NLE Mac / Final Cut questions from 2004

[Chris Wright]

Hey thanks for the reply...

I'm not sure why the pictures were displayed jagged like that. It would happen even after rendering. My best guess is that it had to do with parts of the image having too much detail to be shown correctly on a TV that is lower resolution. I could be wrong though.

Anyway, I ended up adding a gaussain blur of just 1 pixel to each image, and it cleaned it right up. All the jaggies were gone, and the image still appeared very clear on the screen.

I still have another similar problem... and that's scrolling text. I made a credits sequence for the project I'm working on and the scrolling text has the same sort of jaggies. The deinterlacing and 1 pixel gaussian blur help a little, but does not fix the problem entirely. The scrolling credits I'm using now is actually a large photoshop file that I keyframed in final cut, but the same problem occurs when using final cut pro's scrolling text generator. The photoshop file I'm using is in 23 point type, and the font is Lucida Grande. I assume this font is big enough to be displayed without problems on the screen, but I may be wrong. However, I can't really afford to make the type any bigger. Also, the PS file has a black background, and has been flattened, so I am not trying to set scrolling text with a transparent background over video in final cut.

I hope that's enough info for anyone who may be able to help...

Thanks!

[Rob Lohman]

I doubt you can do it in FCE. But it can be removed but it requires
a LOT of hard manual labour. I would suggest add black bars till
you get rid of it if that is an option...

Or if it just is one scene for example you might get away with
cropping to a smaller resolution and blowing that up to full DV
again.

[Loretta Shigo]

thanks for your reply!!

the cropping to a smaller resolution sounds intriguing. .
is that something i can do in FCE ?

it is a whole scene. may be too long.
but. perhaps edited in segments first. .
i'd be willing to try.

[Boyd Ostroff]

I guess it really depends on WHAT is underneath those letters and numbers. If it's a static background then it might be relatively simple to fix. But if people and things are moving in that area it will be much more difficult. I suspect that FCE can do this, assuming it has inherited some of FCP's features. Read through your manual about compositing and you should get some ideas.

Cropping would be easy. In the canvas make sure you have selected to show both the image and wireframe. You may need to drag the window larger and/or reduce the view scale to 50% so you can see the area outside the active image frame.

Grab one of the "handles" in the corner of the image and drag outwards. This should zoom your image wider. Now if you point to the middle of the image and press the mouse button you can drag it around until it's positioned such that the numbers don't show. Try not to enlarge the image any more than needed because it will quickly degrade as it's zoomed. You'll need to render this. If you just want to watch the video on a typical TV set you can get away with this up to a point, but on a good monitor you will notice that the image looks soft.

An alternate approach you might try would be letterboxing the image, as though you were shooting 16:9 or even something more extreme. Would that cover the numbers but still give you a decent composition? This can easily be done using the crop property of the motion tab . Click on the triangle next to "crop" and then move the top and bottom sliders to any desired position to create the letterbox you want. Again, this requires rendering.

Caveat: this is how it works in FCP, I'm assuming FCE is similar. Good luck, and let us know what you end up doing.

[Loretta Shigo]

Thanks for your reply!!

I have been thinking about the crop idea. . .
wow.. sounds like it may help... i will try this as soon as i can...

have not imported any thing into FCE yet. . .

I'll keep you posted on how this works out!!

Thank you for your help!

[Ray Echevers]

In my sequences, when I try to render the final "cut", so I can export the sequence, most of the time I have issues rendering.
Most of the time when I try to render all or the current sequence, either the rendering time window/bar pops up for a millisecond and then dissapears and nothing happens or I get this message after it starts rendering 1/4 or 1/2 of the way through.

File Error: The specified file is open and in use by this or another application

Could this be a memory issue or something else?

Also, when I try to go into the rendering settings, the application quits.

[Jeff Donald]

It could be, how much memory do you have?

[Ray Echevers]

<<<-- Originally posted by Jeff Donald : It could be, how much memory do you have? -->>>
1.5GB of memory.
It's weird, earlier I went back on to FCP4 and it worked no problem, maybe it's just that the memory is all backed up. Well, I was doing a good bit of editing and had a lot of stuff to render.

[Jeff Donald]

Anytime you have a problem like that you can always save your work and log out or restart the computer. This will force any open programs to quit and restart. Quitting FCP and trashing the preferences may also help.

[Charlie Wu]

i just notice that FCP 4 requires panther, but i had installed in on my 10.2.8 already. i am able to use the software alright (maybe there are problems that i am not aware of), but i am not able to utilize any real time effects at all. my friend is running FCP4 on her powerbook and she is able to get several effects put on and viewing in real time. i have a 12 in powerbook 1Gz with 768 mem, and her mac is a 17 in PB 1Gz with 512 mem. i suppose that we have the same clock speed CPU will make us equal in performance. the only difference is that she is running Panther, and i am not. i know that 17in pb has bigger cache, but i don't know why that she can get some real time effects and i can't?

second, is dual 1.25 G4 is still up for the challenge?

thanks

[Jeff Donald]

In order to get all the features of FCP HD you'll need to upgrade to 10.3.4 I edit at home with FCP HD on a dual 450 with no problem, so I suspect a dual 1.25GHz should do just fine.

[Ray Echevers]

<<<-- Originally posted by Jeff Donald : Anytime you have a problem like that you can always save your work and log out or restart the computer. This will force any open programs to quit and restart. Quitting FCP and trashing the preferences may also help. -->>>
I did the restart and all was the same.
But, I logged out of my account, and my girl use her account for about 45 minutes, then I logged back in, and I tried rendering all, and it worked perfectly and very quickly.

I did try to go to the Rendering settings that time, so I can't say if I would still have issues with the application quitting when trying to access the settings.
Also, what exactly does trashing th preferences do, and how would I do it?

[Jeff Pryor]

I have shot footage of a totally black silhouette against a sunset, and I now wish to replace the sunset with something else. What would be the simplest way to isolate the black portion and to be then able to composite in other footage behind it using Final Cut Pro? Any advice would be greatly appreciated...

[Ron Jones]

Driving me nuts! Could someone help me. When in Final cut pro 4.5, my video play back in viewer and canvas window ( both at 50%) are playing slow and out of syc. but when I go To 25% in viewer and canvas window,
video is playing in syc and okay. Problem is too small to view for edits I need to do.

Is there something I need to click on or off in my Final cut pro set up?
It has been working fine, that is the same project untill two days ago.

I have a G-4 laptop, 768 MB of memory, 26 gigs of space.

Ron

[Dave Frank]

What happens when you set the size to "Fit to window"?