alright guys, i'm having the strangest problems all of a sudden. i have a DVX100A and FCP HD...
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i have 2 problems and my guess is that they are related.
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1) i am shooting in 24PA. i'm guessing that i am not capturing correctly because it always needs to render the sequence file. i know what the settings are, but they don't work. for example, i have the a/v settings set up to capture with firewire NDF at 2:3:3:2 pulldown and to default the sequences to 23.98fps. BUT when i actually CAPTURE the footage, it somehow isnt in 23.98. if i right click, go to properties, and go to Format, it says that the clip is 29.97fps. FCP seems to be confused as well, because under the Tools menu, it usually says Apply Advanced Pulldown or whatever, but instead it says Remove Advanced Pulldown because it thinks it was used, but if i actually click it, it says "Error, no clips found using the advanced pulldown" and whatnot. if i drop the clip into a 23.98 sequence, it won't work without several minutes of rendering. even though it supposdly was captured at 23.98. HELP!
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2) i'm guessing this has something to do with the _frame rate, but maybe not... anything i DO capture with the above problem has the sound way off sync... like a couple seconds off sync, not just a few frames. sometimes i have this problem, sometimes not. its very sporaddic, but probably 25-50% of the time, i have this problem.
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any suggestions? this is so weird.... thanks a lot!

I am building a DVDSP project, and had just found out about the ability to add jacket pictures to your DVD projects... and its very easy to do, but its not working. I made my picture in photoshop in the standard DV size, exported it as a TIFF file and brought it into DVDSP. I told DVDSP to use that file as the jacket picture, and it seems to work fine in the simulator. However, once I burned the DVD it does not work in the DVD player.

I have tried it in an APEX TV/DVD combo, an ONKYO DVD changer, and a PS2. all 3 play DVD-R discs flawlessly, but none will display the jacket picture. does anyone know why and how to fix this?

thanks,
Chris

Is your render quality set to high? If it is set any lower you will get this.

Capture settings for 24p an 24pA on the DVX are identical to that of normal NTSC DV - ie you must capture at 29.97fps, then let FCP remove the pulldown. They you can set your timeline to 23.98fps.

Graeme

It might help to set Final Cut into ?high definition rendering? mode. The one that uses 32-bit floating point numbers. This will avoid problems with rounding errors (causes banding).

If your problem is something else (you see 4X4 blocks), try using a color smoothing filter. FCP4 has one (labelled something like 4:1:1 color smoothing or something like that).

2- If that doesn't work, post a picture of your original footage plus one after CC.

i'm aware of that, but it wasn't working. my hunch was that the settings were just messed up somehow... i trashed them and set them up again, just the same, and somehow it worked. whaddaya know?

had any one used medea/g-raid drives?

Thanks for the replies.

Shane - I believe everything is set to highest quality. Just to be on the safe side, which setting specifically controls the quality of a render? Is it the one in user preferences? Or System Settings, or something else I'm missing? It doesn't look like when I've applied a filter and it's in preview mode without rendering, where it looks all pixellated. That's not the problem. I'm looking at the footage on a Sony NTSC monitor, and the unmodified footage looks perfect (no artifacts of any kind), but the color correction adds these big blocks anywhere there's a large solid color, like a wall or sky.

Glenn - How do I render in High Definition mode? If that doesn't work, I'll try the color smoothing filter and post the results.

Thanks again.

I've started capturing yesterday at school on Final Cut 4.
My short was shot on 24p advance with the DVX100a camera. The setting was set on 24 frames when capturing maybe I need to change that to 23.98?. When I shot the video the shutter speed was on 1/24. But don't see any problems when watching it.

Everything looked fine when the capturing was being made. But when I tooked the captured work from the school's G5 into my laptop. The footage looks bad, there is buzzing of the video, just doens't look good at all. :(

Any of you know what could be wrong, any settings on final cut 4 I should look for when capturing 24pa.

Thanks

Hi All.

Does anyone have any comments on taking the Final Cut PRO HD certified course? What would be the advantages more then product knowledge?
Will this, can this increase billable work?

