Also Final Cut Pro HD is available now as a download for FCP 4.0 users here:

http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/download/

or use your software update thingy : )

SD YUV over firewire>?

Panasonic and Apple Collaborate to Bring HD Over FireWire to the Desktop and Mobile Editing

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/apr/18panasonic.html

video was shot on a TRV900 which I never had any problems in the past before. This is the ONLY tape that I've had audio sync problems with. Audio is shot in 16bit mode and I don't believe there are any timecode breaks in the tape but I could be wrong. I do have other tapes that I've captured that have had timecode breaks and all have captured fine in FCE2 so I'm not sure what the problem is. I have turned off the "warn if dropped frames" occurs and when I do leave it on with this particular tape, it shows up and stops capturing so I believe it is dropping some frames.

<<<-- Originally posted by Paul Chun : I just captured my 5th tape from a series of tapes that I am editing and pulled some of the video into the timeline in Final Cut Express 2. The audio is out of sync with the video. The other tapes are fine and I've tried to recapture this one tape several times but it is always out of sync. Anyone know why this is? I'm assuming that I'm dropping frames as is it being captured. Any reason for this? Is it my computer or my camera/tape? -->>>

Just out of curiosity...

Could you try capturing this particular tape with iMovie and then importing it into Final Cut?

I am editing a short film and have decided to make it black and white instead of color. It's all edited in FCP 3 and ready to go. What's the easiest way to make all the video black and white? I was looking for an effect but can't find one. Thank You.

You'll need to use one of the color correction tools to desaturate all of the sequences.

I am currently editing a project in FCP3, and I am going to edit a new project in a few weeks and the directors wants me to edit in FCP4 (which I would love to as I have heard many great things about FCP4).

I read that it is not a good idea to convert FCP3 projects (and media) to FCP4 projects, so I was wondering if I bought the FCP4 upgrade, would it be possible to run both FCP3 and FCP4 on the same Mac? Obviously not at the same time, but it would be cool if I could continue with my current project in FCP3, and switch to FCP4 for this new project?

after capturing and editing i cant seem to record my final movie back onto my xl. using after effects and FCP4. is there some setting im missing to be able to do this. i thought that i could just go back onto my camcorder from firewire.

anyone care to clue me in on the necessary steps?

thanks a million.

J.

from FCP open your sequence and select File, Print to video (or similar wording) have your camera connected and in VCR mode, use your Cameras remote to record, un-pause. I don't beleive you can do this from AE, you would have to render the footage from AE to your HDD and import it into FCP and back to your cam from there. Does this make sense?

yeah thats exactly what i was doing. its been so long since ive had to get anything back off my computer that in the newest version i wasnt sure if there was some other preferences or something that had to be set or something.

hmm. ill give it a try again. hopefully itll work this time. im sure i just missed something.

thanks for the input.

i had both installed no problem when i first got FCP 4. i later converted all my projects with no ill-effects tho.

I was recently fortunate enough to con my father into co-signing a loan for a G5 (1 gig ram, 160gig, ati radeon 9600 pro). The world may mock my camera, but they will tremble at my dual 1.8's. At any rate, my budget is now in dire straits and my query is this;

what is the best move I can make as far as audio is concerned: should I get a better mic for my camera (which sports a mini input) or should I invest in some attachments for my computer and work on audio in post. (ALSO TO CONSIDER: I could sell this hp pavillion labtop i'm on right now for more cash to work with, but i fear losing my last bit of PC might kill me)

I know this is highly subjective, but I thought you all might like a change of pace and i also thought it might prevent another disaster... like my panny dvc7...

You could export a finished cut and desaturate the whole movie at once. If you really have a final cut and don't have to do anymore editing, it may be less of a pain to do it that way.

Getting good sound in the first place is many times easier than trying to fix things in post. The best thing you can do to get better sound is to get the mic as close as possible. The two most common ways to do that is with a lav or with a boom-mounted mic. For other situations a podium mic or handheld will get the microphone closer.

