New Convert
 

After years of being prodded by my best friend to "make the switch" I've finally seen the light. Actually, I still have my windows laptop so I'm not a complete convert. I plan on using FCE as my main editor and wanted to know what people suggested as an educational source for someone converting from using "Vegas" and "Premiere". I know I can still use Premiere on my Mac but I had already pretty converted over to Vegas for the past several months having never really felt comfortable with Premiere. I can't believe the world I've been missing as I've completely fallen in love with this machine... God, I can't believe I just said that. :) Thanks for any help in advance and now I'm off to offer sacrifices and prayers to the Mac Gods...

Max

FCE Online Training/Tutorials ??
 

I picked up FCE and a 160gb Lacie D2 firewire drive at the Apple Store yesterday at lunch. I watched the dvd that came with it, along with some of the manual, but I'm still looking for other good online sources for training/tutorials. Any suggestions? I'm sure it will take time to learn all the features, but it sure is a giant improvement over iMovie!! Thanks.

BTW, I have been viewing the forums at Apple, and it seems many people are having problems getting an external drive and dv camera to work together. I just plugged the Lacie into my iBook, and the GL2 into the Lacie, and it works great!! I just changed my scratch disk to the Lacie in FCE, and capture there with no problem.


Kirk

AVID runs on both PC and Mac.

Max...

I'm a Media 100 editor but have played a bit with FCP. It's somewhat similar to Premiere and other NLE's in basic function.

For detailed information there's a book entitled "Final Cut Pro For Macintosh"
by Lisa Brenneis.

I've been reading rave reviews for the upcoming version 4 of the program. If I had to start over today I'd go with FCP. Great value for the dollar and a very extensive upgrade path.

Good luck with the switch!

Dean Sensui
Base Two Productions

ton of tutorials
 

most of the sources I know about are tutorials on final cut pro. 90% of that information will be appropriate for FCE but a google search on "final cut express" and tutorial will undoubtably turn up quite a few options. There are tapes, dvds, books and more available for FCP and similar things, I should assume, for FCE. For a start, check out http://www.creativemac.com for some FCP tutorials....

Thanks guys for the help. I bought a copy of "Final Cut Express for Dummies" at Barnes and Noble because it was the only book there that I could find on it. I have mixed feelings about the "for dummies" books but I thought it would at least have a nugget or two of good information anyway. I also saw a DVD tutorial on the web that looked kind of cool too but like anything I'm sure the best way to learn is to just roll up my sleeves and get dirty.

DVD-R vs DVD+R
 

What's the real difference between DVD-R and DVD+R formats? I think DVD-R is more compatible with set top DVD players, but the DVD+R camp loves saying how superior their format is. Wouldn't this be similar to CD-Rs having two different formats, both playing essentially the same data, but both can only be recorded on proprietary recorders? Whats the point?

I'm confused. Somebody please help.

G5?, Q37?, Smeagol? - New power macs
 

The rumor mills are stepping up discussions on the new 970 based Power Macs -

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1121730,00.asp

Notice, that like a recent Business Week article this article is not from your traditional rumor sites.

The rumor sites still have the 970 as being announced at Apple's WWDC - with Steve Jobs giving a demo of 10.3 (Panther) on one of the new machines.

FCP 4 question
 

FCP 4 comes with a "full 32-bit floating point per channel video processing".

What is it and what does it do?

Confusion is all around regarding this. Basically they are just
competing formats with the same feature set. Currently -R
seems to be more compatible indeed, but +R has always
claimed superiour compatability. However I don't believe
they have delivered on this promise (although DVD+RW seems
to do good).

Basically it looks like that for record once -R is king but for
rewritable +RW seems to be liked.

I (nor anyone else for that matter) can tell you which format
(or perhaps both) will prevail. More newer players seem to
support both, but that is also not garantueed by any means.

If you are looking for a new DVD burner I personally would look
into any of the multi format burners like the Sony DRU500a
(replaced by the 510 I believe), the new Nec (don't know what
the model number is) and the just released Pioneer A06. They will
all do -R/+R, -RW/+RW & CD-R/-RW. The main reason to buy a
multiformat burner is that you are more or less garuanteed to
be compatible in the future (can never be 100% sure on this,
ofcourse).

