NLE Mac / Final Cut questions from 2006

[Luca F Lucarini]

i've got a project that i've edited in native HDV. i'm planning to send it to Magic Bullet at some point to de-interlace it. How should I prepare the file for magic bullet? I'm eventually going to convert the project to SD to be delivered on a mini-DV tape. Should I downconvert and then output a lossless file to MB? Or should I run MB first and then take that file into a DV sequence?

[Ed Mellnik]

I am looking to put together a raid array that will be good enough to work with uncompressed HD in FCP.

Wondered if anyone here has put something together that was not a turnkey expensive solution.

Looking at some raid cards capable of 8 esata drives and an enclosure for 8 drives.

ANy suggestions?

[David Scattergood]

I'm currently getting to grips with FCP for the first time (migrating from Prem Pro on the PC). So far so good - pretty quick learning curve (not that the manual is entirely helpful).
Working towards producing a short documentary project edited entirely on FCP (music created via Logic and Soundtrack) via a JVC HD100 cam and iMac 24", 2gb, 2.33ghz machine.
Aside from obviously making sure the footage is as pristine as I can achieve (same applies to the audio/soundtrack) I need the titles to be spot on also; I'll be using a fair bit of titles as the subject is a photographer and I'll be labelling each photo when shown in film. Further down the line I'd like to add subtitles to a short film I'll be making.
Unfortunately I don't have photoshop on the mac so I intend to use FCP's plug-in's and Live Type II which I'm hoping will do the trick.
Dropped a couple of titles into a short sequence and so far so good (nothing fancy at this stage...though 'fancy' can sometimes ruin work imo).
I then used the Boris plug in to add a title; slight issue in as much as what entered the sequence seems to have picked up fair amount of degredation i.e. blurred and almost 'pixellated'.
Any tips or ideas folks? I have tried the manual but it isn't so generous!
Many thanks.

[Hayes Roberts]

I am excited-I assembled my project(shot 720p on jvc hd100) in imovieHD, because I was travelling. I thought" oh well, I'll use this as a rough cut and do REAL editing when I get back in FCP " Well ladies and gentlemen, I'll have you know that I took me little imovieHD project, handed it off to DVD studioPro and after about two hours a disc popped out that I (with some hesitation and nervousness) loaded into my brand spankin' new Toshiba HD DVD player and squeeled with glee when the "reading disc" message reported "HDDVD". It played beautifully! I AM KING OF THE WORLD!
Now on to my question-- When importing asset in DVDstudio the file came in as QuickTime movie from i movieHD. Would there be a better way to edit/or import? I am glad i have a hd disc, but is there something I am missing? Can I get better quality? Is there a better way? Should I edit in FCP to begin with, or could I do this imovie thing for quick projects and still have as good results as with FCP? Thanks to the man/men bold enough to tackle this.

[Johan Forssblad]

Hi,
I'm trying to mix footage from a Canon XL H1 shot in HDV 25F (PAL)
with footage from a Canon XL2 shot in SD 16:9 25F (PAL).

I try to put them both in a 1080i50 or 1080p25 HDV timeline but have some troubles and may need some hints to operate as efficiently as possible in FCP 5.1.2.

A. Do I work correctly or is this more complicated and time consuming than required?
1. I make an HDV 1080i/50 sequence.
2. I put my XL2 SD clips there.
3. I select "Modify - Scale to sequence" to scale up the footage from 720x576 to 1440x1080 and then render. (Otherwise the footage will just occupy about 1/4 of the screen area.)
4. I select "File-Export-Using Compressor-HDV 1080i50 to change to a HDV file. I get a new .mov file.
5. Now I'm allowed to select both the native HDV and the new .mov and make "Multiclip" to edit with two different angles from the two cameras.
6. Was this as simple and fast as possible? How could I retain my induvidual clips instead of having one long sequence?

B. First I captured the HDV footage using the new 1080p25 capture. But then I couldn't select multiclip because FCP says it is impossible due to different codecs. The Compressor does not have a 1080p25 setting I need for for my SD material. Is there a workaround for this?

C. What difference is it to capture the 25F footage by selecting 1080p25 or 1080i50 for the 25F footage?

D. The idea is to obtain HDV material but output to DVD (SD) initially and save the HDV for the future. There is no demand in this case for more space consuming but better picture quality codecs.

Thankful for any hints from you with more knowledge out here! /Johan

[Martin Noboa]

Hi, I have finished editing a short movie in native hdv, pal, but before exporting I´d like to know if anybody has used the deinterlace filter in FCP...
It does a god job?
And what about the field dominance, if we select none it really does a 25 p?

thanks in advance
martin

[Steve Nunez]

Does anyone know if FCP might evetually support M2T file import in future versions or revisions?
I know infomation gets leaked around and was wondering if anyone knew anything about support for raw video streams like M2T? It seems future HD cams like JVC's HD/HDD cam might go this route and it makes sense for future cams to record their native HD as M2T- if FCP could support it, it would mean transcoding to current HD presets (HDV, DVCPro HD) would be unneccesary.

