NLE Mac / Final Cut questions from 2007

[John Cash]

Hello all, the last few days I have seen something going on that really concerns me. I usually leave my machine on and FCP open all day while Im at work which puts the monitor in sleep mode. When activated it comes up with the entire disply at a blueish hue, and sometimes I get red lines all over for just split seconds as if it is unstable. I havent checked all the connections yet ( Like I do in my real job dealing with electronics) but has anyone ever had this problem? Seems after aboutr a minute everything settles down and the typical grey color returns to the Viewer,canvas and timeline.

Am I about to see a crash?

[Mark Shea]

Hi

I'm recapturing an old project. I started batch capturing the first tape, which was saved as three separate files. The (last) end of tape file (tape1c) cannot be captured as an error message comes up that the tape ends before capture complete. I checked the tape, it ends at 1.25.30. Yet the file on FCP says the tape ends at 1.25.33?

I tried naming a new file the same as the original end of tape file (tape1c), and capturing only to 1.25.30, but the project won't replace this new file with the old one.

I'm just wondering if anyone can suggest a workaround?

[Nate Ford]

So here's the situation:

I'm an FCP editor and I edit a couple of web-shows for a cable channel that feature a lot of talking heads shot against a greenscreen.

my department moved to a new studio recently and we scrapped out traditional green-screen setup and instead invested in the reflecmedia chromatte system. this thing seems really cool on paper and we liked the idea of being able to have one of their curtains in the studio and the portable flexible background for locations/etc.

it took our shooters a while to get the hang of it, but once they did they were able to give me stuff with a pretty nice keyable green backdrop. (they shoot on dvx's and one hvx, fwiw.) i found that with "mattenee," the software keying package sold by reflecmedia, i was able to get a nice key. (i never really got a good key with the built-in fcp greenscreen plug.) this was on a g5 running fcp5.1.

here's where the trouble starts: they recently upgraded my suite to a mac pro running fcp studio 2/final cut 6. now, when i apply the filter and uncheck the "automatic" box, which allows the manual tweaking of the white and black level, fcp crashes. every time. the plug-in works on "automatic", but its useless on automatic-i can't get a good key without tweaking those 2 parameters. our i.t. guys loaded fcp studio 2 on a g5 and an intel-based mac pro, and same thing. running the older fcp suite on the same machines, the plugin was ok.

meantime, reflecmedia isn't returning our IT guys' calls or emails (and without naming names, our channel is a pretty major one and we're accustomed to our calls being returned.) furthermore, the software package appears to have fallen off the face of the earth- there's no mention of it on their site, just the hardware based keying stuff, which they continue to manufacture.

so the reason for my post is twofold-
first, a warning- reflecmedia is a crappy company for support. based on our experiences, i would strongly discourage anyone from buying their products.

secondly, i need help. has anyone been able to get this plug-in to work on the system i described? have you had good luck with any other keying software? i hate to throw good money after bad, but it's not my money, and ultimately i just need something that works. given the reality of my workflow, the keying has to take place in final cut, not in after-effects, motion, or anywhere else. let me know what you've used and recommend.

[Joshua Aaron]

I've got some older videotapes that I'm importing into FCP6 and although they import just fine, the tracking is a bit screwy. On a VCR you've got tracking adjustment knobs and can do some things to clean it up. Is there anything like that for already imported footage in FCP6? Unfortunately, I imported a few hours of video footage and didn't realize the tracking was pretty off. Instead of going through and hoping that one adjustment will work for the entire videotape I was hoping to be able to correct this digitally.

[David Warren]

Hi, I'm a 2nd year film student and also a long-time premiere user.. havnt had any problems with it to speak of until i started editing HDV footage from my canon xh-a1.. premiere's lack of an intermediate codec is sort of the main problem.. but also im now going to be getting into ProTools and whatnot so I'm taking the plunge and looking to pick up a mac..
im on a bit of a budget with school and whatnot so im weighing out my options right now.. basically im wondering what will be able to run final cut studio 2 (mostly fcp6 really) while editing hdv footage.. im willing to stick with 5.1.4 for now if its going to cost more hardware wise.
anyway..
a macmini is obviously the cheapest option and it can be equiped with 2gb of ram which is recomended for fcp6.. but it says 'all intel integrated video is not supported' which is all the macmini AND macbook's use..
is this entirely true? am i SOL unless i spend $2k on a macbook pro or macpro?
i already have a good monitor/keyboard/mouse setup for my pc here that i could use so i dont really want an imac..

so my main criteria are:
-dont want to spend a ton of money
-want to be able to edit my 1440x1080 24f (!!!) hdv footage at a decent speed

aaaaaand.. thats about it.

anyway.. just looking for some suggestions here.
thanks
-dave

[Elmer Lang]

Archive.org (a wonderful site) sometimes has options for Cinepack, they are often large indicating pretty good quality, I think. Are they editable in FCP?
lmr

[Ryan Black]

Hey all, I 've got a couple hardware questions for those of you with mac pros.

