us pretty much exploded during a severe power spike not too long ago.

We will be capturing uncompressed SD via an AJA IO box from a sony beta deck.

Currently we are shooting DVCPRO50 24p on Panasonic AJ-SDX900 cameras. For use with our FCP system all of our footage will first need to be dubbed over to betacam, so heres my question.....

Since i dont know the technical details of each format, i would like to know if dubbing over to betacam sp from DVCPRO50 is going to cause a noticeable quality loss above and beyond the regular degradation common with a component transfer.

Of course ideally we would want to transfer from a DVCPRO deck via SDI into FCP, but unfortunately we are out of DVCPRO decks and we were lucky our bohemoth parent company opened up its wallet for the new FCP system. Beta is really our only choice at the moment.

Thanks for the help!!

Edward N

[Jeff Donald]

Yes, there is a loss of quality. The degree of loss is relatively subjective. However, it sounds like a moot point, since your out of options. However, if your corporate parent opens it's wallet again I think there is a FireWire option for that camera that would allow you to get digital video into FCP. I think that would be a fairly low cost (compared to buying another deck) way to stay digital.

[Andrew Hogan]

You can download a Freeware DVD player called "VLC". (plays all region DVDs and VCD etc) Then you can do the Apple-Shift-3 combo to get snapshots. It works!

[Carl Russo]

Hello!

I've been licking my chops at the ad copy for this eBay package deal. My background is in 16 and Super-8 film shorts, so I'm new to NLE. (I'm adept at Pro-Tools in radio production, but the tech problems were always the engineer's.)

I'd like to read some comments on the ad below. The $5000 system tops my budget. Dual G5 packages from this seller start at $10,000. I'll be shooting with a Sony VX2100.

How much footage could I expect to hold with this kind of memory? I intend to produce some fairly short subjects for starters.

The ready-to-roll pre-configurations are obviously attractive to a novice like me. Do you see any immediate problems with the combo? Please read and advise!

Thanks,
Carl Russo

"This system was designed for high-end video production on a tight budget. This system comes to you completely configured, ready to start production. Just hook up all the cables with one of our trained technicians on the phone, and you are ready to start working immediately with a state of the art lowest priced Mac G5 Processor system.

The "Sister Kahuna G5" editing bay is Mac video editing and multimedia production heaven! Based around Apples latest G5 1.6GHz Processor, 19" High Res CRT Display, 14" JVC Production Monitor,1: 80GB Primary Hard Drive, 1: 120GB SATA Media Drive, 1GB DDR RAM, and Studio Audio Package, "Sister Kahuna G5" will allow you to take on the most comprehensive projects that cutting-edge production requires.

This system is especially well suited for Feature Films, Documentary Video, Television Commercials, Video Intensive Multimedia Authoring, DVD Authoring, High-End 3-D Graphic Design, Audio Mastering, and Voice Over Recording. This incredible system will allow you to produce broadcast quality finished work day in, day out. And best of all, its incredible Real-Time Editing Capabilities keep you on deadline and completing jobs in record time. This system comes to you ready to use and completely configured for production.

INCLUDED IN THIS AUCTION:

Computer

Apple Macintosh 1.6GHZ G5 Computer w/Keyboard and Mouse
80 GB Serial ATA Primary Hard Drive
120 GB Serial ATA Media Drive
1 GB DDR400 RAM from 4 256 MB Stick
NVIDIA GeForeFX 5200 Ultra Graphics Card
SuperDrive DVD/CD Burner
56k Modem
Software

OS-X (Latest Version Apple Includes)
Final Cut Pro 4 (Boxed Retail)
DVD Studio Pro 2 (Boxed Retail Version)
Apple Live Type (Included with FCP4)
Apple Sound Tracks (Included with FCP4)
Production Equipment

NEC FE991SB Flat Screen CRT Monitor
JVC TH-H1375 CGU 13" Production Monitor
JVC SR-VS30U DV and S-VHS Dual Digital Video Tape Recorder
Monsoon Planar 14 Planar Array 2.1 Speaker System
Behringer 1002 10 Channel Audio Mixer Microphone
Complete HOSA Brand Cable Package for entire system"

[Olaf Olgiati]

Assuming the following setup:

DV CAM PAL (Canon XL1)
Final Cut Pro 4
Adobe After Effects
Magic Bullet
DVD Studio 2

What's the correct worflow to acquire, edit, apply the magic bullet suite and then save to DVD or DV?
I'm more a Final Cut person, and I'd like to use AE just for the Magic Bullet Suite (deinterlacing, frame conversion, deartifact,letterboxing, maybe try some opticals or looks).
I mean, shall I convert all my original footage with MB in after effects (deinterlace, frame conversion and deartifact) BEFORE editing on FCP? Then editing on FCP as usual, adding colour correction, some basic chroma keying, and then back again to AE to letterboxing or opticals+looks?
Or shall I start editing on FCP, and then "magic-bulletting" the exported final sequence? Deinterlacing etc.. at the end?

