NLE Mac / Final Cut questions from 2004

[Jeff Donald]

download the Motion Checker application and you'll find out if your video card qualifies. The tech specs for Motion are here.

[Gary Chavez]

o man, thanks for the (late) offer, i found somebody a long time ago, otherwise i would have shot myself. , i still almost throw and break things daily.

oh, give me back two analog tracks of audio and one analog track of video and the fleetest fingers to make those Beta decks sing.

All the tricks and flash this non-linear technonlgy provides us,
has not improved storytelling as far as i can see.
it will however, distracted the hell out of the viewers of a bad story.

[Stylianos Moschapidakis]

I am about to install FCP 3 on my eMac and want to do it the right way. I have spent a great deal of time reading almost everything I've found on- and off-line that's related to installing FCP and many folks seem to find it necessary that a clean installation of the operating system be performed prior to installing any video editing software; however, no-one has a solid explanation as to why that's necessary. So, I was wondering, how many of you think that a clean install is a must and why?

[Jeff Donald]

I've never done that.

[Mark Sloan]

People may suggest doing a clean install for a couple of reasons, but really you should be fine. What I would suggest is using the disk utility to fix permissions both BEFORE and AFTER you install FCP 3. What version of OS X are you using?

[Stylianos Moschapidakis]

Thank you both for replying.

Mark, my eMac came with both OS 9.2.2 and 10.2. Now, I am still unsure which OS I should install FCP 3 on. Initially I wanted to install it under 10.2 but it turns out that the QT Pro Key that came with FCP is good only for QT 5, not version 6, which is the one that was pre-installed on my eMac; and, I don't want to downgrade the existing version of QT because I am afraid I will mess things up with iMovie (v. 2.1.2), which I still use and want to continue using. So, I am thinking it might be better if I install FCP under 9.2.2. Any advice/suggestion will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Matt Elias]

I was told by an Apple Store employee to zero out your drive before installing FCP because the guys at Apple ProVideo won't talk to you unless you've done so - something about isolating bad portions of the drive. When I eventually talked to ProVideo I was told it wasn't necessary to do so - go figure.

Do you have AppleCare? You can always ask the ProVideo guys simple questions like this.

[Matt Elias]

Good to hear! I've been in the same boat trying to pinpoint problems w/ an ext drive.

[Jeff Donald]

Thanks for posting back with the ultimate outcome Ron. All drives need to be formatted HFS+ (Extended). This was a frequent problem with early versions of FCP and there are numerous posts here about formatting drives for capture issues.

[Tyler Spiers]

I have a short where in some shots the sky is blue and in some shots the sky is white. What's the best way to match the sky color so it looks the same. Like say I wanted to make the blue sky look white.

[Glenn Chan]

Use the secondary color corrector.

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/cc_legal_fcp4.html
Secondary Color Correction

This type of color correction refers to being able to adjust one color value in a scene without affecting other colors, also referred to as selective color correction. This can be used to change the color of a sky or intensify the blue in a sky without affecting the rest of the scene. It can be used to change any colored object in an image, like a shirt, from one color to another.

This technique is similar to blue screen effects, where the blue screen is keyed out (made transparent) to replace the blue background with another scene.

To perform this color correction, we can use the Color Corrector 3 Way or Color Corrector filters. The controls are the same for each filter. I like the Color Corrector filter for this, as it gives a lot of flexibility for modifying the chosen color, even if the desired color shift is substantial.


(search for "secondary color correction"... you will need to scroll down)

2- You could also try to do things with gradients. i.e. generate a gradient somewhere and add blue to the white skies.

3- You can also use garbage mattes to isolate the sky more.

[Matt Elias]

Ran a search and came up w/ nothing. What does the smooth point tool do in FCP HD? I know what the pen tool and delete point tool do, but not sure about the smooth point.

[Paul Vlachos]

In a sequence I'm working on, the thumbnails of a few clips in the timeline say "Media Offline," but they're not offline. They're in the browser with no line through them, they play and edit normally, and nothing seems amiss, except the thumbnail is displaying this message.

I've tried doing the preference trash trick, reconnectint the media, and a few other things, but they're still there. I'm getting inclined to forget about it and just continue working, but it still bothers me. I hate odd inconsistencies because they sometimes lead to odder and bigger inconsistencies.

Has anyone encountered this before or have a solution?

thanks.

[Jeff Donald]

Try recapturing.

[Paul Vlachos]

I'll try that as a last resort. As I said, it all seems to work. In fact, twice now, the thumbnails appeared, then disappeared a few minutes later.

Odd behavior, and it makes me worried, but it's only in one sequence out of about 20 total, so I'll just keep an eye on it and see how it goes.

So I guess this hasn't happened to anybody else? If so, please let me know.