NLE Mac / Final Cut questions from 2007

Michael Castaldo · November 14th, 2007, 09:28 AM

We are editing a project on FCP 4.5. When we start up it's fine but eventually starts to lag. It didn't start doing this until after we added RAM to the computer. We started a new project thinking the other one was corrupt but that didn't help. If we quit the program and re-launch, it is ok for a while but eventually starts to lag again. We are working on a Dual 2GHz powerPC G5 with 3.5GB RAM. The project is pretty simple, 13.3mb file size, SD, 16:9 timeline.

David Green · November 14th, 2007, 02:06 PM

Hi,

I'm working on a 23.98 film project in FCP. To make a long story short, I need to garbage matte 29.97 material on top of a portion of my 23.97 frame in order to hide a timecode window burn.

When I do this, however, I experience horizontal interlace jaggies from my 29.97 footage.

I've attached a photo of what I'm experiencing. You'll see a 23.97 frame with an identical 29.97 image masking the bottom half of each image.

Does anybody know the best way to blend 23.97 material with 29.97 material in the same frame?

My final output is a 29.97 NTSC DVD, and I'm working in FCP 6.

Many thanks for any suggestions!

- David

Dino Leone · November 14th, 2007, 06:48 PM

Hi all,
This is of interest to all who use FCS 2. Apple released a whole bunch of updates today.
Here's a nice overview:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles..._security.html

Notably, FCP includes a couple very nice fixes, and I noticed that the new DVD StudioPro now natively supports 24F HD formats! I've been waiting for this as this will allow us to burn HD-DVDs at 24F.
Regards,

Russell Banks · November 15th, 2007, 09:42 AM

i have a 4 camera setup that all feeds HD/SDI into a datavideo SE1000. I am then taking that one program out and sending it to my MacPro via Multibridge where it will be combined with the audio from the sound board. My question is I would like to capture one camera straight to hard drive for back up purposes or in case I miss a cut. I want everything to interface very nicely with my MacPro and was wondering how I would set this up?

Should I get an xserve with an hd/sdi card for ingest?
Can I just get some sort of hard drive that will capture straight from HD/SDI?

Anyone have any thoughts?

Jonathan Schwartz · November 15th, 2007, 11:29 AM

Just shot a wedding with an XH-A1 and HV20 but now I have a problem. I kept the HV20 in 60i while I changed the A1 to 30p. Now I can not use multicam in FCS2 to edit the footage. What is the easiest and quickest way to get these two clips to the same codec?

Jonathan Schwartz
CA Video Productions

Bryan Wilkat · November 15th, 2007, 06:19 PM

hey guys, quick, and probably stupid question:

is it possible to set my timeline and capturing settings to be 24fps with 2332 pulldown and then capture regular 60i video(29.95fps), thus converting it to 24fps? becuase i did it and it seems to play back in the viewer alright, the audio is in sync and everything..but i have a feeling that people dont do this for a reason...?

John Moon · November 16th, 2007, 10:48 AM

I came across a site a couple weeks ago that had some really cool grunge type effects both visual and audio. But....i forgot to save it and can't seem to locate it again. Any websites that have any cool retro, grunge type plugins or .mov files?
Thanks for the help.
John

Robert Ducon · November 20th, 2007, 04:04 AM

I've been previewing the project I've been editing on my good SD monitor - it's an HD project that I've been viewing via Composite and real-time down-scaling with my Decklink HD Extreme. So far, so good.

I can calibrate my monitor fine, and using the FCP supplied color bars, I can set it so the last PLUGE bar can be seen.. all per the manual.

So I then tried Component out - same system, same monitor, same FCP project - nothing changed - didn't even restart or close and open the FCP project.

All of a sudden the image is darker on the monitor. No matter what I do, I can't brighten the monitor enough to see the last PLUGE bar! Everthing is maxed out on the monitor. Even the override provided by the Decklink software can brighten everything - but not enough to reach the 'average' levels that the Composite cable was at.