Also media compatibility with players is very important and that
is even more fuzzy....

Someone correct me if I'm wrong. What this mainly tells you is
what kind of internal engine FCP uses to render (compute) all
of the effects you put on your video's (think fades, wipes, color
corrections etc.).

Whenever someone or some products tells you about these
kind of numbers it is to show you (hopefully) that the engine
is having more bandwidth to create the effects with as much
less "noise" and other image defects as possible. This mainly
is imported when you start stacking effects etc.

A simple example. A pixel has the color 179,131,125 (RGB). Let's
say you want the brightness down by 20%, so each color
should be given 80% of its original value.

80% of 179 is 143.2
80% of 131 is 104.8
80% of 125 is 100.0

Now lets say the engine does not work with floating points
(ie, non fractional numbers), so the end results get either
rounded or chopped of, so you either get:

143,105,100 or 143,104,100.

For the rest of this example we'll stick with the rounding (first
result).

Lets say we are now introducing a second effect to brighten
the image by 50% (I know this doesn't make sense but for
math sake lets keep it simple).

150% of 143 = 214.5 (gets rounded) = 215
150% of 105 = 157.5 (gets rounded) = 158
150% of 100 = 150

So we get 215,158,150.

Now if the engine had use floating points and did not need to
round we could have used the original numbers. Lets do the
calculation with those again:

150% of 143.2 = 214.8
150% of 104.8 = 157.2
150% of 100.0 = 150.0

Okay so these numbers differ (with the last set being more
accurate then the previous one). Now our final output format
does not support floating point pixels (almost no format does
including DV, JPEG, MPEG etc.) so it must be rounded (which
each package does at the end of the effects chain).

214.8 becomes 215 (no change here)
157.2 becomes 157 (CHANGE! The green pixel is off by 1!)
150.0 becomes 150

So instead of 215,158,150 in the first method we now get the
more correct 215,157,150.

Ofcourse this is a minor difference which you won't be able
to see. But you can probably imagine that with multiple filters,
multiple passes and more difficult mathematical equasions
this can quickly add up!

This is why every new version of an enginge uses more bits
and more numbers after the fractional point to get a greater
quality (with the cost of extra time needed to process it).

I hope this explained it a bit....

Video And Audio Stutter
 

sorry, anyway, i have just printed to video a 2:00 minute story and there is a glitch in the audio and video about 1:15 in, for 2 shots only. i cant figurer it out. i have re-layed the video with different out and in points and the glitches still remain on the final render.

was there something on the raw tape the system doesnt like?
the clips play fine in the viewer window.

is this glitch on your computer as well? If it is, the glitch came
from the source material...

i cant tell, when i play in the time line, it is allways kinda stuttery.

That is not a good sign. I'm not a Mac person myself so I don't
know whether this is normal (I assume not!). If you can't play
it back okay then your Mac probably cannot keep up with all
the work. That might result in dropped frames during capture
and/or playback.

I hope some Mac wizards will step in before I make a complete
fool of myself <g>

yeah, im not even a non-linear person. or a mac, or even a computer person.
this entire little project is killing me, now all my audio is just a big freaking hum.

Final Cut - can't print to tape at all
 

Hello all,

I'm really starting to sweat a little...gigantic deadline looming...I've now tried two DV decks and when I run print to tape out of Final Cut Pro all I get is a black on the tape. Both decks are recognized by FCP (I can capture from both) but I just can't go out at all.

Dual 1.2
1024 RAM
FCP (latest)
OSX (latest)

If anyone has any ideas I'd be happy to hear them.

Take care,

Chris

don' t know for sure, but sounds like misconfigured print-to-tape going on here. worse comes to worse, play sequence from the timeline and manually hit the record button. :)

channel1 and channel 2
 

does FCP 3 always mix down the audio?
i like to seperate my primary sound on and nat sound on 2.
when i renderthough, both tracks are mixed togther, so channel 1 and 2 contain the same audio.
lots of my stuff goes to the local news stations. they like seperate audio as well, since most still edit tape to tape.

should read ..primary sound on 1...

