fragged?
 

If you disk is heavily fragmented it becomes worse as it gets more crowded. You might use the Diskwarrior defragmenting tool, or the Norton defragging tool, or you can back it up, wipe it out and restore it to defrag it.
before doing that be sure to run disk first aide and DiskWarrior to make sure the problem isn't directory related.
If it is on the same hard drive that FCP is on (you are capturing to the same drive but just a different partition) then that could be the problem. Creating a different partition is not the same as capturing to a different hard drive. It may "look" like a different hard drive but it isn't and the head still has to travel back and forth. The idea is to capture to a different hard drive than your FCP/OSX (or9) hard drive...not just a different partition.

What I usually do is edit the video so that it does what I want (let's say it is 1 minute long before it loops). Then in Photoshop I create the text for the menu with a blank layer at 720x480. I then import the PSD into Final Cut Pro and lay it on top of the minute long video and render. Export the video as an .m2v file. Take it into DVD Studio Pro and create a new menu and select that video file. Make sure the "Simple overlay" is on and choose some colors. Then create your buttons in DVD-SP.

This will result in the fastest menu you can do. If you keep the PSD file native in DVD-SP with many different layers, it will respond VERY slowly when in a real DVD player. Yes, it can look nicer, but I don't like the cursor moving down a second or two AFTER I press it.

DVD authoring.
 

We have an 73 minutes worth of footage to print out on tape.
The thing is , with Firewire DV, it seems there is a dropped frame and the audio and video are out of sync. We go around to use the Cinewave to rerecord on to Digi beta. Is anyone familiar with this problem with long footage? Can someone tell me if there is a good help page for this.
Thanks in Advance.
Takeshi

Thanks Curtis I never thought about doing it that way. I will give it a shot.

Takeshi,

There could be a lot of reasons for that...would you mind posting your computer/software specs? That'll help us to have a better idea of what the problem is.

DVX-100 and Final Cut Pro 3
 

I'm on the verge of buying the DVX-100, but at this time I don't have enough funds to buy the camera and a new computer to edit with Final Cut Pro 4.

See I own an ibook 500 G3 with FCP 3. So FCP 4 requires me to buy a whole new computer as well as the upgrade. Even with an Emac that is still a large sum at this point.

Anyone, if I can afford to upgrade my computer, will using the DVX-100 be a pain in the ass for editing?

I see no advantage to edit in 24 fps mode, so I assume I can still editi in 29.97, but do I have to do anything.

My understand was the footage recorded on to the Mini-Dv tape is 29.97, but the 24 info is also stored on there, so you can get the footage to be in 24 if you so desired.

So if I wanted to shoot on 24p, but edit in 29.97 using Final Cut Pro 3, should I have no problems?

I jsut want the film look that 24 gives you, but since I don't plan on going to film I see no need to edit in 24fps.

thanks for any education you can give me.

Thank you.

I have a notice stuck near the top of the DVX100 Forum with some links that should help. If you have additional questions post back here and I'll try to help.

I didn't see any notice about Final Cut Pro 3... I saw one about 4 that linkes to the Apple website.

Basically I just want to know if I buy this camera, and shoot in one of their 24 modes, can I edit the footage using FCP 3?

What are the steps?

Can I pop the tape I recorded on the DVX-100 into my Sony deck and import the footage like I always have before.

specs
 

John,
ahh, you're in Tokyo too?

here it is.
one G4 1G dual OSX with Cinewave Final cut pro 3.0
37GB OS HD, over a tera of raid HD, 120GB Firewire HD,
one G4 OSX with Final cut pro 3.0
20GB OS HD, 115GB for video storage.
We do split the sequence into different pieces, but there seems to be jumps on the audio when printing to tape. Seems to happen to both machines. This did not happen to other projects, just this long one. This is strange.
Takeshi

Takeshi,

Yes...I'm in Hakozakicho. I'll send you my phone number by e-mail... we should talk sometime.

