Synchronising with live performance in FCP
 

I'm working on a film project in FCP (4.5) which will involve playback with a live pianist in its final form. He/she will have a laptop propped on the piano as a visual monitor. In order to help the pianist synchronise with the edits I'd like to have a visible countdown on certain clips (which would appear on the laptop only). I've looked at the countdown function in Print to Tape but not sure this is the answer.

Bit tricky and complex I know but any thoughts about a solution would be welcome!

Geoff

Just put synch marks on a text layer. Quite simple really.

Thanks Liam - sounds like a good idea. Excuse the ignorance but could you point me in the right direction for doing this (a section in the on-line manual?) as I've done very little with text in FCP. I assume this would also be embedded in the image which would create a problem as the projected version for the audience would see it too?

Your problem is that you really want to have is two different versions of the project running in locked sync with each other. One with visual cues for the pianist and the other for the audience.

This is not the easiest thing to do without the right equipment. If you have a sizable budget you can do this but a laptop isn't it. You can use the laptop if absolute sync isn't needed. You can have the projected version on DVD and start both versions by hand within a second of each other.

Here is a question. Does your edited project have an audio track that goes with the live music? If not, you can have the cue points in the audio track and the pianist gets a set of small headphones to hear the cues. The audience only hears the live music.

Thanks for your thoughts William which are very pertinent. You're right that two synched versions are probably needed. I do have a reasonable budget and access to some equipment so was hoping I could somehow trigger a DVD or suchlike from the laptop (Macbook Pro) which would be started by the pianist for greatest flexibility so if you have thoughts about how this could be done I'd be grateful even if it needed quite expensive solutions (I did wonder if Jitter might be useful if you know it which I have access to). Manual synching is not really feasible as some of the timings are quite tight and yes, the film does have an audio track also so using audio cues would be problematic coupled with the fact I want to avoid overloading the pianist with too much info.

Contact a local A/V presentation company that specializes in multiple monitors. They will have the equipment you need to rent for the occasion and technicians for hire.

If you rather do it yourself, you'll have to get a specialized VJ/presentation program like Module8 (Modul8 VJ software) which can run multiple video streams from a Mac Pro (sorry, no laptops or iMacs). I've never worked with these programs so good luck.