NLE Mac / Final Cut questions from 2002

Jeff Donald · October 23rd, 2002, 06:06 AM

Joe's right, it should work fine. My wife just got one and uses FCP and iMovie on it. The only problem is with FCP and the small screen space. It really helps to have a larger single monitor or dual monitors. The iMac only does mirroring with two monitors. So, consider the 17 inch screen if your using FCP.

Jeff

October 23rd, 2002, 06:36 AM

Thanks to all of you...

New question :
Can I expect editing a 30 minutes film with this set-up and the 17 inches screen ?

Best regards,

Alain

Jeff Donald · October 23rd, 2002, 06:40 AM

Depending on how much raw footage you'll use and other factors you may want an external FireWire drive at some point.

Jeff

Martin Munthe · October 24th, 2002, 04:02 AM

There is not one Mac in the Apple product line (PowerBook, iBook, iMac, G4 workstation) that is not up to FCP 3 specs. You could actually run FCP 3 on a 1999 model blue and white G3. You won't be able to use the RT effects but you sure can edit. The only thing a dual 1,25GHz brings to FCP is rendering speed. If you feel you can't afford waiting 6 seconds on the machine to render a dissolve but need the 3 seconds from the dual 1,25 you should spend the money.

John Kaye · October 24th, 2002, 05:21 PM

Henrik,
You made me laugh with your last comment, lol :) Well what caught my attention in your previous comment(s) was the fact that FCP has an "extensive" color correction. Hmmm, I started working on FCP two months ago. Now it is time to fix couple of scenes and I am finding it very hard to correct some bad lighting (I know it was MY fault, need to continue?:) Well, if I can only brighten up the subject and keep the background (white wall) from being overbright. Any suggestions? if you are in L.A. I would LOVE to show you the footage, if not, I can call you sine I have MCI (Yes, they are still operating, lol) and can call free all over the U.S.

P.S. Hey guys, please don't email me asking about MCI's newest feature, it is called: The neighborhood. Check with them :)

John Kaye · October 24th, 2002, 05:32 PM

I am almost done with my project and need to transfer it to DVD. I am using OSX. FCP 3.0 Any suggestions on what to use? iDVD? DVD Studio pro? Is one easier to use than the other? Do I need to know any special specifications in order to go from FCP to a DVD?

Man, do I dislike the technical side of this job. I wish I could make movies and let someone else deal with the technical side of it. Anyone knows if Steven Speilberg and his wife are looking to adopt a young vibrant filmmaker :)

Jeff Donald · October 24th, 2002, 08:57 PM

Boy this can be tough with all the various versions of Quicktime, FCP and DVD SP. The easiest way is to export from any version of FCP as a QuickTime file. Then in iDVD import the QuickTime and burn. You'll lose a little quality in iDVD but the simplicity and ease is the best.

If you are going after the highest quality I need to know what version of QT, FCP, DVD SP and if you are going to multiplex the MPEG 2 in DVD SP or a program like Cleaner and burn it in Toast? Also what Mac OS are you using. Some functions are broken in early version of DVD SP. If you have updated to QuickTime 6.0.2 already we've got problems. So post back and I'll tell you how to do it.

Jeff

Ken Tanaka · October 24th, 2002, 09:55 PM

As Jeff noted, several good roads lead to Rome. In reading your post, however, I keyed-in to one phrase: "Man, do I dislike the technical side of this job."

That said, here is what I would recommend (as a user of FCP3, DVD-SP and iDVD):
You'll need to use DVD Studio Pro if:
- Your project has many complex and/or interrelated components that must be programmatically connected on the disc (complex menus, commentary tracks, etc.). iDVD cannot provide such sophistication.
- Your project is longer than an hour. While you can encode up to 90 mins with iMovie you will not be able to maintain control of the resulting higher compression rate in iMovie.

