Hello Sharon,
iMovie is fine for many home videos or hobbyist applications. It's pretty capable within a very small largely avocational sphere. FCP is a full-bodied nle capable of handling nearly anything thrown at it.

Which one is right for you will depend largely on what you need to do. What are you editing? Where is it going? What type of media? etc. Since iMovie is free, give it a try first. The next intermediate step would be to Final Cut Express, in terms of cost. Then to Final Cut Pro or Avid DVExpress.

I'm editing for commercial broadcast. Again, I'm looking at straight-forward edits with some dissolves.

My advice: Just get FCP 3. You're going to need it's capabilities such as the broadcast-safe checker/corrector, the color correction facility, the audio editing facilities, etc., etc.

iMovie is not appropriate for your application.

Alternatively you could just hire a professional editor on a project basis if you don't want to dig into FCP for yourself.

If you don't want to spend the grand for FCP 3, FCP Express might be just the ticket. You can compare major differences ($700 savings) at the top of the page If you need to work from Betacam the RS-422 control might be a big factor.

This thread seems to have gone cold quick.

I just tried for the first time to use iDVD 3 and have the same problems with text buttons for scene selections. Buttons that are vertically aligned work fine in preview, but after burned to dvd they are linked and effectively only select the first chapter marker.

Also I have one motion button and although I had touble getting it to show as scaled to fit the button in edit mode, it did scale in preview mode, BUT when burned to DVD the motion video is unscaled, showing only the upper left corner of the video.

I filed a bug report with Apple...

iDVD3
 

I had several long sessions with Apple support which were frustrating. Basically they said these problems were a non-issue as far as they were concerned (this may have changed since my initial calls). Re the buttons issue - the software seems to work fine if you don't use the "free" floating option. I also have consistently gotten clean burns . . . altho others have not. The chapter marks (exported from FCP) work great!

I appreciate hearing other users comments. Perhaps as more folks start to use iDVD3 more information will be available.

I've had similar problems with my external drive. I recently upgraded from FCP 3 in OS 9 to FCP 3 in OS X, and started having problems with the quality of the footage I was capturing from my XL-1 to my external 7200 RPM (80 gig IDE drive in a firewire case).

I never did solve the problem, but now I just capture to my 30 gig internal (non-system) drive, then use the media manager tool to move the captured footage to my external 80 gig. This method seems to work fine - I have no problems playing back footage from the drive, or saving render files to it or anything - just capture.

I suspect it has something to do with firewire drivers or something specific to OSX. It may even be some kind of bottlenecking, as my camera is also plugged in via firewire - but this should only occur if they were both plugged in to some kind of firewire hub, whcih they're not.

So anyway Jeff (three Jeff's, crazy) you may want to try this if you have say, 15 to 30 gigs free space on an internal drive for swapping.

Jeff Pelletier

Single/Dual processor upgrades
 

Have any of you upgraded your Macs with a upgrade
processor like the Powerlogix? They have 1GHz single/dual
processors. I'm considering to upgrade. Wondered if there
were any kind of issues with FCP/Video?

thanks,
--james

Capturing Audio and Video to separate files?
 

To all you FCP users out there.

DO you capture audio and video seperately? I am wondering if, with three hard drives in my G4, if the performance of FCP would be improved If I choose to select physically different drives for audio and video. I know my G4-400 is no speed demon, however I just wanted to know if this tweek is worthwile or not. This machine is dedicated to FCP. No other software installed.

I don't think it would make any difference. I always keep the onboard audio as well as the seperate audio. It takes up more space, but I use that to help sync the new audio.

Try it. In some cases the separate files create sync problems, in other cases it solves them. It may provide a slight increase in performance.

I haven't heard of any problems with the single processor upgrades. Dual processor upgrades have created some problems (OS related and FCP related) for a few users. I would discuss in detail the planned upgrade with the retailer your purchasing from and see about returns if it doesn't work.

Check out http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/. They have user reports for just about every hardware configuration and upgrade card. People report any issues they have during installation and regular use. You should be able to find what you're looking for there.

Rick

I remember trying to optimize audio from a video clip in sound forge once. I saved the audio at a different rate, which blew any chance of getting it to sync. Back to step one...

MacGurus has an active upgrade forum you might want to check.