So I can't even calibrate the monitor to meet the signal that the computer is outputting.

I swapped back to Composite - everything was as it was before.

I know the cables are great - it's not their fault. I know the monitor works fine - because, it does. What's going on with Component being darker?

I'd prefer the Component solution naturally - sharper!

Kevin Munn · November 20th, 2007, 09:13 AM

I'm using FCP 6 with the latest updates. Since I installed FCP 6, whenever I go to batch capture footage I get a warning that says "You are about to capture drop-frame footage from a non drop-frame source." It does this no matter what deck I capture from or what camera I shot the footage with (shooting mostly with a Z1U, FWIW). Thus far I've ignored the warning without any apparent problems, however, today during a relatively long capture I got a warning saying that it detected a switch from drop-frame to non drop-frame within the same tape, and it aborted the capture attempt automatically. It shouldn't have detected a switch b/c the footage was all shot with the same camera during the same shoot. I've searched the forums and elsewhere online without any luck so far. Any suggestions?

Roger Beck · November 20th, 2007, 01:49 PM

In Premiere Pro you can export to a PDF file called Clip Notes. The viewer looks at the footage in the PDF and enters their comments throughout the clip in a text box at the bottom and then closes it back up and returns it to the editor in the same PDF format. This is extremely handy but I have only seen it for Premiere Pro, do you know if there is something similiar for FCP?

thanks, roger

Stephen Marsh · November 22nd, 2007, 04:18 PM

Hi,
This is a fairly simple question, I just want to make sure I'm doing this right before I capture a bunch of footage...

So, I've got a lot of footage shot in 24pa and I want to edit it in FCP with the 24pa pulldown removal.

It's standard definition video, but it's shot on an XL2 (in the native widescreen). I obviously want to import it at full quality and resolution.

So...

My capture settings should obviously be set to remove the 24pa pulldown, etc, but what about the box that says "Anamorphic." Should I check that? When I do that it doesn't change the boxes for horizontal and vertical resolution (still says 480x720). In reality the picture is probably like 480x8__-something? I DO NOT WANT letterboxes. Should I put in a specific number?

So basically I'm asking if someone would be kind enough to tell me, in an idiot-proof way, the specific settings I need to use in FCP6 to capture the HIGHEST quality possible, non-letterboxed footage shot in 16:9 SD 24pa (with pulldown removed so it's true 24p) off an XL2.

Thank you very much,
-Stephen

Richard Siberry · November 23rd, 2007, 01:30 AM

I am currently cutting a trailer for a long term HDV documentary I am working on to screen for some of my investors.
I am editing the raw footage, mostly 1080p24 with some 1080i60 in FCP 6 on a Mac pro. As a preliminary trial I duped the trailer sequence and went File > Export > Quick Time Movie... The exported sequence plays fine on any Mac but not on any PC. I only have a PC laptop to bring to the screening. How do I get my trailer into a format that will play back on my PC laptop through an LCD projector?
The PC laptop has the latest version of QT loaded but it gives an error message saying that it needs more info to play the trailer, it doesn't specify what info it needs. The PC in question is running Win XP SP2.
Thanks for any help you can give.
Rich.

Katrina Spires · November 23rd, 2007, 01:16 PM

I've been working with After Effects 7, Final Cut Pro 5.1, and iDVD 4 (on a dual 1.8GHz PowerPC G5 running OS 10.4.11) for about six months now, and I've never had this problem happen before, so I'm not quite certain how to fix it.

I assembled a photo montage in AE; it includes elements like page curl and speech balloons that appear and disappear. I needed to add five pieces of music, so I used the Render Queue in AE to create a QuickTime movie (default "Best Settings," "Lossless"), which I pulled into FCP so I could edit five pieces of music under the montage.