DVD Studio Pro is an extremely powerful and reasonably easy dvd authoring system to use. But its power comes from the fact that it exposes nearly all aspects of the dvd authoring standards to its users. It -does not- encode your material to MPEG-2 format; you'll have to perform that manuever using the codec (supplied and installed automatically during DVD-SP installation) via your QuickTime Pro software. DVD-SP's menu construction capabilities are also limited mainly by your imagination -but- you'll probably need to use other tools (such as Photoshop) to build some of your menus' components.

If you can keep the length of your project to 60 mins. and the complexity of your menus low just use iDVD. It masks nearly all the complexity of dvd authoring, produces very good results for short projects and offers a fair amount of flexibility in menu appearance. It also performs the MPEG-2 encode directly from your FCP export. Plus it's just fun to use.

Henrik Bengtsson · October 25th, 2002, 12:27 AM

Heheh... im in Sweden (which is cold,wet and rainy right now :9 So i'd actually rather be in LA (well certain areas of LA might be off for me :).

What i use in FCP is the combination of the 3-way colourcorrector and the toolbox (ie. the waveform monitors). With the graphical interface to the colourcorrector and keeping track on how they different controls affect the different monitors you have a very good control that you usually don't have in digital systems. I remember that on the Softimage|DS system i used to work on we actually put in a separate Analogue waveform monitor to check the outgoing image. A bit cumbersome and dumb way to do it in a $150000 system imho.

Actually, what you could do is send me a few secs of a footage that you need to tweak and what effect you are looking for and i could have a look at it. Just mail me at henrik@docuwild.com and i'll set it up.

/Henrik

Thomas Berg Petersen · October 25th, 2002, 02:07 PM

I just finished shooting a documentary on my XL1S PAL. Now, it's time to edit it and I have to buy a new computer.

I have decided to buy the new G4 1.25 DP using FCP3, adding more RAM than the preset 512 MB RAM and an extra hard drive.

My question is now where to buy it and the configuration.

I have checked out the Apple Online store, and saw that they had some great offers: additional 512 Mbit RAM for only 40$. And 400$ mail in rebate when you buy a new G4 and a Studio display. But I guess any Apple dealer can offer this?

As I live in New York City, I would like to see if I can avoid the sales tax, at the same time I don't mind paying a little extra for the components to make sure they are installed correctly. (Is this an oxymoron?).

Do you have any recommendations?

One of the reasons I want to add an extra hard drive is so I can keep my video stuff separate from the programs and other stuff (wordprocessing etc.). But maybe that can be done by just splitting up one of the hard drives.

Does any of you use your computer for other things that editing like word processing, internet, etc? If so, how do you configure it in order to avoid the Mac becomes unstable or "corrupted"?

One of my friends has the FCP3 education version which she wants to sell to me. Is that legal?

I look forward to hearing from you.
Thomas

Vic Owen · October 25th, 2002, 02:56 PM

Time to resurrect this thread. After dealing with more pressing issues during the summer, I gave up on this effort for awhile.

Recently, I finally decided to take it on again, and started from scratch. All the usual fixes were tried, i.e., moving the offending Unix file on the MAC, formatting the drive with the Firestore after the Ver 2 upgrade, screaming, etc. Nothing would get my G4 1G-DP to recognize the FW drive with OS10.1.5. (I'm still too chicken to try FCP3 with Jaguar!)

In desperation, I formatted the FW drive on my daughter's Sony VAIO as a FAT32 volume. After reconnecting it to the MAC, it now reads it just fine.

Apparently, the MAC didn't like the way the Cooldrive was formatted, even though it came as a FAT32 volume.

All is well, now, in my attempt at a tapeless world. I hope this might help anyone else that has had similar problems.

Many thanks to Matt McEwen and Chris for their help!

John Kaye · October 25th, 2002, 05:31 PM

Hi Jeff,
I am using QT 5.0.2
FCP 3.0
& OsX
now what is DVD SP? Is it a software that I absolutely need in order to transfer my movie to DVD?
Hi Ken,
I was told that idvd has lower quality image than DVD Studio Pro.
I want to transfer my movie so I can submit it to festivals and have it projected (if it gets in) on DVD in the best qualitry I can get it in.
My documentary is 56 min long.