Thanks tons in advance.
Tom

Anyone use products like this:

Movie Archive 1.0 for Mac OS X

Movie Archive enables you to capture, compress, browse, and organize a multi-tape video library. Movie Archive requires Mac OS X 10.2 or later and a DV camera connected via FireWire.

http://lqgraphics.com/software/moviearchive.php/

Okay so, I've recorded all of my media with the 16:9 mode on my Canon XL1s. I logged and captured it into FCP4 with the anamorphic button clicked. My sequence presets are for anamorphic 16:9 as well.

However, a handful of my clips are letterboxed. Why is that?

I created an initial sequence with all of the interview footage for my film. Here the clips appear as 16:9 and are not letterboxed. After I pasted portions of this sequence into other sequences (to construct different scenes), they alone were letterboxed, but none of the other clips added to the new sequences were.

Why would some clips be letterboxed and others not within a given sequence? And, why would those same clips not be letterboxed in another sequence? Furthermore, how do I get them back to normal anamorphic 16:9 without letterboxing without redoing each of my edits?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and I apologize if this was handled in a previous thread.

Do the clips appear this way in both the viewer and the canvas?

yes, the offending clips appear letterboxed in both the viewer and the canvas. But thier source clip in the browser is not letterboxed, when brought into the viewer.

If I open the letterboxed clips in the viewer and click on the motion tab, then distort and change the aspect ratio from -33 to zero that removes the letterboxing. Will this degrade the video quality? Is there a way to do this for multiple clips at once? Would it be better to re-edit the clips back in from the browser (very time consuming)?

Also, why would those few clips aspect ratios have been changed to -33.33, and thus be letterboxed if I never changed them.

Sorry for all the questions, I am a newbie with FCP.

I think it's probably very simple. Check the sequence settings on the letterboxed clips. If you drop a 16:9 clip into a 4:3 sequence then FCP will automatically letterbox to fit. All you should need to do is go to the sequence settings dialog and check the anamorphic box. However, any clips that have been dragged to the sequence will probably not "de-letterbox" by themselves. You will need to drop those back into the sequences. If that gets complicated (such as existing edits you don't want to lose) you should be able to open the clip by double-clicking it on the timeline, click on the motion tab in the clip's viewer window and select the distort property. Set the aspect ratio to 0 and I think that will restore the clip to the proper proportion such that it fills the 16:9 window.

In the future, just make sure the clip and sequence settings are in agreement before proceeding!

The only advantages of the class are better knowledge of the software. It might help a little on the resume, in terms of letting your prospective employer know that you know FCP very well, but it won't make them hire you outright. Nor will it increase your billing rate.

Just because you are certified on the equipment, doen't mean you can edit. What I mean by that is that just becuase you know HOW to use FCP, doesn't mean that you know how to edit a story. That part is all creativity and imagination...and something that you won't get from the course.

You can know everything there is to know about Microsoft Word and formatting a document, but it doesn't mean you can write.

You will get hired because of you storytelling ability. Your demo reel or showcase of past projects will big the biggest asset in selling yourself, and able to bill more for yourself.

Thanks Shane.
That's what I was looking for. I have the creative talent for still
photography, imaging but want to unleash some creative talents
on the vid side.

I will assume that learning FCP with a solid base will be the
way to start and then see if some talent can be applied.
No doubt it will take a great deal of commitment which I
can apply.
Thanks again.
Tom

Is there no loss if the codec is set to "DV -- NTSC" in Video Settings or does one have to select "none" for the codec?

I'm working in FCP HD and need to make that effect you see on so many low-budget video shows where they blur out just a portion of the screen (like when they need to remove someone's face or hi-profile logo or whatever). Can I do that in FCP HD? Or do I need something like After FX?

Thanks!

Yes you can do it. There are probably several ways, but this is how I would go about it.

(I don't have my editing system in front of me so this is from memory).

You need two copies of your clip, one on V1 and one on V3. Temporarily hide V1.

On V2 you need to place a matte that is the shape (and at the location) that you want the blur to appear. Use the shape generator to create a white oval, then adjust the parameters to get the size, shape, location, and edge softness about right. Place that shape on V2.

Select the clip on V3 and set the composite mode to Travel Matte - Luma (Modify->Composite Mode->Traval Matte - Luma). Now all you should see is an oval "window" of your clip on a black background (if you hid V1 as suggested above). At this point you can fine tune the location, shape, size, and edge softness of the matte shape on V2 to zero in on the area you want to apply the blur.