When I imported the QT movie into FCP, it looked squished in the Canvas monitor until I turned off the "square pixels" option. I added the music and output the FCP file as a "reference" QT movie (unchecked "self-contained"), which is my normal output before burning in iDVD.

But when I import the movie into iDVD, the resulting image is slightly squished again (people tall and skinny). I've checked the image against other projects I've done; it looks like iDVD is trying to fit the entire image into the screen by making it non-proportional (which is why everything looks too tall and skinny). Normally, it just cuts off the left and right edges and keeps everything proportional -- but not this time.

I've never had this problem happen before, and I can't figure out where in the process the problem is occurring. The After Effects composition is set to 720x480, DV aspect ratio (0.9), and so is the FCP sequence. When I "get info" on the QT file I exported from FCP, the settings look exactly the same as previous files (720 x 480, DV/DVCPRO - NTSC).

I'm still experimenting to see if I can find a solution on my own, but I'd welcome suggestions, too.

Arturo Glass · November 23rd, 2007, 04:17 PM

I have FCP set up to capture using the Apple Intermediate Codec, device control using Sony HDV Firewire. However, Final Cut just seems to allow the "capture now" option rather than letting me log and selectively capture clips. Is there a way around this so as to edit "normally"?

I'm trying to edit in a 24p timeline, and to do that, capturing as mentioned above, doing reverse telecine with Cinema Tools to 23.98, then importing that into FCP.

Gary Williams · November 23rd, 2007, 09:37 PM

I would like to hear some opinions on burnning longer projects in HDV for example would it be better to get and external hard drive to put my longer projects on that I cant burn to a D-5 disc due to their size but instead transfur the finished project to an external drive and take it to a dup house and let them put it on a hd dvd disk for me.

November 14th, 2007, 09:28 AM	#286
Michael Castaldo Tourist Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Hastings, NY Posts: 3	FCP is lagging pretty bad We are editing a project on FCP 4.5. When we start up it's fine but eventually starts to lag. It didn't start doing this until after we added RAM to the computer. We started a new project thinking the other one was corrupt but that didn't help. If we quit the program and re-launch, it is ok for a while but eventually starts to lag again. We are working on a Dual 2GHz powerPC G5 with 3.5GB RAM. The project is pretty simple, 13.3mb file size, SD, 16:9 timeline.

November 14th, 2007, 06:48 PM	#288
Dino Leone Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Sunnyvale, CA Posts: 131	A load of FCS updates released today Hi all, This is of interest to all who use FCS 2. Apple released a whole bunch of updates today. Here's a nice overview: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles..._security.html Notably, FCP includes a couple very nice fixes, and I noticed that the new DVD StudioPro now natively supports 24F HD formats! I've been waiting for this as this will allow us to burn HD-DVDs at 24F. Regards,

November 15th, 2007, 09:42 AM	#289
Russell Banks Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Austin, TX Posts: 26	how to ingest all this? i have a 4 camera setup that all feeds HD/SDI into a datavideo SE1000. I am then taking that one program out and sending it to my MacPro via Multibridge where it will be combined with the audio from the sound board. My question is I would like to capture one camera straight to hard drive for back up purposes or in case I miss a cut. I want everything to interface very nicely with my MacPro and was wondering how I would set this up? Should I get an xserve with an hd/sdi card for ingest? Can I just get some sort of hard drive that will capture straight from HD/SDI? Anyone have any thoughts?

November 15th, 2007, 11:29 AM	#290
Jonathan Schwartz Major Player Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Ocean Springs, MS Posts: 211	Help With 30p And 60i Footage Just shot a wedding with an XH-A1 and HV20 but now I have a problem. I kept the HV20 in 60i while I changed the A1 to 30p. Now I can not use multicam in FCS2 to edit the footage. What is the easiest and quickest way to get these two clips to the same codec? Jonathan Schwartz CA Video Productions Last edited by Jonathan Schwartz; November 15th, 2007 at 03:51 PM.