Freeze Frame
 

when dumping to my Beta SP deck, it will only record the first frame of each edit. and thats if i use the up arrow in the canvas window. what sup?

Thanks for the advice guys. This is definately an option.
Appreciate it.

--james

capturing from XL-1 to FCX
 

Hi Jeff,
I just read your post and I myself wanted to ask something relating to your question. I'll do this at the end of my answer to your question.
The only way I had no problems capturing from the XL-1 is the following:
Capture your video material in MacOS 9.2.2 with FCP 2.0.2. Then you will have no problems. Regardless to all the other tricks people told me this works. It makes no difference if your working on a G3 Powerbook, a G3 iMac, a G4 AGP Graphics or a new G4 2x 1MHz. I tried them all with all variations of FCP and MacOS versions 9.2.x up to 10.2.4.
FCP 3 and 3.0.2 on MacOS X Jaguar does capture but sets the captured material offline and you can't find a file on your hard disk afterwords.
FCP 3 and 3.0.2 in MacOS 9.2.2 does not capture, shows time breaks after two minutes or so. There is no help.
Having captured your video material and saved it as a new project, you can then switch to FCP 3.0.2 in MacOS 9.2.2 or MacOS X Jaguar open and save your project and you're out of trouble. You can now cut your film as usual. Only problem is you have to renew this process, if you have forgotten some video material and must capturenew material. You can't open your project on FCP 9.2.2, because of compatability problems between FCP 2 and 3.
So you have to start a new Project as described before. Afterwords you can import the captured material into your first project by "Import", "Drag and Drop" or "Copy and Paste".
Apple has a real problem with Canon and the XL-1. What I described is a repeatable bug and a heavy one. You can't change completely to MacOS Classic and Jaguar, because the described method does not work in Classic mode. FCP 2.0.2 does not work in the Classic mode. You need Mac OS 9.2.2. The problem appeared with FCP 3, did not change in FCP 3.0.2 regardless which system version you have. There are so many video companies out there using Canon's XL-1 or XL-1s and the Macintosh, I can't understand Apple's attitude.
I myself wanted to know from this american list, if somebody had heard of Apple's reactions to user complaints.
In Germany not so many people work with the XL-1 and the Macintosh and the clerks at Apple Germany did not answer my requests.

Best Regards
Wolf

Yeah, it looks like I'll have to do the tedious frame by frame animation.

Oh well. Thanks for the replies guys!

NAB Rumors
 

A final beta version of FCP 4 was recently released and the stage seems to be set for the introduction of FCP 4 and DVDSP 2. Yes, recent rumors have a new version of DVDSP being announced. It is said to offer much tighter integration with FCP 4.

FCP 4 is rumored to include hundreds of real time effects, support for DV50 and FireWire 800, 24 fps editing, and it will run only on OS X. Shake may also play a support role in FCP.

I would expect some exciting news from Apple at NAB.

Distortion in frame edges
 

This is a problem I have wondered about for quite some time. When creating smaller frames within the screen the edges can often appear fine on my monitor but distorted or "bent" on the tv screen preventing me from getting nice square boxes. Can someone enlighten me as to what the source of this problem is?

Realtime preview on premiere?
 

Hi there,

I recently switched from PC to mac. Does the Mac version of Premiere 6.5 have realtime preview like the PC version. If so where can I enable it. Maybe I'm just blind...... ?

Most Excellent
 

A bump on both would be excellent, IF the features are there. I'm actually very happy with FCP 3 except for a few bugs, but a new version of DVDSP would be most welcome -- especially if it have a better more controllable encoder. Of course, better compositing and text features in FCP would be great.

Thanks for the heads-up. Are you headed to NAB?

640x480 or 720x480 NTSC
 

Ok please excuse my ignorance on this subject, but I just realized when I open a project in Premiere I open a 720x480 Project, and I just noticed after cutting and pasting a frame into photoshop from the capture window....that the frame is actually 640x480, but when I drop it into the timeline it streches to 720x480? Thought this was strange.

Now my question is why do I find the standard NTSC Frame size as 640x480??? I always thought it was 720x480? It seams that PAL has always been at 720x576. Can somebody clear this up for me?

