NLE Mac / Final Cut questions from 2003

Jeff Donald · May 4th, 2003, 05:04 AM

The limit on sizes is around 138 MB, formatted and until recently there weren't any drives that size or larger. The release of 10.3 at the end of summer will offer direct support. Until then you will either need special drivers written by the drive mfg. or a separate drive controller card. The newer RAID cards are typical of the type of controller card need.

Jeff Dobisch · May 4th, 2003, 12:14 PM

No, what I meant was, what is it used for, like as in, when to use proc amp and when to use broadcast legalizer.

If a sequence looks "too bright", would you use proc amp or legalizer. If you use legalizer and it still looks too bright, would you use a number less than 100, or use proc amp?

How do you use the proc amp, for instance to lower brightness, or change black levels?

Ben Nicholson · May 4th, 2003, 05:27 PM

The transitions & filters in FCE are nice, but I've just bought & downloaded a new set from CGM:

http://www.cgm-online.com/eiperle/index_dve_e.html

These look pretty good to me, as a way of expanding FCE; I don't need the non-DV capabilities etc of FCP.

Does anybody here have any experiences/opinions about these plugins?

BTW, a page with demos & tutorials for the plugins can be found on the URL above.

Ken Tanaka · May 4th, 2003, 05:36 PM

Hello Ben,
We have several threads discussing these plug-ins.

Ben Nicholson · May 4th, 2003, 05:56 PM

Thanks Ken!

Chris Lucey · May 4th, 2003, 09:22 PM

I am about to get into the world of DV. Also i am planning on trying out a Mac based unit for editing. Can someone recommend a Mac unit, as well as a good amatuer congfiguration. Eventually i would like to get a Canon GL2 in the not so distant future. I was leaning towards the twin G4 units. Any good system requirments for my new system ?

Ken Tanaka · May 4th, 2003, 09:50 PM

Hello Chris,
See this recent thread. I think you'll find most answers to your questions in it.

Paul Mogg · May 5th, 2003, 09:30 PM

This seems too good to be true, so please correct me if I've made a basic error in some way, but I believe I've found a way to edit JVC_HD1 footage uncompressed in FCP without any quality loss and without any expensive HD hardware, just a lot of regular DV disk space. What I did was as follows:

1) Using a shareware utility for the Mac called mpgtx I decoded the HD1's .m2t (Transport stream) file to a regular .m2v MPeg2 file

2) using another utility called mpeg2decx I decoded the Mpeg2 file to uncompressed 1280*720 HD.

Suprisingly I found that you could load this up into an appropriately configured sequence in FCP and view (or edit) the footage frame by frame, but not play it back due to the huge data size.

3) again using mpeg2decx I made a DV format copy of the HD footage and then edited it in FCP in a DV sequence as normal.

4) after editing I made a copy of my DV sequence, then made it offline

5) I edited the settings of this sequence to be 1280*720 uncompressed, then reconnected my media, but this time to the HD footage, NOT the DV footage. Eh voila! all my cuts and transitions and color corrections are ready to be renderd to my HD footage, which I did.

You can then output the edited HD footage in any format you want. The great thing about this is that the HD footage has only been uncompressed the one time, so there should be no quality loss as you would expect with editing a TS stream file directly. It seems to me you could edit any uncompressed HD footage this way, am I wrong? On a short piece of footage it seemed to work just fine.

My only problem now seems to be how to get the HD uncompressed footage back to an MPEG2 file, without having to spend thousands on an HD MPEG2 software encoder, the Quicktime one only works for DV files, any ideas?

All the best

Paul

Rob Lohman · May 6th, 2003, 09:05 AM

It isn't exactly uncompressed since it comes from a compressed
source. If I understand you correctly you used mpgtx to extract
(demux) the VIDEO stream (.m2v) from the program/transport
stream (so no conversion there, right?). Then you exported it
to uncompressed (which format?).

Now all FUTURE modification to the file(s) will be without quality
loss indeed. At one point you will have to compress it again
though. If you doing simple editing that it doesn't look all that
interesting. But if you do a lot of image manipulation in
multiple layers/applications then it definitely might!

I don't know FCP but are you suggesting you can edit HD
footage now which you normally can't? That will probably
be very interesting to a lot of people!