The second thing you can do is to get a more directional microphone... but that doesn't help too much. If you're going to mount the mic on the camera (which is always the furthest away from the sound source...) then you might as well get the most directional microphone you can get (ignoring parabolic mics, because they don't sound good). The Sennheiser MKE300 is one of the shotgun mics you can get that has a miniplug input.

What gear you should get depends on what you're shooting and whether or not you can get somebody to be the boom op.

2- I would've done things the other way around... spend a lot of recording gear and less on the computer. Recording gear (video/sound) doesn't become obsolete as fast and determines final output quality a lot more than your computer does.

You can nest your entire movie and desaturate the whole thing.

2- If you want to be fancy you could put a curves filter upstream of the desaturation filter so you can adjust which combinations of red green and blue go into the final image.

I don't remember if FCP has a curves filter.

Perhaps there are several threads on this here, but I wonder if there is a simple way to NLE on FCP from video originally shot in a Sony Cinealta. That is proceeding as you do when you shoot in film and do NLE on FCP or similar.

How do you do it? What do you need?


Carlos

It has a curves filter, but it is not an actual curve-based interface. Rather, it is a series of sliders, which is much more clunky (IMO).

I tried capturing this tape on a new eMac and it captured fine w/out dropping frames. So I'm assuming my G4 is giving out and I need that dual 2ghz G5 soon!

Looking for some nice animated Lower Third Title backgrounds.
Right now I really need somthing sports oriented for basketball,
but would like to have a few generic ones for future use.

Appreciate any leads. Thanks
FCP

Hello Ted,
You might some good stuff at Digital Juice (http://www.digitaljuice.com/)

Ted,

Intelligent Assistance (http://www.intelligentassistance.com/) offers a great tutorial/help tool for LiveType, and included with it are some nice templates for lower thirds.

I second Glenn's opinion. There is only so much you can do in post that will really help.



mg

Dang it, I'm still using FCP 3. That IA Tutorial sounds like the way to go, considering the cost of "store bought" lower thirds.
I see it has info about Calligraphy, but I wonder if it has enough for FCP3 to make it worth buying.

Just wanted to find out if anyone has some good ideas on Training . What book or DVD set would you recommend?

Thanks

Chris.

Hi. I am getting ready to convince one of my workplaces to buy a G5. The workload will be light with little rendering so any of the three available models should do fine. However I wonder which of the three makes for the best investment in terms of money/performance ratio. Can anyone advise on this issue? Perhaps somebody here has benchmarked the three machines, i.e. rendered a complex FCP project on all three and compared the render times, or perhaps there is a benchmark site you can recommend. Any comments? Thank You.

Ted,

The IA tutorial I have is for LiveType. It really doesn't mention FCP much at all, and when it does, it seems to be universal stuff that you'd find in any version of FCP.

Basically, it gives you some nice templates to use IN LIVETYPE to export out as Quicktime movies. Then, you import those movies into the FCP timeline. It shows you how to alter the templates in a multitude of ways so that they take on a whole different look and style. And finally, it shows you how to make your own using graphics and existing objects and textures and animations in LiveType.

So really...FCP has nothing to do with it. It's all about LiveType...and it's well worth the money.

http://www.barefeats.com/fcp4.html
Barefeats has benchmarks. The best price/performance ones IMO are the dual processor G4s (1.25ghz and 1.42ghz) and the dual processor 1.8ghz G5.

You can buy a refurbished mac off places like smalldog.com, which is just as good as new (might even be better) but at a lower price.

I am in FCE. I open a clip in it the timeline. With the playhead stationary the iamge in the canvas window remains sharp, but when I go to play mode the clip in the canvas window seems to shift ever so slightly and go noticeably softer. As soon as I hit stop, the image sharpens again. Also when I scrub through the canvas (timeline image) the shaprness is not affected.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Grant

I don't know about FCE, but in FCP you can control the render quality for the canvas window. Try setting it higher if possible, although that might affect performance on your computer. But the important thing is how it looks on an NTSC monitor driven by firewire. The canvas window is only preview quality and shouldn't be used for critical judgements.

Thanks, Boyd.

Where did this come from? I just went on to the Apple website and saw the big splash for this new motion graphics program. Looks pretty sweet!

