NLE Mac / Final Cut questions from 2002

[Mark Reidy]

Hello,

I need help reducing traffic (automobile) noise, either thru FCP 3 or Peak DV 3.1

TIA,
Mark

[Daniel Berube]

<<<-- Originally posted by Chet Hardin : I am about to embark upon encoding my final cut pro project to dvd.
I have no idea what to do. I will be using a g4 867 with os x. The dvd software will be the standard, idvd.
final cut pro 1.2.
Help? -->>>

What you need to do is to Export as an FCP movie in FCP 3, and, to save space, export the movie as a render file. Here's the recommended settings:

FILE>EXPORT>FINAL CUT PRO MOVIE:
- Setting: DV NTSC 48 khz Superwhite
- Quality: HiRes (1)
- Include: Audio and Video
- Markers: None
- Recompress all frames: LEAVE UNCHECKED
- Make movie self-contained: LEAVE UNCHECKED

Click OK.

When you UNCHECK "Make movie self-contained," you actually export a reference movie file that points to all of the media in the timeline. If you were to transfer this exported "reference" movie to another mac, it would not play correctly because it would be looking for all of the media files that you left behind on the other Mac. What is great about this is that iDVD will recognize the reference file with no problems and it'll be substantially smaller in file size than if you were to make the movie self-contained.

When you are in iDVD, you merely import that reference file and it appears as an icon on your iDVD project window. Once you do this, iDVD will encode an MPEG 2 file in the background so that you can continue to build your iDVD project. At any point in time during the encode process, you can click on the side pull-out window to verify the status of the encode.

iDVD treats your imported reference file as an asset; if you import multiple refernce or self-contained movie files from FCP, they will be qued to encode on after the other in iDVD. It's a pretty straightforward process and at any point in time you can preview your project to check your work.

Give it a try and let me know how it works out for you.

[Adrian Douglas]

Doug,

THis seems to be apretty common problem wiht FCP, and I think most guys get around it by capturing with Imovie. It's more forgiving in the TC area

[Ken Tanaka]

Capturing via iMovie, as my colleague Adrian recommended, will indeed work since iMovie is forgiving of t.c. breaks. But there is a caveat. Footage captures via iMovie is apparently in a slightly different format which, after importing into FCP, will require a render. Additionally, you will also have to re-render each time you change audio on these tracks. From my experience this was a pain in the caboose on a short project. For culling through 50 hrs. of footage it would be equivalent to a felony sentence.

But if you are using FCP version 3 I have good news. In this current version you can tell FCP to ignore t.c. breaks during capture. The dance steps to achieve this are:

Final Cut Pro > Preferences > (General tab) > un-check "Abort Capture on Time Code Break"

It's not quite as smooth as iMovie's eternally forgiving capture (it can occasionally scold you) but it does the trick.

Good luck!

[Rob Lohman]

If you have recorded a few seconds at least of only the noise
you might be able to cancel it out. But I do not know if those
programs can do that, or which one can for that matter.

[Nathan Gifford]

Another solution is copy camcorder to camcorder using a firewire jumper. This elminates the t/c breaks. It also beats paying someone $25-$30 a tape to do the same.

In the future (and maybe you are already doing this) is to do pre and post rolls. Using record review, make sure the camera has backed up to a valid t/c before your next shot. This helps prevent discontinuous t/cs.

I wish my Cinestream could ignore t/c breaks like FCP does.

[Peter Butler]

Hi all, just been looking at the Apple website and their new range of macs. I must admit it's very tempting to buy one but what gets me is the difference in price between the UK and the US. For the 1GHZ one in UK it's £2000 in the US it's $2500 which works out at £1635 a saving of £365. I know that I'd still have to pay shipping and tax but it would still save me about £200. Is it worth me thinking about doing this or would their be problems in runnig a US mac in the UK, I can't think of any.