Paul Mogg · May 6th, 2003, 11:23 AM

Yes I am suggesting that Rob, and as I said, it seems too good to be true, so I'm looking for someone to spot the big clunker I've made in the workflow and prove me wrong. But I actually did this yesterday on a very short piece of footage, and it seemed to work just fine.
To answer your question I decropressed to Quicktime uncompressed format, just choosing "None" under the Quicktime compression settings, it produced a 350mb or so file from the 10mb Mpeg one, so I assumed it is uncompressed!

Paul

Boyd Ostroff · May 6th, 2003, 12:28 PM

I see that Apple has just made some changes to the eMac line including faster CPU and lower prices. The base model is now an 800mhz G4 with a 17" flat screen CRT for $800. IMO this would be a great entry point for somebody (like a student) who wants to make an entry into the mac video world. True there isn't any internal expansion capability, but for a Mac, that's a new amount of bang for the buck. You can always add firewire drives for more storage. And Final Cut Pro should be perfectly happy on an 800mhz machine. I run it on a 733 G4 desktop and 667 PowerBook G4 without problems (of course faster is always better though ;-)

For $1,000 you can move up to a 1GHz model, or $1,300 for 1GHz with a DVD burner. Glad to see that Apple isn't ignoring the low end.

Jeff Donald · May 6th, 2003, 02:39 PM

The latest version of OS X is available for download via the System Preferences Software Update Panel. Here are tips on how to download the file and avoid install problems.

These are the enhancements:

Addresses an issue for Mac OS X 10.2.5 in which a kernel panic message may appear if certain USB hubs or devices are connected.
Improves printing compatibility for PostScript OpenType fonts.
Improves compatibility for Maya Auto Paint and Paint Effects features.
Addresses an issue for Mac OS X 10.2.5 in which English is the default language and Asian language scripts are not be available in the International preference pane, if a script's font is not available.
Improves compatibility for MacSoft Unreal Tournament 2003 on computers with GeForce 2MX and GeForce4MX graphic accelerator chipsets.
Address Book now supports the Sony Ericsson T610 phone.

The combo update is available here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=70174

Ken Tanaka · May 6th, 2003, 05:55 PM

Thanks for the heads-up, Jeff.

I think it's interesting that as Apple's popularity slowly increases, so do its OS updates. I used to bemoan Microsoft's never-ending, and highly disruptive (to a large organization), service patches. Apple seems to be facing the same music.

Jeff Donald · May 6th, 2003, 09:01 PM

From what I've been able to gather the USB hub problem has been a big issue for some users. Apple rushed this fix which is very nice of them to do and a little uncharacteristic. The delay between updates is usually longer.

In the old days this would have been a big issue. More than likely your computer would not have started and you would have spent countless hours tracking down the extension that was causing the conflict. No fun at all. Now days with OS X and it's UNIX underpinnings the system is very stable and runs. Some users may loose functionality of a device or two (usually legacy devices), but everything still works. Much nicer than the old days.

Gary Chavez · May 7th, 2003, 02:43 PM

beta deck will not record video from on a timeline im working on. will print to video fine, then the tape will record the audio but no video. same with edit to tape as with the "hot roll."

checked some other projects and they all worked fine so its not the machine and i get no timecode messages.

did i some how encode the video wrong?
lots of very fast 18-25 frame cuts with blank spaces in between, as opposed to black.

ahhh, is that the problem? not reading the blanks?

May 4th, 2003, 05:04 AM	#391
Jeff Donald Warden Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Clearwater, FL Posts: 8,287	The limit on sizes is around 138 MB, formatted and until recently there weren't any drives that size or larger. The release of 10.3 at the end of summer will offer direct support. Until then you will either need special drivers written by the drive mfg. or a separate drive controller card. The newer RAID cards are typical of the type of controller card need. __________________ Jeff Donald Carpe Diem Search DVinfo.net for quick answers \| Where to Buy? From the best in the business: DVinfo.net sponsors

May 4th, 2003, 05:27 PM	#393
Ben Nicholson New Boot Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: London, UK Posts: 15	CGM DVE Vol. 2+ plug-ins - what do you think? The transitions & filters in FCE are nice, but I've just bought & downloaded a new set from CGM: http://www.cgm-online.com/eiperle/index_dve_e.html These look pretty good to me, as a way of expanding FCE; I don't need the non-DV capabilities etc of FCP. Does anybody here have any experiences/opinions about these plugins? BTW, a page with demos & tutorials for the plugins can be found on the URL above.