Now, about your problem. First, the dropped frames...it's possible to get a dropped frames warning when there haven't actually been any dropped frames. This happens sometimes when other processes are running on the computer, such as your e-mail being checked automatically, etc. You'll see that the "dropped frames error" box has popped up. But if you click to "continue" and then later check, sometimes you'll find that there's no dropped frames at all...the footage looks fine. So, my first recommendation is to continue rendering to the end and then check to see if there actually is a problem. Have you done that? Let us know. If so, we'll try to come up with another option.

About the audio being out of sync...have you selected the "Sync Audio" option in your FCP preferences? If that is selected, that'll help your audio stay matched to your video. Have you done that? If not...give it a try and let us know if that works. If it doesn't work, I do something very "low tech" that seems to work. I'll just cut the video and audio at certain intervals...unnoticeable in the final product.

If none of the above helps, we'll get some of the FCP wizards involved. It's nighttime in the U.S., so as soon as morning hits maybe we can get Jeff Donald or Ken Tanaka to chime in with their ideas.

Output to After Effects and back to FCP
 

I've got a gig cutting together this project for a client... he's got a nice set-up with a high end G4 and he dished out the dollars for Magic Bullet as well.


here's the deal: I need to work on every single shot of the project. I need to color correct all of it and need to do an assortment of other things before I get to the Magic Bullet Look Suite.


I was asking around on some MB boards about some issues and was told it was best to CC in AE since I would be able to see how it effects the shot after applying MB and that makes sense to me.

The issue is that I've been told that my methodology for getting clips into and back out of AE isn't right.

(I'm pretty much doing exactly what this article says:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage...en_fcp_ae.html
)

Now this article is a couple of years old and I know there has to be some people that are doing this on a regular basis and can give me the straight sh*t on this subject and I trust the people here more then many other boards I read.

Sooooo, if you output to AE and then back into FCP tell me what settings and workflow you use.

Thanks in advance!

OH, and he won't spend the money to get Automatic Duck so don't bother suggesting it.

FCP4, DVX100 and Timecode break repair
 

Greetings,

Has anyone out there used FCP4's new "create new clip at timecode break" feature.
It's an interesting addition and could be very helpful for those unexplained timecode breaks that pop up here and there.We will be testing this feature next week as we recently shot a project in 24P advanced on the DVX100 and some of the tapes are full of breaks between start/stops. They didn't occur when reviewing the footage or powering off, but just during a normal start/stop.
I'd be curious if anyone else is having this problem and has any ideas on what may be casuing it.

Cheers,

Paul

I have been exporting the footage out of FCP (& no audio) as a Anim quality Quicktime movie> In AE add the timeline to the render queue and then render (when you feel like a coffee) in AE lossless (as i often have some transparent parts in the footage) then import that back into a FCP bin.
Apparently you can also export as a FCP reference movie to save HDD space. Is this what you were asking?

plugin AE<->FCP
 

has anyone used the plugin to convert AE into FCP. Sounds handy but a bit expensive.
Takeshi

If you look at the article I reference they say to export as FCP movie... this way AE only works from the original captured files.


Exporting back they suggestyou use the MAKE MOVIE export with a variation on the LOSSLESS preset resetting the format to DV and LOWER FIRST.


This, I believe, is when you don't have layers like you are talking about.


I've read the reviews of Automatic Duck and it seems pretty cool, it does something like recreating your timeline in an AE composition. But I've never used it and at 300+ US$, doubt I will for a long time unless a client buys it and lets me play with it.

Thanks-I'll hit my Disk with Norton and see how it goes. I managed to get results by making some room on the drive but now I am getting crashes as soon as I try to render or even when I open up a projetct sometimes. It's all very strange!

Need Mac help please!
 

I'll admit it. I've only been using a Mac since December and really have no idea about how it works.

It's a power mac. 2 120gig drives. I had both on my desktop. I clicked on my video drive to do a get info thing to see if I had enough room to capture some stuff a friend wanted me to work on. I've got a few projects going and wasn't sure if there was enough space left. I accidentally hit eject instead. Now it's gone and I have no idea how to get it back. I didn't delete the drive right? How do I acces the files that are on there. Please help...anyone? I'm running 10.2.2

Just restart you computer and it will remount all your drives that are attached.