Cheers


Peter

[Rik Sanchez]

It should be okay, you can change the preferences to have your system in British English with the British style of numbers. not really sure what that is but you select the British flag in the International prefs in the system prefs.

I buy my macs in the states and have it shipped to me by a friend because it is cheaper plus I want my whole system in English. Luckily now with OS X I can write text and titles in Japanese for my videos and graphics, but before when I got my first mac, I bought it in the states as well just to have an English system.

hope this helps.

[Peter Butler]

Yeah thanks for that it's something I'm going to consider.


Cheers

Peter

[Matt Stahley]

i can suggest trying the notch filters and low/hi/shelf filters or parametric eq etc. . but if you are trying to keep some dialog that has been recorded with the traffic noise you wont be able to seperate the 2 . and whatever you do with the audio filters will more than likely alter the dialog in some way as im sure it will share some frequencies with the traffic noise.

[Mac Daddy]

Hi everyone,
will be getting my new Dual 1 gig in a few days and needed some information. Heard that there is a problem duplicating DVD's off of the standard DVD's that are burned on the computer.
True? Anyone with experience in this matter? Anyone with problems playing the DVD's back on standard consumer players?

You input appreciated- thanks,

Jeff Patnaude

[Jason Wood]

If you need uncompressed video and want to stay with Avid, you could always offline with Xpress DV and take your EDL to your rented bay and online. It would save you suite rental fees. The files transfer seamlessly and flawlessly between systems. Most of the folks I know are doing this when using any other format but DV.

At 5:1 DV really isn't phased much. When you get into Betacam, etc...that's when you might start seeing artifacts.

Hopefully in later versions Avid will be forced to release Xpress DV with more compression options to compete with FCP, but it's a double edged sword for them. They need to stay competitive with FCP, but they also want to sell more MCs, which is good and bad for the XpressDV users.

[Ken Tanaka]

Hello Jeff,
There are two flavors of DVD media; "general" and "authoring". The former is slightly crippled (by design) and has a lower capacity than the latter. Your Mac burns general DVD's. Theatrical releases are burned on "authoring" discs.

No problem whatsoever playing DVD-Gen's in any reasonably current player.

If you're planning on a mass duplication for wide distribution check with your dupe service. In general, none want a disc as a master. Older sevices might want a DAT of the disc. Word has it that some services are finding it most convenient to use a FireWire drive containing the disc's contents.

[John Kaye]

Hi Guys,
I'm a newbie so please bare with me :)

When I capture from the Cam to the computer, I realize that sometimes the audio is transfered at 48.01 rate (or 47.779) and sometimes to the normal speed of 48.00 I find myself breaking the same 40 min DVCam tape into two 20 min capture sessions, so just in case I get the audio discrepency, then I will end up redoing 20 min capture as oppose to 40 min.
My preferences are all set to 48 khz. the weird thing is I use the SAME tape/footage for capture and I get 48.01 (or 47.779) transfer and then I redo it and I get the right 48.0 transfer for the same footage!

1- what is going on?

2- Is there a feature to let me find out if the capturing is being done (in resl time) with the right speed (much like the feature:Abort Capture on Dropped Frames) without waiting 20 min for the capture to be done and then checking it?

Second problem:
3- I already had captured 3 tapes before realizing this problem. I broke the tapes into 20 min captures each, then I made sub clips of each capture. Now I realize SOME of the sub clips are in 47.779 (or 48.01) speed and some are in normal speed. I tried to highlight the "wrong speed" sub clips and do a Batch Capture but -for some reasn:)- it ended up capturing the ENTIRE 40 min tape. My time code is not broken up (I figured that since all I have are interviews and all the tapes' time code go from 0 to 40 min, so if it was interrupted it wouldn't be going to 00.40.00.00, would it?:)
So...any suggestions :)

BTW, did I make any sense? :)

[Jason Wood]

If it's too bad...you'll probably have to ditch the audio and loop it.

If it's really-really important...hire a pro.