NLE Mac / Final Cut questions from 2003

[Rob Lohman]

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....

[Gary Chavez]

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.

[Rob Lohman]

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

[Gary Chavez]

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

[Rob Lohman]

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>

[Gary Chavez]

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.

[Chris Kay]

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

[Edwin Quan]

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. :)

[Gary Chavez]

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.

[Gary Chavez]

should read ..primary sound on 1...

[Kris Durkin]

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

[Edwin Quan]

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.

[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

[Edwin Quan]

<<<-- 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.

[Kirk Messner]

Thanks !!