November 15th, 2007, 06:19 PM	#291
Bryan Wilkat Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Montreal, Canada Posts: 171	question about 24fps timelines hey guys, quick, and probably stupid question: is it possible to set my timeline and capturing settings to be 24fps with 2332 pulldown and then capture regular 60i video(29.95fps), thus converting it to 24fps? becuase i did it and it seems to play back in the viewer alright, the audio is in sync and everything..but i have a feeling that people dont do this for a reason...?

November 16th, 2007, 10:48 AM	#292
John Moon Major Player Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Indianapolis, IN Posts: 446	Plugins / Effects I came across a site a couple weeks ago that had some really cool grunge type effects both visual and audio. But....i forgot to save it and can't seem to locate it again. Any websites that have any cool retro, grunge type plugins or .mov files? Thanks for the help. John __________________ John J. Moon www.northernlightfilmworks.com - Event DV Top 25 Recipient

November 20th, 2007, 04:04 AM	#293
Robert Ducon Major Player Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Victoria BC Posts: 400	Component Image Darker than Composite Image I've been previewing the project I've been editing on my good SD monitor - it's an HD project that I've been viewing via Composite and real-time down-scaling with my Decklink HD Extreme. So far, so good. I can calibrate my monitor fine, and using the FCP supplied color bars, I can set it so the last PLUGE bar can be seen.. all per the manual. So I then tried Component out - same system, same monitor, same FCP project - nothing changed - didn't even restart or close and open the FCP project. All of a sudden the image is darker on the monitor. No matter what I do, I can't brighten the monitor enough to see the last PLUGE bar! Everthing is maxed out on the monitor. Even the override provided by the Decklink software can brighten everything - but not enough to reach the 'average' levels that the Composite cable was at. So I can't even calibrate the monitor to meet the signal that the computer is outputting. I swapped back to Composite - everything was as it was before. I know the cables are great - it's not their fault. I know the monitor works fine - because, it does. What's going on with Component being darker? I'd prefer the Component solution naturally - sharper! __________________ Mac + Canon HV20

November 20th, 2007, 09:13 AM	#294
Kevin Munn New Boot Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Southington, CT Posts: 19	Capture Issues- drop-frame vs. non drop-frame I'm using FCP 6 with the latest updates. Since I installed FCP 6, whenever I go to batch capture footage I get a warning that says "You are about to capture drop-frame footage from a non drop-frame source." It does this no matter what deck I capture from or what camera I shot the footage with (shooting mostly with a Z1U, FWIW). Thus far I've ignored the warning without any apparent problems, however, today during a relatively long capture I got a warning saying that it detected a switch from drop-frame to non drop-frame within the same tape, and it aborted the capture attempt automatically. It shouldn't have detected a switch b/c the footage was all shot with the same camera during the same shoot. I've searched the forums and elsewhere online without any luck so far. Any suggestions?

November 20th, 2007, 01:49 PM	#295
Roger Beck Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 31	Clip Notes equivalent for FCP? In Premiere Pro you can export to a PDF file called Clip Notes. The viewer looks at the footage in the PDF and enters their comments throughout the clip in a text box at the bottom and then closes it back up and returns it to the editor in the same PDF format. This is extremely handy but I have only seen it for Premiere Pro, do you know if there is something similiar for FCP? thanks, roger

November 22nd, 2007, 04:18 PM	#296
Stephen Marsh Tourist Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Orlando, FL Posts: 3	Capturing SD 16:9 with 24pa Hi, This is a fairly simple question, I just want to make sure I'm doing this right before I capture a bunch of footage... So, I've got a lot of footage shot in 24pa and I want to edit it in FCP with the 24pa pulldown removal. It's standard definition video, but it's shot on an XL2 (in the native widescreen). I obviously want to import it at full quality and resolution. So... My capture settings should obviously be set to remove the 24pa pulldown, etc, but what about the box that says "Anamorphic." Should I check that? When I do that it doesn't change the boxes for horizontal and vertical resolution (still says 480x720). In reality the picture is probably like 480x8__-something? I DO NOT WANT letterboxes. Should I put in a specific number? So basically I'm asking if someone would be kind enough to tell me, in an idiot-proof way, the specific settings I need to use in FCP6 to capture the HIGHEST quality possible, non-letterboxed footage shot in 16:9 SD 24pa (with pulldown removed so it's true 24p) off an XL2. Thank you very much, -Stephen