May 4th, 2003, 05:36 PM	#394
Ken Tanaka Retired DV Info Net Almunus Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 6,943	Hello Ben, We have several threads discussing these plug-ins. __________________ Lady X Films: A lady with a boring wardrobe...and a global mission. Hey, you don't have enough stuff! Buy with confidence from our sponsors. Hand-picked as the best in the business...Really! See some of my work one frame at a time: www.KenTanaka.com

May 4th, 2003, 09:22 PM	#396
Chris Lucey New Boot Join Date: May 2003 Location: Calgary Posts: 20	Newbie to DV and Mac ? I am about to get into the world of DV. Also i am planning on trying out a Mac based unit for editing. Can someone recommend a Mac unit, as well as a good amatuer congfiguration. Eventually i would like to get a Canon GL2 in the not so distant future. I was leaning towards the twin G4 units. Any good system requirments for my new system ?

May 4th, 2003, 09:50 PM	#397
Ken Tanaka Retired DV Info Net Almunus Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 6,943	Hello Chris, See this recent thread. I think you'll find most answers to your questions in it. __________________ Lady X Films: A lady with a boring wardrobe...and a global mission. Hey, you don't have enough stuff! Buy with confidence from our sponsors. Hand-picked as the best in the business...Really! See some of my work one frame at a time: www.KenTanaka.com

May 4th, 2003, 12:14 PM	#392
Jeff Dobisch New Boot Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Covington, TN Posts: 9	No, what I meant was, what is it used for, like as in, when to use proc amp and when to use broadcast legalizer. If a sequence looks "too bright", would you use proc amp or legalizer. If you use legalizer and it still looks too bright, would you use a number less than 100, or use proc amp? How do you use the proc amp, for instance to lower brightness, or change black levels?

May 4th, 2003, 05:56 PM	#395
Ben Nicholson New Boot Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: London, UK Posts: 15	Thanks Ken!

May 5th, 2003, 09:30 PM	#398
Paul Mogg Major Player Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: San Francisco CA Posts: 386	Editing HD1 footage in FCP uncompressed This seems too good to be true, so please correct me if I've made a basic error in some way, but I believe I've found a way to edit JVC_HD1 footage uncompressed in FCP without any quality loss and without any expensive HD hardware, just a lot of regular DV disk space. What I did was as follows: 1) Using a shareware utility for the Mac called mpgtx I decoded the HD1's .m2t (Transport stream) file to a regular .m2v MPeg2 file 2) using another utility called mpeg2decx I decoded the Mpeg2 file to uncompressed 1280720 HD. Suprisingly I found that you could load this up into an appropriately configured sequence in FCP and view (or edit) the footage frame by frame, but not play it back due to the huge data size. 3) again using mpeg2decx I made a DV format copy of the HD footage and then edited it in FCP in a DV sequence as normal. 4) after editing I made a copy of my DV sequence, then made it offline 5) I edited the settings of this sequence to be 1280720 uncompressed, then reconnected my media, but this time to the HD footage, NOT the DV footage. Eh voila! all my cuts and transitions and color corrections are ready to be renderd to my HD footage, which I did. You can then output the edited HD footage in any format you want. The great thing about this is that the HD footage has only been uncompressed the one time, so there should be no quality loss as you would expect with editing a TS stream file directly. It seems to me you could edit any uncompressed HD footage this way, am I wrong? On a short piece of footage it seemed to work just fine. My only problem now seems to be how to get the HD uncompressed footage back to an MPEG2 file, without having to spend thousands on an HD MPEG2 software encoder, the Quicktime one only works for DV files, any ideas? All the best Paul __________________ Paul

May 6th, 2003, 09:05 AM	#399
Rob Lohman RED Code Chef Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Holland Posts: 12,514	It isn't exactly uncompressed since it comes from a compressed source. If I understand you correctly you used mpgtx to extract (demux) the VIDEO stream (.m2v) from the program/transport stream (so no conversion there, right?). Then you exported it to uncompressed (which format?). Now all FUTURE modification to the file(s) will be without quality loss indeed. At one point you will have to compress it again though. If you doing simple editing that it doesn't look all that interesting. But if you do a lot of image manipulation in multiple layers/applications then it definitely might! I don't know FCP but are you suggesting you can edit HD footage now which you normally can't? That will probably be very interesting to a lot of people! __________________ Rob Lohman, visuar@iname.com DV Info Wrangler & RED Code Chef Join the DV Challenge \| Lady X Search DVinfo.net for quick answers \| Buy from the best: DVinfo.net sponsors