Apple Motion (http://www.apple.com/ca/motion/)

I'm running FCP4 on an emac 1ghz with 768mb of memory. Would another 256mb make much of a difference?

Also is there much difference between lets say kingston, edge or GVP besides the price?

Thanks, Chris

It was released last Sunday during a special Apple event at the Venetian resort in Las Vegas.

I was able to attend and saw the demo. Was amazing to see what it could do, in real time, with an HD video clip and a variety of effects piled on.

And FCP HD was equally impressive.

Dean Sensui
Base Two Productions.

Anyone know of a good intro to FCP 4 online? Even just some how-to articles or others would be helpful. I am very much a newbie and needing a good starting point... for free.

I've got a 16:9 movie file that I want to output for TV (4:3). I don't want to squish or crop the image, I just need to add the "black bars" on the top and bottom.

Is there a way to do this directly in Cleaner? I'd rather not go back and re-render my project and I can't find anything in the manual about it. It seems silly to me that it can't add a field of black to the "unused" part of the screen.


-j

I just ordered peachpit press's Apple Training manual for FCP4. I heard several positive things about it. I just recently made the switch from FCE.

For FCE I used the Visual Quickstart series. FCE didn't come with a printed manual, and I prefer having a book in my hand instead of having to switch back to Explorer or Safari. I also use their book on Adobe GoLive and found it easier than the manual that came with GoLive.

Go to the public library and take a look at what's available for FCP (be it 1, 2, 3, or 4). Even if the book is outdated, it should give you a feel for what each different series (Dummies, Visual Quickstart, etc.) is like before you buy something and discover you can't stand the way it's written.

Hope this helps.

Jeremiah

http://www.kenstone.net (go to the FCP section, the photography section probably isn't safe for work [EDIT: I can't believe I said that now everyone will be curious...])

http://www.digitalzoo.com.au/lunchtime/

Anyone using FCP knnow how to mark clips or even sub-clip while capturing - like you can in AVID?

thanks
j

I've been looking for places to sell my iMac (which I had been using to edit with b/f moving to a G5). I've already placed it for sale locally on various bulletin boards, as well as the DVinfo Classifieds- both which have not produced much yet.

Any suggestions on a buyer rich environment? I'm pretty burned out on eBay, fending off scams, etc...

Thanks for the help!

hello all,
i am new to FCP (recent PC switcher) and i was thinking that i would invest in an ezboard keyboard with the FCP shortcuts on the keys to speed up my learning curve and because i had wanted one for premiere when i was on a PC. then i came across a much more affordable solution here, http://www.itn.net/cgi/air?stamp=Z7sObee_HvN*itn%2Ford%3D1082908888.53983%2Citn%2Fair%2Funited&return_to=air_avail&air_class=coach+%28lowest+avail.%29&air_avail=10&rt_ow=Round+Trip&depart=san&dest.0=washington+DC&mon_abbr.0=Jun&date.0=5&hour_ampm.0=12+am&mon_abbr.1=Jun&date.1=6&hour_ampm.1=12+am

^ it is just the keycaps that you can replace your original keys with. my question for you all is, if i have a keyboard from my PC that connects via USB, can i use this keyboard to put the caps on and hook it up to my powerbook?

thanks a lot

JR

You could try listing it in our Classifieds section. You could also try trading it in at PowerMax (http://www.powermax.com/) against a new purchase.

update to FCP HD (aka FCP 4.5). It has CinemaTools built in, so it can handle 24p editing, plus with the new release it has the ability to edit HD footage in real-time.

Cheers

I am using FCP 4 on a G5. I have a project with 8 sequences. When I opened the project thismorning, FCP began to open everything normally so that all the tabs showed in the canvas. As it got to opening the last one, it shut down all the sequence tabs except for two. All the sequences show in the browser. When I double click on the sequences in the browser, again, FCP goes through the motions of opening them. You see the progress box ´preparing video for display´ on the screen and the sequence tab briefly appears in the canvas and on the time line. Then it literally jumps back into one of the tabs that was showing originally. I can´t open my sequences. Does anyone have any idea what might be happening?
Thanks,
Kirsten

Are you talking about doing an offline edit, or an online, full quality edit? The workflow is essentially the same, exept that you would have to conform your EDL later in an online suite. Many HD and indie film projects have offlined in FCP just using the DV codec, but then, what's the point in editing in NTSC or PAL from HD footage? it's like working on a 1/4 size proxy.

