NLE Mac / Final Cut questions from 2004

April 25th, 2004, 10:45 AM

hello all,
i am new to FCP (recent PC switcher) and i was thinking that i would invest in an ezboard keyboard with the FCP shortcuts on the keys to speed up my learning curve and because i had wanted one for premiere when i was on a PC. then i came across a much more affordable solution here, http://www.itn.net/cgi/air?stamp=Z7s...r_ampm.1=12+am

^ it is just the keycaps that you can replace your original keys with. my question for you all is, if i have a keyboard from my PC that connects via USB, can i use this keyboard to put the caps on and hook it up to my powerbook?

thanks a lot

JR

Ken Tanaka · April 25th, 2004, 11:04 AM

You could try listing it in our Classifieds section. You could also try trading it in at PowerMax against a new purchase.

Stephen Schleicher · April 26th, 2004, 07:48 AM

update to FCP HD (aka FCP 4.5). It has CinemaTools built in, so it can handle 24p editing, plus with the new release it has the ability to edit HD footage in real-time.

Cheers

Kirsten Scully · April 26th, 2004, 12:36 PM

I am using FCP 4 on a G5. I have a project with 8 sequences. When I opened the project thismorning, FCP began to open everything normally so that all the tabs showed in the canvas. As it got to opening the last one, it shut down all the sequence tabs except for two. All the sequences show in the browser. When I double click on the sequences in the browser, again, FCP goes through the motions of opening them. You see the progress box ´preparing video for display´ on the screen and the sequence tab briefly appears in the canvas and on the time line. Then it literally jumps back into one of the tabs that was showing originally. I can´t open my sequences. Does anyone have any idea what might be happening?
Thanks,
Kirsten

Scott Anderson · April 26th, 2004, 12:43 PM

Are you talking about doing an offline edit, or an online, full quality edit? The workflow is essentially the same, exept that you would have to conform your EDL later in an online suite. Many HD and indie film projects have offlined in FCP just using the DV codec, but then, what's the point in editing in NTSC or PAL from HD footage? it's like working on a 1/4 size proxy.

As far as Final Cut Pro HD's capabilities, what I saw at NAB was 720 24p footage from the Panasonic Varicam. I'm not sure that the CineAlta's 1080 24p would transfer directly. In fact, Apple was really hyping the relationship with Panasonic. I expect that the DVCProHD codec is the only one at this stage. You could always transfer the footage to DVCProHD, then work natively in FCPHD. You would then get the full advantage of being in the native codec, except you would have degraded the image quality by downsampling.

By the way, if you wanted to work in FCPHD, you need a dual 2Ghz G5 with very fast IDE drives, like maybe the new Firewire 800 drives. If you're going to offline at DV resolutions, a fast G4 is fine, with off the shelf FW 400 drives.

Jeff Price · April 26th, 2004, 02:31 PM

I gave up waiting for a speed bump that might never come and have a G5 DP sitting in a box in the editing suite.

So, now what? I've upgraded the RAM to 1 gig. I will get a second hard drive in the next week or two (either the Seagate 160 or the Maxtor 250). I already have a few externals for storage/backup and I'll be ugrading to FCP and DVDSP over the summer.

Any tips on setting up/getting the most out of the new computer? Gotchas to watch out for?

Thanks.

Carlos E. Martinez · April 26th, 2004, 02:39 PM

<<<-- Originally posted by Scott Anderson : Are you talking about doing an offline edit, or an online, full quality edit? The workflow is essentially the same, exept that you would have to conform your EDL later in an online suite. Many HD and indie film projects have offlined in FCP just using the DV codec, but then, what's the point in editing in NTSC or PAL from HD footage? it's like working on a 1/4 size proxy.

As far as Final Cut Pro HD's capabilities, what I saw at NAB was 720 24p footage from the Panasonic Varicam. I'm not sure that the CineAlta's 1080 24p would transfer directly. In fact, Apple was really hyping the relationship with Panasonic. I expect that the DVCProHD codec is the only one at this stage. You could always transfer the footage to DVCProHD, then work natively in FCPHD. You would then get the full advantage of being in the native codec, except you would have degraded the image quality by downsampling.

By the way, if you wanted to work in FCPHD, you need a dual 2Ghz G5 with very fast IDE drives, like maybe the new Firewire 800 drives. If you're going to offline at DV resolutions, a fast G4 is fine, with off the shelf FW 400 drives. -->>>

The idea would be to do an off-line edit of HD stuff and deal with it as if it was film. In fact because it would end up in film.