May 6th, 2003, 11:23 AM	#400
Paul Mogg Major Player Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: San Francisco CA Posts: 386	Yes I am suggesting that Rob, and as I said, it seems too good to be true, so I'm looking for someone to spot the big clunker I've made in the workflow and prove me wrong. But I actually did this yesterday on a very short piece of footage, and it seemed to work just fine. To answer your question I decropressed to Quicktime uncompressed format, just choosing "None" under the Quicktime compression settings, it produced a 350mb or so file from the 10mb Mpeg one, so I assumed it is uncompressed! Paul __________________ Paul

May 6th, 2003, 12:28 PM	#401
Boyd Ostroff Wrangler Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Mays Landing, NJ Posts: 11,787	New eMacs I see that Apple has just made some changes to the eMac line including faster CPU and lower prices. The base model is now an 800mhz G4 with a 17" flat screen CRT for $800. IMO this would be a great entry point for somebody (like a student) who wants to make an entry into the mac video world. True there isn't any internal expansion capability, but for a Mac, that's a new amount of bang for the buck. You can always add firewire drives for more storage. And Final Cut Pro should be perfectly happy on an 800mhz machine. I run it on a 733 G4 desktop and 667 PowerBook G4 without problems (of course faster is always better though ;-) For $1,000 you can move up to a 1GHz model, or $1,300 for 1GHz with a DVD burner. Glad to see that Apple isn't ignoring the low end.

May 6th, 2003, 02:39 PM	#402
Jeff Donald Warden Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Clearwater, FL Posts: 8,287	OS X 10.2.6 Available Now The latest version of OS X is available for download via the System Preferences Software Update Panel. Here are tips on how to download the file and avoid install problems. These are the enhancements: Addresses an issue for Mac OS X 10.2.5 in which a kernel panic message may appear if certain USB hubs or devices are connected. Improves printing compatibility for PostScript OpenType fonts. Improves compatibility for Maya Auto Paint and Paint Effects features. Addresses an issue for Mac OS X 10.2.5 in which English is the default language and Asian language scripts are not be available in the International preference pane, if a script's font is not available. Improves compatibility for MacSoft Unreal Tournament 2003 on computers with GeForce 2MX and GeForce4MX graphic accelerator chipsets. Address Book now supports the Sony Ericsson T610 phone. The combo update is available here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=70174 __________________ Jeff Donald Carpe Diem Search DVinfo.net for quick answers \| Where to Buy? From the best in the business: DVinfo.net sponsors

May 6th, 2003, 05:55 PM	#403
Ken Tanaka Retired DV Info Net Almunus Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 6,943	Thanks for the heads-up, Jeff. I think it's interesting that as Apple's popularity slowly increases, so do its OS updates. I used to bemoan Microsoft's never-ending, and highly disruptive (to a large organization), service patches. Apple seems to be facing the same music. __________________ Lady X Films: A lady with a boring wardrobe...and a global mission. Hey, you don't have enough stuff! Buy with confidence from our sponsors. Hand-picked as the best in the business...Really! See some of my work one frame at a time: www.KenTanaka.com

May 6th, 2003, 09:01 PM	#404
Jeff Donald Warden Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Clearwater, FL Posts: 8,287	From what I've been able to gather the USB hub problem has been a big issue for some users. Apple rushed this fix which is very nice of them to do and a little uncharacteristic. The delay between updates is usually longer. In the old days this would have been a big issue. More than likely your computer would not have started and you would have spent countless hours tracking down the extension that was causing the conflict. No fun at all. Now days with OS X and it's UNIX underpinnings the system is very stable and runs. Some users may loose functionality of a device or two (usually legacy devices), but everything still works. Much nicer than the old days. __________________ Jeff Donald Carpe Diem Search DVinfo.net for quick answers \| Where to Buy? From the best in the business: DVinfo.net sponsors

May 7th, 2003, 02:43 PM	#405
Gary Chavez Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: San Antonio Posts: 355	cant get video to tape beta deck will not record video from on a timeline im working on. will print to video fine, then the tape will record the audio but no video. same with edit to tape as with the "hot roll." checked some other projects and they all worked fine so its not the machine and i get no timecode messages. did i some how encode the video wrong? lots of very fast 18-25 frame cuts with blank spaces in between, as opposed to black. ahhh, is that the problem? not reading the blanks?