Compatibility issues surrounding Quicktime 6 and Toast?
 

Hi ,
I'm unable to burn a VCD and I was wondering if anyone knows of any incompatiblities between Quicktime 6 and Toast 5.02. I'm running OS 9.2 and I have an .mov file i am unable to burn in toast. It starts the encoding process in toast for VCD and then it stops about a 1/5 of the way thru and just gets hung up. Anybody have any suggestions? Greatly appreciated.
-Kris

if you have quicktime pro, i believe there is an option to specifically "export movie to toast video cd" or something like that. don't have my mac in front of me so i'm not positive.

Thanks Edwin; but now new problem
 

Yes, you were right about the quicktime pro. So I was able to burn a VCD but now the quality while watching on my tv and also on the computer is blotchy and pixelated. Any ideas why this could have happened? thanx much in advance.
-Kris

Re: Thanks Edwin; but now new problem
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Kris Durkin : Yes, you were right about the quicktime pro. So I was able to burn a VCD but now the quality while watching on my tv and also on the computer is blotchy and pixelated. Any ideas why this could have happened? thanx much in advance.
-Kris -->>>

yep. basically, the preset compression settings and in quicktime for exporting to toast vcd sucks! last i remember, the settings couldn't be manually edited either. you might have to invest in an app like cleaner 6.

Thanks !!

Got Final Cut Pro 4 today
 

Because I live in PA, the location of an Apple warehouse & distribution point, I got my FCP4 today.

I have been playing with Live Type for about an hour . . . and it is really impressive. It'a a little slow on my 867Mhz.

I have also tried out Soundtrack and it shows good promise too. Unfortunately it has been "unexpectely quitting" after attempt to open a saved file. Working to get to the bottom of this.

I had Final Cut Pro itself crash on me (see my post in the thread called something like "FInal Cut Pro arriving any day now"). There is bound to be 1,000 different Final Cut Pro 4 threads. I hope Apple doesn't begin to develop a reputation like Microsoft in having many bugs in new releases.

FCP4, Soundtrack goodbye sleep!
 

Well despite my initial cursings at apple for giving me an installer that crapped out on me when i was trying to install FCP4 I have to say that this thing freaking rocks... Yeah, yeah, 4 is coool whatever but Soundtrack is so dern awesome! I only hope that I will actually get around to doing something in FCP 4 instead of just playing with Soundtrack the whole time. I seriously duobt that I will sleep in the next 4 hours because of this program (in a good way not like the waiting for programs to stop crashing way) If anyone here has reservations about the upgrade the soundtrack editing ability is reason enough to pay for an upgrade... Just make sure your installer works...

Video on a CD
 

OK

simple question for all the great Mac users. How can I get my MPEG 1 video and audio export from Avid and FCP 3 to play on a CD. I am tring not to purchace any new software (cheap). I have Avid Express and Final Cut Pro 3. When you export MPEG is splits the audio and video up. I want to make it easy for people to just pot in a cd and play a video clip. I like MPEG 1 because the picture quality looks good compared to AVI and Quicktime compressed. Now how do I get them to play together when burned to a CD. I have DVD studio Pro, Quicktime Pro, After Efects and as stated before Avid and Final Cut Pro 3. Is there any way to do it with what I already have. Or, is there a way to get MPEG 1 quality (low but decent) in an AVI or Quicktime file and still be able to get a 20 min clip on a CD with the programs I have.

I'm not sure where your problem with QT is coming from. I have 5 QT video clips on a CD, or roughly 25 minutes. It only uses half of the cd. All I did was export for cd from Premiere, and the quality is amazingly good. All of the clips are only 320x240, but still nice.