So my guess is a G4 would be enough. What interface do you use to copy from HD to the Mac? For film is usually the lab that makes the video transfer and provides a Beta or DV time-coded copy, which is later fed into the FCP. The lab can do that for sure, but maybe a transfer can be done on location and edit as the film is being shot in HD.

I didn't pay much attention at the time HD was released, as it looked as if it would become an unaffordable system for low budget projects, when apparently it did not. Or not quite so.

The Panasonic seems to provide a mid-term to "full HD" with 24p / 720p, the top being 24p / 1080p). Maybe I should look into released theatrical projects that were shot in 720p, if it's possible to find such info.

Carlos

Jay Silver · April 27th, 2004, 07:29 PM

I'm really sorry to drag this out again but I've gone through the old threads and I still just don't understand and the tutorial that Jeff pointed to is gone.

When I play my DV footage directly from my camera on a TV, it appears at the proper 4:3 ratio.

When I import it into my computer and convert the RAW DV file (720 x 480) to an MPEG2, it plays at the proper 4:3 ratio in my MPEG player.

The problem is when I do my editing and render out a 720 x 480 file. When I convert that to an MPEG2 I get a distorted image as it vertically stretches to fill the 4:3 ratio.

My question: what am I doing wrong? Any help would be appreciated.

-j

Ken Tanaka · April 27th, 2004, 10:51 PM

What editor are you using? What -specific- settings are you applying for your export from that editor?

Tom Greever · April 28th, 2004, 06:45 AM

Those are great, thanks! Some I had already seen. Is there anything else out there? Thanks for your help...

Tom Greever · April 28th, 2004, 06:49 AM

I wonder if anyone has experience with this and can lend advice. I would ideally like to log all my tapes and batch capture all the clips at a lower quality than full DV quality. Then I can assemble a rough cut with lower quality clips. Once the final version is created, I do a batch capture to re-capture all the clips I need for the project, re-render everything and I'm set. This allows me to save on hard drive space until the final version is complete.

Anyone done this? What recommendation do you have? What codecs should I use? Even a step by step process would be helpful to find out what other people are doing.

Stephen Schleicher · April 28th, 2004, 06:58 AM

I have about 30 FCP Quick Tips up on my site

Cheers

Stephen Schleicher
www.mindspring.com/~schleicher

Rob Lohman · April 28th, 2004, 09:54 AM

I gotta ask why just not get a big (external) harddisk. They are
very cheap and will save time with the recapture (and problems
that might arrise from it). I'm no Mac specialist, but I do believe
FCP supports the feature you want. I'll let someone more in the
know answer the specifics...

Jeff Price · April 28th, 2004, 11:32 AM

There is a new version of Quicktime out (or coming out later today). The two additions I know about are the addition of a lossless audio encoder (all the quality in half the space) and improvements to AAC encoding.

Probably best not to be a guinea pig until word of compatability with video software gets out.

Tom Greever · April 28th, 2004, 05:43 PM

Yes, I know that FCP supports doing this. I'm just looking for tips that anyone has, or trouble they might have had doing it.

I do have a somewhat large external hard drive: 160GB. But I only use a PowerBook since I travel so much in Asia and I can't always take that disk with me. So, I'm usually relying on the 30GB left on my PowerBook.

April 25th, 2004, 10:45 AM	#541
Guest Posts: n/a	keyboards? hello all, i am new to FCP (recent PC switcher) and i was thinking that i would invest in an ezboard keyboard with the FCP shortcuts on the keys to speed up my learning curve and because i had wanted one for premiere when i was on a PC. then i came across a much more affordable solution here, http://www.itn.net/cgi/air?stamp=Z7s...r_ampm.1=12+am ^ it is just the keycaps that you can replace your original keys with. my question for you all is, if i have a keyboard from my PC that connects via USB, can i use this keyboard to put the caps on and hook it up to my powerbook? thanks a lot JR

April 25th, 2004, 11:04 AM	#542
Ken Tanaka Retired DV Info Net Almunus Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 6,943	You could try listing it in our Classifieds section. You could also try trading it in at PowerMax against a new purchase. __________________ Lady X Films: A lady with a boring wardrobe...and a global mission. Hey, you don't have enough stuff! Buy with confidence from our sponsors. Hand-picked as the best in the business...Really! See some of my work one frame at a time: www.KenTanaka.com