It sounds like you're still over 80% capacity on your drive. Optimum performance is obtained by capturing to a separate physical drive (not a partition of the main drive). It is not uncommon to have crashes or freezes, etc when capturing to the system drive.

converting NTSC to PAL via quicktime?
 

I have a NTSC project in FCP and I need to burn it on PAL for DVD... Ok, so I understand I can do this from FCP into quicktime, then to iDVD... what settings should I use on my quicktime. 25fps, right? what about the audio? 48? Then do I just drag it to iDVD and go from there?
Thanks guys and gals, you rock!
-Kyle

Thanks -- That's what I ended up doing. I wasn't sure what it would do, but I figured it couldn't get worse.

Kyle, is it an important paying project or some personal stuff where resolution isn't super critical? IF it's a paying/distrubition job then I would have it converted professionally as going from NTSC to PAL there is a resolution difference of nearly 100 lines. Many people have said that footage that originated on NTSC and then "upconverted" so to speak to PAL looks very soft and washed out. There is also the problem of what to do with the extra 5fps, as they are simply discarded by some software conversion functions the footage can appear jittery, especially in fast motion sequences.

Most, if not all, PAL DVD players can play NTSC DVD's. You may be OK with regular NTSC. But, like Adrian suggests, if it is a paying client get the conversion done professionally. Quicktime conversions are only fair quality, in my opinion.

Thanks guys,
Yes, this is a paying client, but they ordered 4 DVD's of their wedding. They didn't say anything about NTSC or PAL. The Brides parents live in India, so I thought I'd give them a PAL version in addition to the NTSC version. Mostly as an experiment to see if I could do it. If they want it convereted professionally, that's up to them. I'm not being paid to do it.
If the PAL version doesn't look good enough, the parents will have a NTSC version as well.

Mac Fonts
 

I need to purchase a new font to add to a project I'm editing, and one thing I've never understood is the difference between TrueType and PostScript fonts. I looked through my current system font folder and it looks like all of them are TT.

What's the difference? Are PostScript fonts okay to use?

Corel Painter 8 and FCP questions
 

I dont know if there are any Corel users here but i am having a problem when I import a .psd with layers made in Corel and open it in the timeline of FCP3 all of the colors basically turn semi transparent or purplish blue in other words its all screwed up on every layer.If i save a .pict of the same file and import it to FCP evrything looks fine.I assume this has something to do with the layers when i'm saving in Corel but I cant figure it out.

Any suggestions?

Matt,
I just tried importing a multilayer Painter 8 file, saved as a .psd and had no trouble. All colors on all layers appear true. I saved the Painter file in RGB color format with alpha preserved.

Ken I still havent figured it out.I saved the exact same way.Is there a FCP setting that i need to change to import layers llike this?Basically my reds will turn blue my blacks will turn blue and it has a photo negative style look to it as well - if this makes any sense.

Check your email, Matt.

What's the process like going the other way, from an analogue video in PAL to digital NTSC? Is this also a job best left to a pro facility, or is it possible on a Mac (with what as a front end?)?

Linc Kesler

getting composite vid into fcp
 

Ok I've never been on a chat board, or edited on fcp, so forgive me if i'm outta line here, but here goes:
I've been making 16mm films for 17 years and now finally got a g4 and fcp3. I need to learn about options to import composite ntsc into fcp. I'm also interested in ways of bringing in still images. I know i can borrow my girlfriend's dv camera and use it as an I/O and come in on the firewire. OK, but what are other options? I'd love to eventually work with a less-compressed signal, but all the options I've seen (like Kona) cost thousands and require more computer than I have. In the meantime, is there a low-cost card (and driver--if necessary) available that will do the same job of (digitizing, compressing, encoding--what ever it is that happening in there) that a consumer dv camcorder will do? Is there one that will also bring in stereo analog audio?
I greatly appreciate any advice that will spare me from trying to "decode" this info from salespeople. Cheers, bill

Frame skips on FCP 3 - help!
 