November 23rd, 2007, 01:30 AM	#297
Richard Siberry Regular Crew Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: New York, NY Posts: 30	Outputting in FCP 6 I am currently cutting a trailer for a long term HDV documentary I am working on to screen for some of my investors. I am editing the raw footage, mostly 1080p24 with some 1080i60 in FCP 6 on a Mac pro. As a preliminary trial I duped the trailer sequence and went File > Export > Quick Time Movie... The exported sequence plays fine on any Mac but not on any PC. I only have a PC laptop to bring to the screening. How do I get my trailer into a format that will play back on my PC laptop through an LCD projector? The PC laptop has the latest version of QT loaded but it gives an error message saying that it needs more info to play the trailer, it doesn't specify what info it needs. The PC in question is running Win XP SP2. Thanks for any help you can give. Rich.

November 23rd, 2007, 01:16 PM	#298
Katrina Spires New Boot Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Asheboro, NC Posts: 16	AE to FCP to iDVD ... new problem I've been working with After Effects 7, Final Cut Pro 5.1, and iDVD 4 (on a dual 1.8GHz PowerPC G5 running OS 10.4.11) for about six months now, and I've never had this problem happen before, so I'm not quite certain how to fix it. I assembled a photo montage in AE; it includes elements like page curl and speech balloons that appear and disappear. I needed to add five pieces of music, so I used the Render Queue in AE to create a QuickTime movie (default "Best Settings," "Lossless"), which I pulled into FCP so I could edit five pieces of music under the montage. When I imported the QT movie into FCP, it looked squished in the Canvas monitor until I turned off the "square pixels" option. I added the music and output the FCP file as a "reference" QT movie (unchecked "self-contained"), which is my normal output before burning in iDVD. But when I import the movie into iDVD, the resulting image is slightly squished again (people tall and skinny). I've checked the image against other projects I've done; it looks like iDVD is trying to fit the entire image into the screen by making it non-proportional (which is why everything looks too tall and skinny). Normally, it just cuts off the left and right edges and keeps everything proportional -- but not this time. I've never had this problem happen before, and I can't figure out where in the process the problem is occurring. The After Effects composition is set to 720x480, DV aspect ratio (0.9), and so is the FCP sequence. When I "get info" on the QT file I exported from FCP, the settings look exactly the same as previous files (720 x 480, DV/DVCPRO - NTSC). I'm still experimenting to see if I can find a solution on my own, but I'd welcome suggestions, too.

November 23rd, 2007, 04:17 PM	#299
Arturo Glass Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 29	Editing V1U footage with FCP I have FCP set up to capture using the Apple Intermediate Codec, device control using Sony HDV Firewire. However, Final Cut just seems to allow the "capture now" option rather than letting me log and selectively capture clips. Is there a way around this so as to edit "normally"? I'm trying to edit in a 24p timeline, and to do that, capturing as mentioned above, doing reverse telecine with Cinema Tools to 23.98, then importing that into FCP.

November 23rd, 2007, 09:37 PM	#300
Gary Williams Major Player Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Rocklin, California Posts: 287	HDV 60 minutes or longer? I would like to hear some opinions on burnning longer projects in HDV for example would it be better to get and external hard drive to put my longer projects on that I cant burn to a D-5 disc due to their size but instead transfur the finished project to an external drive and take it to a dup house and let them put it on a hd dvd disk for me.