Now add a blur filter to the clip on V3 and adjust the blur as desired. Turn V1 back on and you should see a blured oval with the rest of your image nice and clear.

Often the area you want to blur will be moving in the frame, making it necessary to keyframe the location (and sometimes the size) of your matte shape to keep it over the area you want to apply the blur.

Again, this is from memory. Sorry if I got a detail wrong or missed a step. I'm sure someone will post a correction. ; )

I'll give it a shot!

Thanks so much!

any suggestions?

A few questions...first, would I be able to send audio and video from a dv deck through composite/analog to my AJA io and have it routed to the computer via firewire, using one of the 8 or 10 bit uncompressed capture settings, and secondly, at the same time have the DECKS firewire going directly to my G5, and set FCP up to use this connection solely for deck control? My deck does not have serial deck control. I know that the capture/deck control presets in FCP are independent. I feel that I cannot take advantage of the uncompressed captured options with the a/v not being routed through the IO. And I might add that right now I have my IO firewire and the decks firewire connected to my G5 at the same time on different buses with no problems.

thanks.

-paul.

You need to capture at 29.97 fps then let FCP remove the pull down and change your timeline to 24 fps.

I've never used it nor do I know anyone that has. But that doesn't mean it's not a good product. If you try it, please post back and let us know how it works for you.

Thanks. My original sequence was a 4:3 as I changed my presets after that one was created. I appreciate the help and the rapid responses.

Why do you want to add an additional D/A and A/D conversion to your footage?

The footage on tape is already converted by the camera from analog to digital and compressed for the DV format. Bringing it into the computer via FireWire maintains the digital data, which is in as pure a form as you are going to get.

Going through the DV deck and AJA system adds two additional A to D conversions - the first is done in the deck as it takes the digital DV data on the tape and converts it to analog, the second is the AJA system that takes the analog output from the deck and converts it back to digital. You may be getting a "better" digital format by going through the AJA (less or no compression, more bits per pixel) but the image quality (resolution, compression, etc.) was already established in the very first step - in the camera. The additional processing steps in going through the deck and the AJA, no matter how good the conversions, can only degrade the image. Maybe not by much but certainly noticeable if you look carefully.

Mike,

I was told, and maybe I misunderstood the person, that by going analog out from a dv deck to the IO, and capturing 8 or 10 bit uncompressed would yield higher quality footage. Now the reason why I inquired is that if in fact I connected the deck directly to the IO and not the computer, I would lose deck control, because my deck does not offer serial deck control. Now, I can capture 8bit 10bit uncompressed, and/or DV/NTSC by just changing the capture setting, and still have fire wire deck control.

Am I on track?

-paul.

That's the whole point of my post - you can't get any higher quality footage than what was originally recorded by the camera onto tape. In this case that camera recorded in the DV format which is defined as: 4-1-1 color space, 720x480 resolution, 5:1 compression, etc.

Every D/A or A/D conversion you do is going to degrade the the image in some way. It may be a small amount, but it is always going to happen. That's why you want to keep the number of conversions to a minimum.

Your best image quality will be maintained by importing the DV footage from the deck over FireWire to the computer.

thank you,

I was also told to do this:

audio/video settings should be at:

sequence setting to 23.98
Capture settings to 23.98 (2:3:3:2 advance pulldown removal)
Device control to Firewire NTSC NDF

If you can upgrade to FCP HD do so. It's free and will really help.


now not sure what to do

Could this be as simple as you are viewing the recaptured footage with the QuickTime player and High Quality is not turned on? In QuickTime Pro, open the DV file and select Movie->Get Movie Properties. Select Video track from the left drop down and Quality from the right drop down. Change the quality to "High Quality Enabled".

Hello,
I have landed a gig where I need to edit a show for a TV show. They need the final show on a Beta SP NTSC tape.

The footage is a mix of Beta SP NTSC and MiniDV NTSC.

I was thinking about renting a Sony PVW-2800 and ad this to my current editing suite: Apple G4 w/FCP 4.5, Sony DSR-11 DVCAM deck and Sony PWM 1342Q video monitor.

I was then going to capture all footage into FCP, edit and then make a master tape on the Sony PVW-2800.

Since I have never done this before, I was wondering if this set up will do? I am also very intersted in any comments.