Cheers

[Scott Moore]

Doing a project in FCP 4.

I have an interior scene involving 4 angles
on a particular actor---the scene came out of the camera a little yellowy, so I did a simple
color correction using the 3 way color corrector
filter ( eyedropper'd the white door in the scene to set the highlights, and the black bars
to set the blacks)

the scene color corrected beautifully, EXCEPT
3 of the 4 angles match and 1 is noticeably
off ----(NOTE: I maintained the same filter settings for all 4)

What's the simplest way to get the odd one's
colors in the line with the other 3?

[John Locke]

Scott,

There's a wonderful tutorial on how to do that here. Scroll down about halfway to "Scene to Scene Color Correction".

Good luck. Let us know how it goes.

[Christopher C. Murphy]

Hey, look around and piece together your own system. Sometimes you can a lot of extras by spreading out your purchases.

Also, I see no "Apple Care" on there - that's #1 for purchases. Without it, you will get screwed down the line...my G5 crapped out 2 weeks after I bought it. Soo...I'm in the know about it. I've got the Apple Care and it was worth the price.

I'd try and scale back a little if you don't need all that stuff right now. You said you use ProTools? You can get ProTools with the MBOX for $400 now online..so, you'll have your audio suite right at home. Everyone knows that audio is MORE important than video, so think about that when you buy.

One more thing - if you get a G4 dual maybe you can save $1000? I have seen incredible deals...and I have both a G5 1.8 single and I have a G4 dual 1.25 -- both are comparable with speed.

Just my 2 cents...you asked!

Murph

[Richard Alvarez]

Dv requires qabout 13 gigs pre hour to store. So 120 gig media drive is a little more than nine hours.

Not sure if you are commited to Mac or Pc, but you might visit DVline.com to see what 5 grand will get you. A whole lot more. If you like protools, you'll like avid. (Same people) Avid ships with copies for pc and mac as well.

[Graeme Nattress]

Unless you've bought MB already, you could take a look at my Film Effects package (www.nattress.com) which will do all that you need while remaining inside FCP and getting faster render times too.

If you go down the MB route, your workflow is ok. You'd have to save each shot out of FCP as a seperate movie and re-make the edits in AE if you want to use the opticals. This is a realy pain which is why I developed an all FCP workflow.

It might be better to do all editing in FCP first, then all MB last.

If you're de-artifacting, I don't know if that will transfer to DVD because DVD has the same colour sampling as PAL DV. However, you say you're doing chroma-key work. I'd definately use the de-artifacting on those shots before applying the chroma key to make the edges as good as possible.

If you apply the MB to the finished final sequence, you'll have the easiest time of it, but you won't be able to use the optical effects as they require the shot at a time workflow.

Graeme

[Steve Nunez]

Hi guys,

I'm a bit puzzled on what's happening to my footage upon batch capture into FCP4. When FCP captures my clips and I place the clips into the timeline- I am getting 1 second handles with the audio but not the video????? In other words the clips have a second of audio before and after the video- everything is synched correctly and the audio does indeed play in sync with the footage- but why am I getting the second of audio before and after the actual video.....I find myself going to each clip and chopping off the handles- this is very annoying and I'm sure I have a setting or preset set wrong somewhere- but I've gone through my settings and cannot find where the problem lies- anyone have any clues??

The only thing I've changed is that I've set captures to DV anamorphic as I am shooting with an Optura which shoots 16:9 (native optical)- so aside from specifying DV 16:9 I don't think any other settings have been changed.

Thanks guys!

(Soundtrack is AWESOME!!!!!!!)

[Steve Nunez]

Hi guys.......I'm trying to view some ASF files generated by my Canon Optura 300 which are supposed to be mpeg-4 compressed videos shot onto SD cards (just for the heck of it)......Windows Media Player for OSX will not play the video- but the audio does indeed play.......VideoLanc can play the video but not the audio- so I have no stand-alone player that can play the audio and video together as intended.....the Canon manual says to go to canondv.com for a QT plugin for mpg-4 videos- but no such plug-in can be found on the site and my QT already plays MPG-4's yet can't play these ASF's.......anyone have any clue as to what can play ASF's on a Mac OS X machine?

[Rob Lohman]

It sounds like the mpeg4 video codec is missing from your
Windows Media Player. Which version did you install?

[Jeff Donald]

No, Microsoft doesn't give the Mac version the same features. Steve, if you send me a short clip I'll try and find a player for you.