3D software for FCP???
 

I'm looking to purchase SOME kind of 3D software for FCP. I need to be able to make & fly 3D logos in all axis planes, have it key-out in FCP, etc.
Maybe make simple animations that keu out over video, stuff like that.

Only problem is - WHICH PROGRAM?
How does FCP import these rendered animations?
What files does FCP import?

Any one use PIXELS 3D?
Does it import into FCP?

ANY help would be great.....
WAAAAAAY too many programs out there and I'm not sure what to buy that WORKS with FCP...

Carl

You could use any 3D program that will support alpha channels. If you just want to do flying logo's and that sort of stuff maybe look at Boris RED. If you want to use it for building 3d animations maybe try Cinema 4D. I haven't used Pixel 3D so I can't comment on it but most 3D packages have a demo you can download to try out. You would most likely build the 3D animation and render it out as a QuickTime movie (using the "Animation" uncompressed codec) and then import it into your FCP project. If it is a flying Logo on a black background you could then key on the background to replace it with video. If the black background was your alpha channel you could just composite it over. If you need the video to be "ON" the logo you would be better off doing it in the 3D program and using the video as a texture map but this is entirely dependent on your 3D package and is beyond the scope of explaination on these boards.
My top 3 favorites for 3D are:
Maya 4.5
Cinema 4D
Lightwave 3D
Check out the Apple OS X section for 3D apps you can try out.
Also look into others such as Boris RED that are more specifically for titles as well as effects.

Carl,
This is really a task that's more in the realm of AfterEffects or some of the dedcated 3D tools rhett noted.

Zaxwerks's 3D Invigorator is one of the best products for such an application. It is a plug-in set for AfterEffects and other programs, but not for FCP.

Adobe was packing the basic version free with the purchase of the AE production bundle. I don't know if they still are. If you don't have AE this might give you a good excuse to get it!

There is a current string on this topic over on the LAFCPUG board. There is a report that the sync adjust in FCP 3.0.4 doesn't work. My preliminary testing has confirmed that, though I haven't dug too deeply yet. Several 10 minute clips from my XL-1 show no correction in the Browser.

Photo Shop with FCP
 

Hi Gys. 2 questions:
I need to integrate couple of PhotoShop pages into FCP. Are there any specifications Ineed to know about, so it will be broadcast quality on FCP.

Also, I will be showing my little piece on a Flat Screen TV which unfortunately makes the image look streched. How can I compensate for that. Is there a specific preference I need to change in FCP?
ANY info is appreciated.
Thank you. :)

Read the tutorial over at LAFCPUG. If you have time they have several other Photoshop tutorials I would recommend for a good understanding of the work flow.

Jeff

Thanks. What about the Flat Screen TV. Is there a speical specification for that? Do I need to change preferences on FCP while I am editing or after edting but before transfering back to DVD or tape so I can play it on the flat screen without any distortion (Streched face effect)

NTSC monitor and Mac
 

This may be a stupid question for you guys but I'll ask it anyway :)
I got a calibrated NTSC monitor to color correct the images on FCP. Anyone knows what components I need to hook up the monitor to the Computer. I have a G4, OSX.
Again,
Thanks :)

What monitor do you have and what type of signal will it input, composite, component, RGB ?

Jeff

Vx2000, Cable Or Post Problem?
 

I was having a few problems with video I shot after capturing it in Final Cut Pro. When I try and edit to tape, I get a flashing of black and white images in the camera. The fire wire seems to be fine. I'm wondering if there's something with the camera. I even tried it in Adobe Priemer and updating drivers etc, which leaves the camera. Any help is appreciated.

you need to stretch it from 4:3 proportions to Square pixels (1:1). Usually by stretching it from 720 in width to 768.

FCP on an iBook??
 

I'm wondering how usable it is on one. I have an iBook 600 combo drive. It would only be for home use; I don't ever plan on trying to make any money on it.

I was reading about FCX, but I think I can get the educational price on FCP. Thanks.