Thomas

Either you need to purchase a capture card, FW800 card, G-raid or Lacie BigDisk Extreme in order to capture the betacam at 8-bit resolution, or you are going to have to transfer all of the beta footage to DV and capture and edit DV/NTSC. For the beta-DV transfer, and vise versa, I'd suggest getting a black burst box as well.

After you finish editing you'll need to color correct and make sure your fall within broadcast safe colors, brightness and blacks. When you output your show, you'll then need to dub BACK to betacam.

Since it sounds like you are somewhat of a novice in this area, i'd suggest getting the Beta's transferred to DVCAM (with matching TC) at a dub house, and when you are done editing and output your final, have them dub it from DV to Beta.

Yup - best advice is use a dub house to make DVCAM copies of the beta tapes for you. Edit as DV throughout, and give the DV master tape back to the dub house to get them to do a DV to SP dub for you. Even if you hired an SP deck, you'd have to deal with the NTSC setup issue on dubbing from SP to DV as the DSR-11 doesn't have a switch to take care of this for you. Also, check your levels on the DV tapes after getting them dubbed from SP to DV as there are still some idiots in dub houses who don't know, (or don't care) how to set their black levels correctly. This is not the place to name names, but after just getting some SP to DVCAM dubs done properly in Toronto, along with some Quad to DV dubs, I was dissapointed after getting an SP to DV dub done locally in Ottawa to see that the black levels were really, really wrong. I'll be getting the guy in the office who ordered this dub done for his project to get his money back on that!

Graeme

Hey all folks.. man it's been a while since i last posted.. at least 2 weeks :)

well i got a fairly simple couple questions i spose.. and i've searched to no avail.. basically, whenever i do a proj in FCP and then compress it using Compressor, which exports it as a mpg2 .. which is all well and good.. i open up the proj in DVD SP 2, at which point when i'm done, i press the button 'Build/format' and DVD SP begins to encode it.. now my question is, since i bring it in as an assett that's already mpg2 encoded, is there any way i can bypass this setting as it seems that DVDSP2 is re-encoding/compressing the footage? or am i totally off base here...

2) When i do Scene selections on the dvd, when the scene ends i want it to go back to the 2nd menu or scene selection menu as it stands.. i know how to do this by adjusting the chapter markers in the main track.. however, when i DO do this and i play the film on the regular menu, for some reason at every chapter marker it goes back to the scene selection menu.. is there anyway possible i can ensure that in the scene selection part it goes back, but in the regular part footage it continues to play without being cut off?

Any help to these questions would be MUCh appreciated folks, thanks in advance! :)

I know this must have come up numerous times before, but I couldn't find it. I am referring to those darn pesky titles. I understand that if I had a NTSC monitor, life might be easier, but that isn't happening anytime soon. Anyhoo, on to the point:

Do titles in AE have to be imported from Photoshop at 72dpi, or can they be kept larger, as in 300. Not to wax obvious, but I like bringing them in larger so I can size them down as the need arises. If you bring them in at 72 and then you need to size them up, they look like poop. That's right, actual poop.

BUT, when I do this (bring them in large) and then size them down, they look something horrid on my computer monitor. I'd hate to have to transfer my footage to dvd everytime to go check on my TV. Any information on this matter will be joyfully absorbed by my sponge-like brain.

Thank you.

Why don't you hook up your TV to your Mac/Final Cut? If you're starting, you should *really* do this so you know to avoid things like overscan, chroma crawl, interlace flicker, etc. A TV will be close to what your video will look like on a TV, what you see on your computer monitor is far from accurate.

All decks can convert from DV--> analog on the fly. In Final Cut, go into the A/V settings and tell Final Cut to send video out through firewire.

Most camcorders can function in place of a deck, but not all have analog-digital passthrough. You need to set the camera to convert in the right direction (many can do both ways).

2- If it looks bad on TV then you have a problem. Check on a TV first.

Here's what I do:

-- Set up FCP for NTSC DV.
-- Capture all DV via Firewire.
-- Capture all Betacam via a Decklink SP card through component connectors. As it captures it encodes it as DV.
-- Setup with the Decklink is set to zero.
-- Setup of the final signal is adjusted with the aid of an external waveform monitor.
-- Output final mastter via the Decklink SP card through the component connectors.