Any info?

[Dean Harrington]

I've got my MacBook Pro 2.33 coming in a couple of days and was wondering if anyone could suggest a reasonably priced drive enclosure kit that would throughput 3 gigs per second. I'll be using seagate 7200.10 drives via sata 2 expresscard 34 slot = both run 3 gigs but I have not found a kit that will transfer at the same rate. 1.5 gig throughput kits are the only ones I've found so far. Any suggestions?

[Dmitriy Uchakin]

Hi guys. Is there any way to natively edit AVIs with the "Apple OpenDML JPEG" codec on the FCP 5.1 timeline? I have tried setting the timeline to M-JPEG A, M-JPEG B, and JPEG 2000 but upon playback in the timeline, the Canvas window says Unrendered. Thank you in advance.

Sorry people I think I should of posted my topic here so here it is:

Originally Posted by Ben Jones

Hi everyone,

I'm very new to the post production game and I am not the most technical person in the world, so please be nice (i'm stupid).

I am buying the new lower spec Mac book Pro with the 128mb graphics card but i'm upgrading the ram to 2gb. Unfortunalty I need to be moblie and I need a mac. I will be doing some basic editing using Z1(HDV or lower) and some standard DV on any camera I get my hands on. My question is, after buying a External Hard drive and Monitor, is their anything else I need to edit on the lastest version of FCP?

I've been told I need to consider the firewire connections of the camera. What do I need to Know?

I have also been told that Mac Book Pro has only one Firewire port. How do I connect an external firewire hard drive and a camera to a Laptop?

I am capturng straight from the camera, is this a problem?

Sorry for the long post but your help would be very well received.

[Joe Moulins]

I'm trying to figure out a way to automate a process where a Volume containing HDV files is duplicated by a volume containing the same folder structure and file names, but with DV files.

The flow I'm looking for is something like this.

1 Record HDV files to a Firestore.
2 Drag folder From Firestore to HDV volume on Mac Pro.
3 Using Compressor (?) duplicate files as DV on a "mirrored" volume.

HDV files will be added to the HDV volume daily, and the DV volume should update to match it automatically.

Is there a utility available to do this automatically, or can anyone recommend a combination of Applescripts, smart folders and Compressor, etc??


Thanks,

jpm

[David Wesselman]

Well it happened. About 18 months ago I built a Final Cut Studio based editing suite with DV/HDV offline editing in mind ( with a small amount of online work ). Then we began getting busy.

Current Specs:
Decklink HD Pro PCIe
HDLink
30'' Cinema
23'' Cinema ( for preview )
Tannoy Studio Monitors for audio preview
All on a 2.3 ghz PowerPC w/4 gig of ram.
Promax - DV box 1tb raid (mirrored) FW800
Promax - DV box 250gig for tranfer between other studios.

What I would like to do.
Migrate the Decklink card over to a new dual 3.0gighz w/16gig of ram. Use the old machine for dubs/burning/aquisition. And dual mount the DVbox between both machines so I can work and burn at the same time. Am I thinking crazy thoughts or is this possible. Future purchases would be a fiber channel raid, but the Dvbox will have to work for now. The demand has changed for offline to online 10bit or higher.

Thoughts?
Dave

[Scott Shuster]

Is it correct to say that those of us who work in non-linear editing software other than Final Cut Pro do not experience any of the much discussed scene-break problems with the JVC HD-GY100UA?*

If so, can those of us who are waiting for Apple and JVC to solve this issue import (and export) using one of those other systems and then just drag the healthy video file over to FCP?

I’m sure it would not be difficult for any of us to find someone who uses one of those other, unaffected systems, who would be happy to help. But would it work? If so, that could be the easiest workaround imaginable, because once the footage is safely in FCP everything’s fine.

* See these threads:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?p=574474
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=77033

[Mark Ahrens]

I just finished a Sports video project for a client and wish to set up for a more efficient process next year. The client gave me an excel file with the time code in/out and clip descriptions -a great time saver but it did take hours to key in the logs.

I am looking for an excel template to give the client to input the info so i can import an EDL and save my time keying.

Is this possible?

Thanks for your help.

Mark

[Phil Gosselin]

Hi all,


I am not a FC user nor a Mac user. I just finished editing a video in Vegas and rendered the whole thing back to a m2t file.

My collaborator need this file. I've looked around and found that FC doesn't support that format.

Will idvd support it then?

Can I simply burn the m2t file to a dvd and he will drag and drop it in idvd?

Thanks

Phil