Thanks in advance for your replies :)

Jeff Donald · October 25th, 2002, 05:33 PM

I would buy it from the Apple Store in SoHo. It is there Flagship retail store. The Apple online store might save you sales tax, but I believe you'll pay shipping. to the best of my knowledge the double ram offer is online sales only. The monitor rebates are at any Apple dealer. Again, I could be wrong on some of that. Just call the store and ask http://www.apple.com/retail/soho/ I would recommend a Firewire drive or another internal IDE/ATA drive. Use the Search function above and search partition, you'll find several posts about partitioning drives.

That's a great choice for editing. You can use it for more than editing. Just keep your media on the second drive with nothing else. No MP3's, no documents, nothing but FCP media.

Your friend can not sell an Academic version to anyone but another student. The license can be upgrade to a full version by paying the difference ($700). contact Apple Care for details.

Jeff

Ken Tanaka · October 25th, 2002, 11:02 PM

DVD Studio Pro does not control image quality; that's a function of how you independently compress your content. As I noted, iDVD is designed for simplicity and holds its built-in compression for a certain data transfer rate (which escapes me at the moment).

Henrik Bengtsson · October 26th, 2002, 02:31 AM

Also, its worth to note that you need to do ALL the menu work in DVD Studio Pro.. wheras in iDVD you can whip together a nice looking presentation using templates. And you can quite easily do your own templates.

BUT, if you want to create the next blockbuster DVD with animated menues, interaction, weblinks and so forth, you should definately go with DVD Studio Pro.

Just wanted to point out that DVD SP is not for the easily scared of technical stuff because you don't get more technical than that :)

/Henrik

October 23rd, 2002, 06:36 AM	#977
Guest Posts: n/a	Thanks Thanks to all of you... New question : Can I expect editing a 30 minutes film with this set-up and the 17 inches screen ? Best regards, Alain

October 24th, 2002, 04:02 AM	#979
Martin Munthe Major Player Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Stockholm, Sweden Posts: 331	There is not one Mac in the Apple product line (PowerBook, iBook, iMac, G4 workstation) that is not up to FCP 3 specs. You could actually run FCP 3 on a 1999 model blue and white G3. You won't be able to use the RT effects but you sure can edit. The only thing a dual 1,25GHz brings to FCP is rendering speed. If you feel you can't afford waiting 6 seconds on the machine to render a dissolve but need the 3 seconds from the dual 1,25 you should spend the money. __________________ Martin Munthe VFX Supervisor/DP/Director

October 24th, 2002, 05:32 PM	#981
John Kaye Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: L.A. Posts: 57	Final Project to DVD I am almost done with my project and need to transfer it to DVD. I am using OSX. FCP 3.0 Any suggestions on what to use? iDVD? DVD Studio pro? Is one easier to use than the other? Do I need to know any special specifications in order to go from FCP to a DVD? Man, do I dislike the technical side of this job. I wish I could make movies and let someone else deal with the technical side of it. Anyone knows if Steven Speilberg and his wife are looking to adopt a young vibrant filmmaker :)

October 24th, 2002, 09:55 PM	#983
Ken Tanaka Retired DV Info Net Almunus Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 6,943	As Jeff noted, several good roads lead to Rome. In reading your post, however, I keyed-in to one phrase: "Man, do I dislike the technical side of this job." That said, here is what I would recommend (as a user of FCP3, DVD-SP and iDVD): You'll need to use DVD Studio Pro if: - Your project has many complex and/or interrelated components that must be programmatically connected on the disc (complex menus, commentary tracks, etc.). iDVD cannot provide such sophistication. - Your project is longer than an hour. While you can encode up to 90 mins with iMovie you will not be able to maintain control of the resulting higher compression rate in iMovie. DVD Studio Pro is an extremely powerful and reasonably easy dvd authoring system to use. But its power comes from the fact that it exposes nearly all aspects of the dvd authoring standards to its users. It -does not- encode your material to MPEG-2 format; you'll have to perform that manuever using the codec (supplied and installed automatically during DVD-SP installation) via your QuickTime Pro software. DVD-SP's menu construction capabilities are also limited mainly by your imagination -but- you'll probably need to use other tools (such as Photoshop) to build some of your menus' components. If you can keep the length of your project to 60 mins. and the complexity of your menus low just use iDVD. It masks nearly all the complexity of dvd authoring, produces very good results for short projects and offers a fair amount of flexibility in menu appearance. It also performs the MPEG-2 encode directly from your FCP export. Plus it's just fun to use. __________________ 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