Kirk

Kirk,
I have an 800 mhz iBook and edit with FCP 3 on it, I use it mainly in RT Offline mode. So far it has been okay. If I was to edit with it using the full resolution DV, then I would get an external firewire hard drive to hold all my media. The only thing about using FCP on an iBook is probably waiting for it to render, it might be a little slow.

i have an iBook/600 with 640MB of RAM and a G4/500 (single) with 1gb of RAM. they perform about the same. i've done photoshop and ae and fcp tests, and they both run pretty much neck and neck *unless* there's a lot of disk activity. which is why i use the g4 that has more disk space. but i think the iBook would be fine if i plugged my firewire drives into it. one thing to note is that if you're capturing, some people have had problems using only one firewire ( i.e. capturing to an external fw drive on your iBook ). i haven't had those problems, but i've seen them noted on the board before.

If y'all need more info let me know. I hope this is not what to expect for the future in terms of responses.

Your description of the problem doesn't mean much to me. Try and be more precise about what is going on and how you have things hooked up and exactly at what step in the process the artifacts appear.

Do you mean when you attempt to transfer the video back to the camera, you have the artifacts? Where do you see the flashing B&W images and when. All the time? It may be that you need to ask this question on the Macintosh Editing Forum where I"m transferring this thread.

You posted on the weekend which is always a bit slower in terms of action.

being flat screen shouldn't make a difference but you do need to squish the picture by changing the image size in photoshop then save it. then later when it is played back on a tv the image will be stretched back to the proper look. Depending whether you use PAL or NTSC the number of pixels will vary too. .

and if I use images from the DVcam and I edit them together, will the final peice look "streched" when it plays on a flat screen TV with ratio of 16:9? Sorry if the question seems dumb but I am trying to learn as much as I can :)

trying to capture to FCP 3.0 for the first time
 

This is going to be an AMAZINGLY simple question for 99.5% of you but does the GL2 come with the proper firewire cord needed for me to capture video through FCP 3.0 on a Mac laptop (667 mhz)? I have the cord that is firewire to USB (for the card, right?) What am I missing? or nothing? This is my first attempt at it and I am stuck at the start. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Again thanks.

Vito

The GL2 doesn't come supplied with a firewire cable. I was a bit upset when I brought mine home and found that out :) You can pick up one at the apple store among other places. I believe it's a 4 to 6 pin type.

Just received this in the mail today. It has very short interviews but they are very interesting definitely worth the free price tag!

Help Help Help
 

I posted a link about photoshop before and Jeff was kind enough to send me a tutorial link about it. I'm trying to do the Main Titles and end titles for my Documentary.
The book "Final Cut Pro 3 And The ARt Of Filmmaking" says FCP can not handle more than 10 Layers. The Tutorial (a reprint from KenStone's page) says nothing about that. I have a photoshop file with 25 layers. The book says to create the pixel ratio at 720X540, rasterize the layers and then resize to 720X480. The tutorial says to change the height settings from 534 to 480 and leave width at 720 (something the book does not even mention.) One source says to save as .PSD. Another says to save as Targa!?
I transferred my photoshop layers into FCP and the titles were jagged and looked very amaturish. I hit the book and the tutorial again looking for solutions: the book says in order to avoid such problem I need to make sure the colors are set for NTSC monitor by changing the setting for each layer (the tutorial doe snot even mention that unless I missed it?. Maybe I did. I'm highly stressed out anyway :) So I did that and discovered that a rasterized .PSD file is not being accepted at FCP!. Whenever I try to Import the rastorized file it gives me an error message saying: not enough memory. I have 89.9 GB left on my hard drive and when I Import the regular (unrasterized) .psd file it gets imported fine into my Browser (with jagged edges around the titles.)
I am going NUTS. My deadline is this Friday to submit my documentary to 5 festivals. Can Anyone help? Or at least tell me what is wrong with what I am doing? Is there a way you can walk me through the process? I can call you anywhere in the States. Any help you can dispense is GREATLY appreciated. Please HELP.
Thanks :)

Great. Thanks a lot Kirk for your help. I will go down to the Apple Store tomorrow and pick one up.

Take care,
Vito Zarrillo

Most cameras don't come with firewire cables, but all firewire cards do. At least, they should!

What version of FCP and Photoshop are you using? How much ram is on your computer? If you don't know, go to the Apple menu in the upper left corner, select about this Mac and it will show you.