Resulting quality is very high, as good as the source material.

Dean Sensui
Base Two Productions.

hmm anyone here have an inkling to what i'm saying or am i not making very much sense? i do that sometimes :|

What would be the proper FCP HD import and sequence settings for 16:9 footage shot on an XL2? Something I am doing does not seem quite right.

A friend of mine recently got a new job and inherited a FCP editing station (dual 1 GHz G4, 80 & 120 GB drives, 1 GB RAM). The previous user was VERY disorganized and the computer is an absolute mess. Unfortunately, some of the data on both drives is required for future projects, and we have been working on making something useful out of it.

Both drives (80 GB system drive, 120 GB video capture drive) were filled to the max, rendering the computer unusable. In order to preserve the old info and free up space for new projects, we used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the system and video disks to a new external 250GB drive, then erased both internal drives and reinstalled OSX Panther. So far everything is good to go and the external drive is bootable.

After getting Panther installed and updated, it was time to install FCP HD (all programs are 100% legal). When he got the computer a couple months ago, it was still running FCP3 so he purchased the full upgrade to HD. The upgrade works fine on the original drive (now the external) but the new FCP installation will not open, showing an error message when trying to start the program. The strange part is that LiveType and the others work fine.

When installing the new FCP, we just used the upgrade disks without having the old FCP3 installed on that drive. Is FCP3 required to install the upgrade even though we entered both the serial numbers (3 & 4) when prompted? Could this be a security function?

Fortunately, he doesn't have any big projects coming up this week and can utilize the bootable external drive for the time being. Unfortunately, we're at a standstill. If anyone has suggestions at solving this, they would be very appreciated.

You say you did a clean install and then updated the OS X software?

If you updated the software to OS 10.3.5, then you are going to have problems. Do a clean install of OS X 10.3.2 (minumum) THEN install FCPHD, then do an update to 10.3.4.

I went through this same problem a few weeks ago. There is something about memory bindings with 10.3.5 that conflict with FCPHD memory bindings.

Hope that helps

Cheers

hey,

i'm about to move to spain and i was wondering how i could travel with my computer. anyone got any tips to do it safely?

peace

I'm assuming you mean that you just want to take your G4 tower with you on the plane? I'm also assuming you mean a tower, not a G4 laptop.

Is this right? Or do you just want to know the easiest way to ship it?

I never even thought to try that. Thanks bunches.

yeah i wanna take the g4 tower in the plane. shipping a computer twice might cost me like 300 euros so i can 4get that. any tips? people say putting in a box with foam will do it but the company i'm flying with(iberia) doesn't have a glorious reputation on the way they treat the luggage...

Thanks Stephen,
I had a feeling 10.3.5 might be the problem, but was still concerned about what was going on. After browsing through the Apple Support discussions, it seems that this is a fairly common problem, although I didn't read any real solutions. I'm going to take your advice and see how that goes.

Thanks again.

There was something posted in the Knowledge base the other day that might solve the problem, but it requires you go into the unix app and type a few lines of commands. Not sure I am willing to do that. Would rather wait for a fix in 10.3.6.

If you are daring enough, you might try it, but if you do it wrong, you'll have to rebuild your computer from scratch again anyway.

Since you are just now beginning to use this new system, might as well reinstall 10.3.2, repair permissions, install QuickTime, then update it to 6.5, then FCPHD, LiveType, SoundTrack, etc. Then do the update for FCPHD (includes update to livetype and cinematools), then do the other system updates to 10.3.4.

If you need to find 10.3.2 - 10.3.4, do a quick search on the apple site. You can still download them.

Cheers

Me am do dumb things to sometimes.

One thing that MIGHT help is to make sure that the Photoshop layer with your text is set to best quality in the Timeline. That would be the little slash mark.

Scaling down "generally" doesn't much with the quality of the text, unless of course you are using really thin text like a seriff font.

An alternative would be to use Illustrator to create your text. That way you can scale them to anysize in After Effects since you are dealing with Vector information.

Out of curiousity, what size is your original Pshop file (720x480ish)? You might want to use a larger canvas size to create your title and then scale down. in this case DPI has nothing or should have nothing to do with scaling down. Only when scaling up - or so my experience has shown.

Hope that helps

cheers