2 diff. decks 2 diff G4's audio prints no video
 

Hello,

Well, I thought it was the deck, but I can't print to video using two different decks and two different computers. Could someone tell me, just so I'm sure, what settings I could check? I mean this is crazy...the audio goes out...not the video....I captured using a 3rd party card...but I'm going out DV...I just don't get it....runing FCP III in OSX all the latest drivers/versions...please help! I can go out using the card via an S-Video cable in tot eh S Video of the deck...but it a real pain and I'd guess there might a drop in quality. Any info greatly appreciated. I did also try just playing through the timeline with the deck in record mode...no go...

Take care,

Chris

What setting did you use other that the frame size. I use Final Cut Pro most of the time. It gives you a lot of compression choises. I have tried them all I think. MPEG looks better, and the files sizes are a lot smaller. Have you ever compared the two. I have no problem with Quicktime, I just thing MPEG looks better.

Firewire Drive Question
 

Hello Group,

Anyone using this particular Firewire drive on MacOS X and FCP?


http://www.macmall.com/macmall/shop/detail.asp?action=techspec&options=S&dpno=743296#scroll


Any experiences with this product will be appreciated. :)


Thanks!

My FCP4 upgrade arrived today!!!
 

It freakin' rocks! Especially being able to look at your color-corrected frame next to the uncorrected one. It'll be a busy weekend.

This doesn't deal specifically with this drive, but always be sure to check out the tomshardware.com site before ever making any hardware purchases.

http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/index.html

It does make some recommendations/comparisons between the 250GB internal drives of Maxtor and Western Digital, and they are apparently of almost imperceptible difference.

You can be close to sure that this will hold true for the external, as all external drives are, are internal drives in a pretty box with a built in IDE to Firewire/USB converter. Hint hint... save OODLES of cash by just buying a big internal drive and finding a good external enclosure. Very easy to put together...

There was this "Quote" from someone in Apple that was reported on www.looprumors.com that Panter was going to be "unlike anything else out there," and will "end all comparisons" between Microsoft Windows and the Mac. "



now with all the great stuff going on with HyperTransport, the new IBM chips and the promise of 64 bit computing I'm fairly jazzed to see what comes out of WWDC---

but the above comments leave me questioning them--- "unlike anything.." what's that mean? It won't be a GUI?

"end all comparisions..." again, it won't be a GUI?

it's going to be an amazing time at WWDC and I for one can't wait for it.

total newb question
 

what's the difference between a split edit and a roll edit?

Don't you mean a "slip" edit?

Edwin,

A "Split Edit" is where the audio and video for one clip don't align at the same point. You'll always know you're doing this if you're using FCP because you'll see little red warning boxes on both the audio and video parts of the clip with the time showing of how much the two are misaligned. So, if you slide the audio track forward .20 seconds, you'll see "+0.20" on the audio track and "-0.20" on the video track. Think of this as the way bricks are laid off center with one another.

A "roll edit" allows you to roll the edit point between two clips back and forth. Let's say you have the start of clip 1 at point A and then end of clip 1 at point B. Then you have the start of clip 2 at point C and the end at point D. With a roll edit, you can roll B and C back and forth to find where you want the two shots to match, without affecting points A and D. Think of it as nailing down a piece of rope at both ends with a slip knot in the middle that allows you to slide the knot back and forth between the two ends.

The "Slip Edit" that Ken is referring to allows you to change the in and out points of the clip without changing its duration. So, if you want a particular clip to remain 5 seconds, but you wish you had edited it at an earlier or later point in the main clip, you can determine the new in and out points and then simply slip it into place. Think of this as a sort of "letterbox"...the letterbox frame (meaning the surrounding clips) stays the same, but you can move the clip behind the frame to find new in and out points...sort of like how a treadmill rotates within a frame.

Final Cut 3 Quicktime Export Issue
 

I've been working on a 36 minute short and have issues exporting. I think I've tried it all.

Yesterday I exported to Quicktime with no compression, thousands of colors, 720x480, 44kHz, Stereo, 16bit. It worked. However, it needed some more work.

Today if I try that same export combo or ANY OTHER export, FC will export a movie in the specified size with audio but no image, only white. I've restarted, shut down, went out for coffee and tried it all over again.

My goal is to export from FC in full quality then compress seperately in cleaner to fit onto a CD.

Any ideas?