April 26th, 2004, 07:48 AM	#543
Stephen Schleicher Regular Crew Join Date: May 2003 Location: Hays, KS Posts: 188	update to FCP HD (aka FCP 4.5). It has CinemaTools built in, so it can handle 24p editing, plus with the new release it has the ability to edit HD footage in real-time. Cheers __________________ Stephen Schleicher www.stephenschleicher.com

April 26th, 2004, 12:36 PM	#544
Kirsten Scully New Boot Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Jerez, Spain Posts: 19	Problems opening sequences I am using FCP 4 on a G5. I have a project with 8 sequences. When I opened the project thismorning, FCP began to open everything normally so that all the tabs showed in the canvas. As it got to opening the last one, it shut down all the sequence tabs except for two. All the sequences show in the browser. When I double click on the sequences in the browser, again, FCP goes through the motions of opening them. You see the progress box ´preparing video for display´ on the screen and the sequence tab briefly appears in the canvas and on the time line. Then it literally jumps back into one of the tabs that was showing originally. I can´t open my sequences. Does anyone have any idea what might be happening? Thanks, Kirsten

April 26th, 2004, 02:31 PM	#546
Jeff Price Major Player Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Chico, California Posts: 357	New G5, now what? I gave up waiting for a speed bump that might never come and have a G5 DP sitting in a box in the editing suite. So, now what? I've upgraded the RAM to 1 gig. I will get a second hard drive in the next week or two (either the Seagate 160 or the Maxtor 250). I already have a few externals for storage/backup and I'll be ugrading to FCP and DVDSP over the summer. Any tips on setting up/getting the most out of the new computer? Gotchas to watch out for? Thanks. __________________ Jeff Price Flickerflix Nature Videos flickerflix@yahoo.com

April 26th, 2004, 12:43 PM	#545
Scott Anderson Major Player Join Date: May 2003 Location: Phoenix, AZ Posts: 327	Are you talking about doing an offline edit, or an online, full quality edit? The workflow is essentially the same, exept that you would have to conform your EDL later in an online suite. Many HD and indie film projects have offlined in FCP just using the DV codec, but then, what's the point in editing in NTSC or PAL from HD footage? it's like working on a 1/4 size proxy. As far as Final Cut Pro HD's capabilities, what I saw at NAB was 720 24p footage from the Panasonic Varicam. I'm not sure that the CineAlta's 1080 24p would transfer directly. In fact, Apple was really hyping the relationship with Panasonic. I expect that the DVCProHD codec is the only one at this stage. You could always transfer the footage to DVCProHD, then work natively in FCPHD. You would then get the full advantage of being in the native codec, except you would have degraded the image quality by downsampling. By the way, if you wanted to work in FCPHD, you need a dual 2Ghz G5 with very fast IDE drives, like maybe the new Firewire 800 drives. If you're going to offline at DV resolutions, a fast G4 is fine, with off the shelf FW 400 drives.

April 26th, 2004, 02:39 PM	#547
Carlos E. Martinez Trustee Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brasil Posts: 1,138	<<<-- Originally posted by Scott Anderson : Are you talking about doing an offline edit, or an online, full quality edit? The workflow is essentially the same, exept that you would have to conform your EDL later in an online suite. Many HD and indie film projects have offlined in FCP just using the DV codec, but then, what's the point in editing in NTSC or PAL from HD footage? it's like working on a 1/4 size proxy. As far as Final Cut Pro HD's capabilities, what I saw at NAB was 720 24p footage from the Panasonic Varicam. I'm not sure that the CineAlta's 1080 24p would transfer directly. In fact, Apple was really hyping the relationship with Panasonic. I expect that the DVCProHD codec is the only one at this stage. You could always transfer the footage to DVCProHD, then work natively in FCPHD. You would then get the full advantage of being in the native codec, except you would have degraded the image quality by downsampling. By the way, if you wanted to work in FCPHD, you need a dual 2Ghz G5 with very fast IDE drives, like maybe the new Firewire 800 drives. If you're going to offline at DV resolutions, a fast G4 is fine, with off the shelf FW 400 drives. -->>> The idea would be to do an off-line edit of HD stuff and deal with it as if it was film. In fact because it would end up in film. So my guess is a G4 would be enough. What interface do you use to copy from HD to the Mac? For film is usually the lab that makes the video transfer and provides a Beta or DV time-coded copy, which is later fed into the FCP. The lab can do that for sure, but maybe a transfer can be done on location and edit as the film is being shot in HD. I didn't pay much attention at the time HD was released, as it looked as if it would become an unaffordable system for low budget projects, when apparently it did not. Or not quite so. The Panasonic seems to provide a mid-term to "full HD" with 24p / 720p, the top being 24p / 1080p). Maybe I should look into released theatrical projects that were shot in 720p, if it's possible to find such info. Carlos