October 25th, 2002, 02:07 PM	#985
Thomas Berg Petersen Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: NYC, NY Posts: 111	Buying a new G4 - but where? I just finished shooting a documentary on my XL1S PAL. Now, it's time to edit it and I have to buy a new computer. I have decided to buy the new G4 1.25 DP using FCP3, adding more RAM than the preset 512 MB RAM and an extra hard drive. My question is now where to buy it and the configuration. I have checked out the Apple Online store, and saw that they had some great offers: additional 512 Mbit RAM for only 40$. And 400$ mail in rebate when you buy a new G4 and a Studio display. But I guess any Apple dealer can offer this? As I live in New York City, I would like to see if I can avoid the sales tax, at the same time I don't mind paying a little extra for the components to make sure they are installed correctly. (Is this an oxymoron?). Do you have any recommendations? One of the reasons I want to add an extra hard drive is so I can keep my video stuff separate from the programs and other stuff (wordprocessing etc.). But maybe that can be done by just splitting up one of the hard drives. Does any of you use your computer for other things that editing like word processing, internet, etc? If so, how do you configure it in order to avoid the Mac becomes unstable or "corrupted"? One of my friends has the FCP3 education version which she wants to sell to me. Is that legal? I look forward to hearing from you. Thomas __________________ Thomas

October 23rd, 2002, 06:06 AM	#976
Jeff Donald Warden Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Clearwater, FL Posts: 8,287	Joe's right, it should work fine. My wife just got one and uses FCP and iMovie on it. The only problem is with FCP and the small screen space. It really helps to have a larger single monitor or dual monitors. The iMac only does mirroring with two monitors. So, consider the 17 inch screen if your using FCP. Jeff

October 23rd, 2002, 06:40 AM	#978
Jeff Donald Warden Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Clearwater, FL Posts: 8,287	Depending on how much raw footage you'll use and other factors you may want an external FireWire drive at some point. Jeff

October 24th, 2002, 05:21 PM	#980
John Kaye Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: L.A. Posts: 57	Henrik, You made me laugh with your last comment, lol :) Well what caught my attention in your previous comment(s) was the fact that FCP has an "extensive" color correction. Hmmm, I started working on FCP two months ago. Now it is time to fix couple of scenes and I am finding it very hard to correct some bad lighting (I know it was MY fault, need to continue?:) Well, if I can only brighten up the subject and keep the background (white wall) from being overbright. Any suggestions? if you are in L.A. I would LOVE to show you the footage, if not, I can call you sine I have MCI (Yes, they are still operating, lol) and can call free all over the U.S. P.S. Hey guys, please don't email me asking about MCI's newest feature, it is called: The neighborhood. Check with them :)

October 24th, 2002, 08:57 PM	#982
Jeff Donald Warden Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Clearwater, FL Posts: 8,287	Boy this can be tough with all the various versions of Quicktime, FCP and DVD SP. The easiest way is to export from any version of FCP as a QuickTime file. Then in iDVD import the QuickTime and burn. You'll lose a little quality in iDVD but the simplicity and ease is the best. If you are going after the highest quality I need to know what version of QT, FCP, DVD SP and if you are going to multiplex the MPEG 2 in DVD SP or a program like Cleaner and burn it in Toast? Also what Mac OS are you using. Some functions are broken in early version of DVD SP. If you have updated to QuickTime 6.0.2 already we've got problems. So post back and I'll tell you how to do it. Jeff