Hi all:
I'm cutting a project on my FCP 3.0.2 based Mac (G4 1GHZ Dual + 40 GB internal 7400 HDD + 80 GB internal 7400 HDD + 1 Gig RAM). While playing my project off the timeline, I'm noting frames skipping every now and then. Rebooting doesn't make it go away.
Could this require a defrag of the media HDD (that's the 80 GB disk)? Went through a lot of footage in Offline RT format before I deleted the unused media and recaptured my rough cut in HiRes. I assume that means the media files may be fragmented across the HDD... documentation on the Apple site says their file system ensures defargging is rerely needed.
...Any ideas? Need to sort this out fast - I'm nearing the end of my edit, and if I need to recapture everything or something, I'd like to know soon!
Best,
Ram

How full are the drives? Do you have media on both drives or just one?

If quality is an issue (and when isn't it?) then use QT. It looks OK going from PAL to NTSC. The other way looks pretty bad to my eyes. Just do and import and export through QT and you have it. some people claim better results using After Effects, but from what I've seen it isn't worth the effort.

Almost all PAL DVD players can play NTSC.

tips on speedy editing and transitions, please.
 

I have a question about how can I speed up editing in FCE. My main concern is with the transitions. I am a self taught user because this is what they use at work, but they don't seem to have manuals anywhere, and I think I've gotten what I can from the apple user site.

In FCE I use the viewer to cut up footage and assemble in the Timeline and then I add transitions, but each transition takes forever it seems.

What I do is pull a dissolve down from the effects tab and drop it in place, and then the same for the audio, then I adjust the duration. then over and over again the same way for each transition.

How can speed this up? Is there a way to save transitions with audio crossfades somewhere for quick access? What methods do you guys use?

any help is greatly appreciated. thanks.

Jeff, thanks:
The media files are all on the larger (80 GB) disk. The 80GB disk has about 45 GB of data on it; the 40 GB disk has about 15 GB of data on it (software etc.)
I'd have thought I'd only see playback detrioration after filling up about 75% of either HD...
I'm running a Norton Utilities defragment on any fragmented media files in the meantime, just to see whether any of the media files are fragmented.
Best,
Ram

There are several low cost boxes that will convert analog video and audio to DV and back. The Dazzle Hollywood Bridge is one, Canopus makes a fine unit also. You will still end up with DV and the inherent 5:1 compression. If your looking to go uncompressed, then you will need a card like the Kona. They are not cheap, but nothing about uncompressed digital video is cheap. Uncompressed media requires many large hard drives and other support media. In other words it's expensive.

Welcome to the forums and make use of the search function that will allow you to view the over 11,000 threads and over 75,000 responses. It's a pretty amazing archive of information. But if you can't find exactly what your looking for post back and help will be on the way.

favorites...
 

you can make a transition a default, then you can right click between two clips in the timeline to automatically place that transition, alternately you can drag from viewer into the canvas and overwrite or insert with transition so it is done on the go.

dv is compressed....
 

if you are looking to use FCP then you will be working in DV so it's not going to matter if you bring it in using a DV camera or a deck, except for the fact that you probably have a lot of footage to bring in and a deck will be a much faster, easier process and it won't wear down the heads of your camera. Not all camera's have analog in, you know, but I'm fairly sure all or nearly all decks will have analog in. that's all you need.

Cropping Quicktimes?
 

I have something that is letterboxed on DV at around a 2.30:1 aspect ratio. I would like to make a Quicktime of this for the net, but I don't want the black bars in there. I may answer my own question as I type this, but is there a way to crop out the black bars and just have a wider Quicktime? The only way I could think of would be to take the DV file into FCP and somehow "stretch" it vertically, and then export to the Quicktime codec of my choice at a resolution that fits the aspect ratio. I have no idea, but that might lose a bit of quality being stretched and distorted back and forth like that. Only one way to find out I suppose.

Any other ideas/suggestions?