Thanks
Brian

It's all about the pixel aspect ratio. On a computer monitor it's 1.0, for digital video it's .9

720 x .9 = 648 actually. I imagine Photoshop and FCP are doing this conversion for you when you cut and paste.

XL1 Frame mode+Black Diffusion Filter+Magic Bullet
 

=mud?

Has anyone seen how footage shot in frame mode on an XL1 that was softened with a Tiffen black diffusion/fx filter looks after its been run through Magic Bullet?

So If I capture from an analog source at 640x480 it is the same as coming from a digital source at 720x480 because the pixels will get stretched? Also if my analog camera captures 700+ lines of resolution do all those lines just create a better looking image at 640x480 or does anything over 525 lines or so just get discarded?

Thanks,
Brian

1-anything over 525 lines gets lost in the translation
2-the "correct" way to import an image from Photoshop is to create the image with the pallet set to 720x480. Then save the image as 640x480 (introducing some horizontal compression distortion into the saved image)
When the image is imported, if the PAR is set to .909, everything will come out in the right proportion. Reverse the procedure for going from frame to image.

DV compression
 

Hello

Had a discussion with a friend the other day about DV compression in edit systems like FCP and Avid Xpress. I though that once your source material is recorded on DV (using the standard DV 1:5 compression), the quality of all copies will remain the same. So it doesn't matter if you make a dub of a tape or edit it in FCP and dump it back to DV tape, whatever goes back to a DV master still has the quality of the original camera tape.
My friend however stated that when you run a copy of a DV-tape (either from an edit system or tape to tape), every copy applies the 1:5 DV-compression. Hence, his pov is that when you're editing DV, it always is best to make your final online in a tape to tape suite, editing directly from the original camera tapes.
I find this hard to believe, because if the 1:5 theory is true, this would mean that second and third generation DV-copies would be of worse quality than those of VHS...which is of course not the case.
The reason for needing to know all this, is that we are doing a DV-based project, editing on several different computers but in the end mastering all that material in a Media 100-suite. I proposed to dump the edits from the different computers to DV sub-masters for finl edit in M100, and at that moment the discusion started...
Looking forward to your comments!
Thanks in advance,
Michiel

DV transfers the data intact through firewire to the computer and back without alteration. You can edit all you want without recompressing the file. However if you apply effects or dissolves or something that actually CHANGES the video image then it must be rendered and recompressed. I have rendered and recompressed DV video any times over just for fun and I didn't notice much, if any, loss.

Jerky quicktime movies from AE 5.5
 

I have been experimenting rendering small clips from
after affects 5.5 in different formats and different
compression settings, as quicktime movies. Some
settings seem to give me very jerky playback in
quicktime.
for example photo jpeg @ 75% is ok but @
89% it is jerky and @ 100% its ok. Motion jpeg b @100%
is jerky.
Anyone got any ideas ??

It sounds like convergence problems on consumer TV sets. It could also be pincushion or barrel distortion. These should be minimized on professional or broadcast production monitors.

I don't use 6.5 too often and when I do it's on a clients machine. I'll look into it Monday. You might also want to try the Adobe site, they have a Premiere forum.

No, not this year. I have a close colleague going and he's promised to email me any earth shattering developments.

I don't use the Tiffen diffusion filters, but I've heard and seen good things. What effects are you using in MB? You might just want to de interlace and adjust motion and not use the full suite.

The 525 lines is vertical resolution, fixed by the NTSC standard. The 700 lines refers to the horizontal resolution and is the rating of the camera head. But in most cases the signal has to go to tape and that is the limiting factor. Mini DV is rated at about 500 lines of horizontal resolution.

When mini DV was first announced it was claimed 100 generations without loss of quality. I think in practical terms 20 generations is a safe limit. Codecs do vary and QuickTime is one of the better Codecs. Codecs have been discussed here before and links to several sites that compare different Codecs have been posted. Use the search function and you should find many good threads on the issue of Codecs.

I would need to see the clips to give an accurate assessment. However, I generally use more even numbers, 50, 60, 70% etc. not 57, 77, 89%.

Try Sorenson. It's a really nice codec.

distortion...
 

I am not sure what any of these things are but I have witnessed this on a number of different TV's over the years. I assume then that I can expect this, to various degrees, on any TV? What about Plasma screens and projection or is the distortion caused by the tube ?