As far as Final Cut Pro HD's capabilities, what I saw at NAB was 720 24p footage from the Panasonic Varicam. I'm not sure that the CineAlta's 1080 24p would transfer directly. In fact, Apple was really hyping the relationship with Panasonic. I expect that the DVCProHD codec is the only one at this stage. You could always transfer the footage to DVCProHD, then work natively in FCPHD. You would then get the full advantage of being in the native codec, except you would have degraded the image quality by downsampling.

By the way, if you wanted to work in FCPHD, you need a dual 2Ghz G5 with very fast IDE drives, like maybe the new Firewire 800 drives. If you're going to offline at DV resolutions, a fast G4 is fine, with off the shelf FW 400 drives.

I gave up waiting for a speed bump that might never come and have a G5 DP sitting in a box in the editing suite.

So, now what? I've upgraded the RAM to 1 gig. I will get a second hard drive in the next week or two (either the Seagate 160 or the Maxtor 250). I already have a few externals for storage/backup and I'll be ugrading to FCP and DVDSP over the summer.

Any tips on setting up/getting the most out of the new computer? Gotchas to watch out for?

Thanks.

<<<-- Originally posted by Scott Anderson : Are you talking about doing an offline edit, or an online, full quality edit? The workflow is essentially the same, exept that you would have to conform your EDL later in an online suite. Many HD and indie film projects have offlined in FCP just using the DV codec, but then, what's the point in editing in NTSC or PAL from HD footage? it's like working on a 1/4 size proxy.

As far as Final Cut Pro HD's capabilities, what I saw at NAB was 720 24p footage from the Panasonic Varicam. I'm not sure that the CineAlta's 1080 24p would transfer directly. In fact, Apple was really hyping the relationship with Panasonic. I expect that the DVCProHD codec is the only one at this stage. You could always transfer the footage to DVCProHD, then work natively in FCPHD. You would then get the full advantage of being in the native codec, except you would have degraded the image quality by downsampling.

By the way, if you wanted to work in FCPHD, you need a dual 2Ghz G5 with very fast IDE drives, like maybe the new Firewire 800 drives. If you're going to offline at DV resolutions, a fast G4 is fine, with off the shelf FW 400 drives. -->>>

The idea would be to do an off-line edit of HD stuff and deal with it as if it was film. In fact because it would end up in film.

So my guess is a G4 would be enough. What interface do you use to copy from HD to the Mac? For film is usually the lab that makes the video transfer and provides a Beta or DV time-coded copy, which is later fed into the FCP. The lab can do that for sure, but maybe a transfer can be done on location and edit as the film is being shot in HD.

I didn't pay much attention at the time HD was released, as it looked as if it would become an unaffordable system for low budget projects, when apparently it did not. Or not quite so.

The Panasonic seems to provide a mid-term to "full HD" with 24p / 720p, the top being 24p / 1080p). Maybe I should look into released theatrical projects that were shot in 720p, if it's possible to find such info.



Carlos

I'm really sorry to drag this out again but I've gone through the old threads and I still just don't understand and the tutorial that Jeff pointed to is gone.

When I play my DV footage directly from my camera on a TV, it appears at the proper 4:3 ratio.

When I import it into my computer and convert the RAW DV file (720 x 480) to an MPEG2, it plays at the proper 4:3 ratio in my MPEG player.

The problem is when I do my editing and render out a 720 x 480 file. When I convert that to an MPEG2 I get a distorted image as it vertically stretches to fill the 4:3 ratio.

My question: what am I doing wrong? Any help would be appreciated.


-j

What editor are you using? What -specific- settings are you applying for your export from that editor?

Those are great, thanks! Some I had already seen. Is there anything else out there? Thanks for your help...