October 25th, 2002, 12:27 AM	#984
Henrik Bengtsson Regular Crew Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Borås, Sweden Posts: 167	Heheh... im in Sweden (which is cold,wet and rainy right now :9 So i'd actually rather be in LA (well certain areas of LA might be off for me :). What i use in FCP is the combination of the 3-way colourcorrector and the toolbox (ie. the waveform monitors). With the graphical interface to the colourcorrector and keeping track on how they different controls affect the different monitors you have a very good control that you usually don't have in digital systems. I remember that on the Softimage\|DS system i used to work on we actually put in a separate Analogue waveform monitor to check the outgoing image. A bit cumbersome and dumb way to do it in a $150000 system imho. Actually, what you could do is send me a few secs of a footage that you need to tweak and what effect you are looking for and i could have a look at it. Just mail me at henrik@docuwild.com and i'll set it up. /Henrik

October 25th, 2002, 02:56 PM	#986
Vic Owen Major Player Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Seattle, WA Posts: 540	Time to resurrect this thread. After dealing with more pressing issues during the summer, I gave up on this effort for awhile. Recently, I finally decided to take it on again, and started from scratch. All the usual fixes were tried, i.e., moving the offending Unix file on the MAC, formatting the drive with the Firestore after the Ver 2 upgrade, screaming, etc. Nothing would get my G4 1G-DP to recognize the FW drive with OS10.1.5. (I'm still too chicken to try FCP3 with Jaguar!) In desperation, I formatted the FW drive on my daughter's Sony VAIO as a FAT32 volume. After reconnecting it to the MAC, it now reads it just fine. Apparently, the MAC didn't like the way the Cooldrive was formatted, even though it came as a FAT32 volume. All is well, now, in my attempt at a tapeless world. I hope this might help anyone else that has had similar problems. Many thanks to Matt McEwen and Chris for their help! __________________ -- Vic Owen --

October 25th, 2002, 05:31 PM	#987
John Kaye Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: L.A. Posts: 57	Hi Jeff, I am using QT 5.0.2 FCP 3.0 & OsX now what is DVD SP? Is it a software that I absolutely need in order to transfer my movie to DVD? Hi Ken, I was told that idvd has lower quality image than DVD Studio Pro. I want to transfer my movie so I can submit it to festivals and have it projected (if it gets in) on DVD in the best qualitry I can get it in. My documentary is 56 min long. Thanks in advance for your replies :)

October 25th, 2002, 05:33 PM	#988
Jeff Donald Warden Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Clearwater, FL Posts: 8,287	I would buy it from the Apple Store in SoHo. It is there Flagship retail store. The Apple online store might save you sales tax, but I believe you'll pay shipping. to the best of my knowledge the double ram offer is online sales only. The monitor rebates are at any Apple dealer. Again, I could be wrong on some of that. Just call the store and ask http://www.apple.com/retail/soho/ I would recommend a Firewire drive or another internal IDE/ATA drive. Use the Search function above and search partition, you'll find several posts about partitioning drives. That's a great choice for editing. You can use it for more than editing. Just keep your media on the second drive with nothing else. No MP3's, no documents, nothing but FCP media. Your friend can not sell an Academic version to anyone but another student. The license can be upgrade to a full version by paying the difference ($700). contact Apple Care for details. Jeff

October 25th, 2002, 11:02 PM	#989
Ken Tanaka Retired DV Info Net Almunus Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 6,943	DVD Studio Pro does not control image quality; that's a function of how you independently compress your content. As I noted, iDVD is designed for simplicity and holds its built-in compression for a certain data transfer rate (which escapes me at the moment). __________________ 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

October 26th, 2002, 02:31 AM	#990
Henrik Bengtsson Regular Crew Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Borås, Sweden Posts: 167	Also, its worth to note that you need to do ALL the menu work in DVD Studio Pro.. wheras in iDVD you can whip together a nice looking presentation using templates. And you can quite easily do your own templates. BUT, if you want to create the next blockbuster DVD with animated menues, interaction, weblinks and so forth, you should definately go with DVD Studio Pro. Just wanted to point out that DVD SP is not for the easily scared of technical stuff because you don't get more technical than that :) /Henrik

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