Jeff

Dang, Jeff! Another thing we expats can't get. Wouldn't want to forward yours over here when you're done with it, would you?

The error message you're getting is most probably due to a lack of RAM rather than HD space. What do you have? 512 probably? If you can juice that up to 1 GB that would take care of your memory problem.

As for the number of layers, is it absolutely necessary to have that many layers? Are you animating all of them? If certain elements will appear simultaneously, just merge those layers together.

It is a Sony Trinitron Model # CVM-1271 color receiver monitor BNC line in Composite. Trying to get from my FCP timeline tp the DV cam Firewire and then from Dv cam to Monitor via Rca cables. What Kind of a Video Capture card do I need for OSX That has Composite and S-Video in/out.

You use the monitor hooked up to view the video footage being passed through your camera. You use the color controls in FCP to make adjustments. The monitor is used to evaluate your adjustments for accuracy. The images on a computer monitor will not match the images on a NTSC monitor. Why do you need an analog capture device?

Well, o.k. What do I need to do? I was able to get the image from FCP onto the Monitor by using teh camera as a medium in between. But whenever I do that some cuts become renderless (red line above the cut) and when I disconnect the camera and start FCP again, the red line dissapears and I get my renders back.! Weird huh!
To simplify it, do you have any solution on how I can see FCP timeline playing on the NTSC monitor so I can judge the color correcion I do?

I installed an Orange Micro FW/USB combo card into a Beige G3. I had no problems capturing or writing DV to my SONY TRV103. I haven't tried FCP.

Well I spoke with Ken Stone (yup, I emailed him last night after being really desperate, and he was kind enough to give me his number to call him) and he explained to me that it was not the Ram or anything else but the fact that the Book that I bought, listed some wrong info about how to trasnfer photoshop files to FCP. Apparently, by adding an empty layer at the beg of the PSD file -as the book suggestes- will cause FCP to freak out and give the error message: not enough memory!. He told me to get rid of the empty layer and few other tips that exist on his tutorial at kenstone.net. I did just that this morning and it worked fine :)

Now, the only problem that I have is that the titles have jagged edge in FCP. They look SOLID when the playhead is placed on one frame. Not sure what his solution will be on this (he hasn't gotten back to me on this.) If you guys know of any solution don't hesitate to reply. Thanks to all of you and your kind replies :)

As far as the 'file format' of miniDV, digital 8 and DVCAM, they are the same. I move freely between these three formats, going in and out of iMovie and FCP.

I use a 1 pixel motion blur on the text, as suggested in Tom Wolsky's tutorial.

In your A/V settings make sue your set to view external video, CMD + F12.

maybe i'm offering redundant info but here's how mine is set up:

dv -> ( firewire ) -> macintosh
dv -> ( composite ) -> monitor

seems to work for me.

Need Mac hard drive help.
 

Not sure which forum this question goes in so I threw it here for now:

OK - I'm finding that my 240gig machine isn't big enough. What's the deal with adding new internal hard drives? I've been building PCs for a number of years but this is my first Mac and I'm not reallly sure what's what. Any hard drive will do or are there specific Mac drives? Do I need to worry about partitioning and formating? Any help?

Mark what Mac are you using and what OS version? Depending on the Mac you can have 3, 4 or 5 internal drives. Newer macs use IDE/ATA drives. Generally speaking, 7200RPM drives are preferred. The maximum size depends on the OS version your using. Older OS's don't recognize drives larger than 137GB. They can be used, but the OS only sees 137GB. The rest is wasted.

It's a PowerMac dual 1.25 running OSX (not sure what version though)

Mark,

You can find out the version of your OS by clicking on the Apple in the upper left and selecting About this Mac. The window that pops up will display the version.

You can probably use any size drive, including the newer 180Gb and 200Gb size drives. Why are you getting larger drives? Are they for media with FCP or iMovie? Are they for MP3's? If they are for media, I don't partition them and I only put media on the the drive. The drive fragments less and I see fewer problems with dropped frames etc.

If the new drive is going to be the system drive I definitely do partition. I use a small partition (2GB) for OS 9xx, a large partition for OS 10.x.x and it's applications (depending on drive size 30GB to 100GB) and the remainder for MP3's, digital image files, etc.