April 27th, 2004, 07:29 PM	#548
Jay Silver Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Posts: 112	Aspect problem I'm really sorry to drag this out again but I've gone through the old threads and I still just don't understand and the tutorial that Jeff pointed to is gone. When I play my DV footage directly from my camera on a TV, it appears at the proper 4:3 ratio. When I import it into my computer and convert the RAW DV file (720 x 480) to an MPEG2, it plays at the proper 4:3 ratio in my MPEG player. The problem is when I do my editing and render out a 720 x 480 file. When I convert that to an MPEG2 I get a distorted image as it vertically stretches to fill the 4:3 ratio. My question: what am I doing wrong? Any help would be appreciated. -j

April 27th, 2004, 10:51 PM	#549
Ken Tanaka Retired DV Info Net Almunus Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 6,943	What editor are you using? What -specific- settings are you applying for your export from that editor? __________________ Lady X Films: A lady with a boring wardrobe...and a global mission. Hey, you don't have enough stuff! Buy with confidence from our sponsors. Hand-picked as the best in the business...Really! See some of my work one frame at a time: www.KenTanaka.com

April 28th, 2004, 06:45 AM	#550
Tom Greever Regular Crew Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Western Chicago Suburbs Posts: 32	Those are great, thanks! Some I had already seen. Is there anything else out there? Thanks for your help...

April 28th, 2004, 06:49 AM	#551
Tom Greever Regular Crew Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Western Chicago Suburbs Posts: 32	FCP Lo-Res Rough Cut, Batch Capture Hi-Res I wonder if anyone has experience with this and can lend advice. I would ideally like to log all my tapes and batch capture all the clips at a lower quality than full DV quality. Then I can assemble a rough cut with lower quality clips. Once the final version is created, I do a batch capture to re-capture all the clips I need for the project, re-render everything and I'm set. This allows me to save on hard drive space until the final version is complete. Anyone done this? What recommendation do you have? What codecs should I use? Even a step by step process would be helpful to find out what other people are doing.

April 28th, 2004, 06:58 AM	#552
Stephen Schleicher Regular Crew Join Date: May 2003 Location: Hays, KS Posts: 188	I have about 30 FCP Quick Tips up on my site Cheers Stephen Schleicher www.mindspring.com/~schleicher __________________ Stephen Schleicher www.stephenschleicher.com

April 28th, 2004, 09:54 AM	#553
Rob Lohman RED Code Chef Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Holland Posts: 12,514	I gotta ask why just not get a big (external) harddisk. They are very cheap and will save time with the recapture (and problems that might arrise from it). I'm no Mac specialist, but I do believe FCP supports the feature you want. I'll let someone more in the know answer the specifics... __________________ Rob Lohman, visuar@iname.com DV Info Wrangler & RED Code Chef Join the DV Challenge \| Lady X Search DVinfo.net for quick answers \| Buy from the best: DVinfo.net sponsors

April 28th, 2004, 11:32 AM	#554
Jeff Price Major Player Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Chico, California Posts: 357	New version of Quicktime There is a new version of Quicktime out (or coming out later today). The two additions I know about are the addition of a lossless audio encoder (all the quality in half the space) and improvements to AAC encoding. Probably best not to be a guinea pig until word of compatability with video software gets out. __________________ Jeff Price Flickerflix Nature Videos flickerflix@yahoo.com

April 28th, 2004, 05:43 PM	#555
Tom Greever Regular Crew Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Western Chicago Suburbs Posts: 32	Yes, I know that FCP supports doing this. I'm just looking for tips that anyone has, or trouble they might have had doing it. I do have a somewhat large external hard drive: 160GB. But I only use a PowerBook since I travel so much in Asia and I can't always take that disk with me. So, I'm usually relying on the 30GB left on my PowerBook.