1)I am gonna be buying a new mac pro when leopard comes out, and wanna setup my system to do multiple simultaneous video outputs. I am going to use a 30" monitor for the main screen, and would like to mirror the output (fullscreen) to a sony broadcast monitor and maybe a second 23" display in Motion3, FC6, and DVDSP4. I work primarily in timelines that use a 23.976 frame rate. Any ideas as to what additional cards I need to do this, ones that support 24p previewing?

2)Does anyone have experience with hardware vs. software raid in os x? The apple raid pci card is 1000 bucks, I am wondering if it really makes a difference in performance, and making the OS sluggish. Any opinions? I am thinking of doing a raid 5 (with system files and project files all on one volume) or raid 0 for project files plus a regular old drive for system files.

Any ideas or insight is appreciated!

[Robert Dombaj]

Hello,
I have created MPEG2 files of my project (.m2v extension) at a pretty high bit rate (I think it was 6.5). I'm a little disappointed at how flat everything looks. It almost looks like the software applied some kind of a "flatten picture" filter. Also, I created an intro in after effects, rendered it out uncompressed and imported into my FCP project. Even that doesn't have the contrast and saturation of the original...and some of the lines have major jaggies. Any idea what I did wrong?

I'm on FCP 5.1.4 and it's my first time encoding to MPEG2 from it.

Thanks,
RD

[Jeff Rhode]

HD2 footage into Final Cut needs rendering--Help ?
A member of our staff is using an HC2 and I am having a problem getting the audio into Final Cut Pro without needing to be rendered. It is MPEG4 48k 16bit AAC audio. I am using a 720 P30 codec because she shot HD with the camera, but all of the audio must be rendered once it hits the timeline.

Any thoughts on a setting that I can turn into and easy set up for her in Final Cut ?

Thanks !

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Recently I had to preview a movie on a TV and the output via firewire was grayed out. Took me a few frantic hours googling and to figure out the problem.

A month ago I upgraded my system from 10.3 to 10.4 and in the process it messed up quicktime, leaving this weird error.

So I thought I'd post the solution for anyone else who needs it.
1. Delete all quicktime system files with .pkg extension
2. Download the latest quicktime from apple.

[Kaku Ito]

Has anyone done anything with iSCSI storage solution for FCP?
Me and my associate is trying to build iSCSI solution using the chassis, the control card from Enahanced Technology and the initiator from ATTO.
We are going to be testing this storage system next week but I would like to share if anyone has any experiences with the similar system.

[James Brill]

I captured clips from a "mock" commercial I shot using 1080 60i on a Z1. I captured the whole tape using final cut set up for 1080 60i. With these clips on my external hard drive I am going to take them to my directors house tomorrow to edit on his computer. Since it is a commercial I want to downconvert it to SD via edge cropping since I framed most of the shots with edge cropping in mind. Should I load the clips into compressor and downconvert from there and open the new clips in final cut? I want to downconvert them before we start editing just so we know what the frame looks like, but we also want to do it without sacrificing image quality.

[Gustavo Godinho]

I have a 26 minutes 50i (cineframe 25) documentary that I need to finish for TV presentation (NTSC - SD).

What is the best way to use Nattress plug-in?

1- Should I first downconvert to PAL - SD and then convert to NTSC?
2- Should I convert to 50i to 60i and then downconvert?
3- What options should I mark to get the best motion result?

[Jason Coblentz]

I have a friend who is cutting some footage in vegas, and I am wanting to know if it is possible to export his cuts and import them into final cut to continue editing. I understand we both have to have the raw footage in our computers. I have looked at using the xml format but vegas doesn't seem to export in that format. Vegas exports aaf format, but I don't know if i could make it work in final cut. Any suggestions on how to get cuts from one NLE to another?

[Jimmy Conway]

I get a jittery footage after rendering my slow motion clips in HDV in FCP6 in the timeline. I need to turn in this movie in tomorrow as a DV quicktime file and DV tape. Any quick ways to fix this problem? Any help is appreciated. Thanks.