What UPS do you use?
 

I am interesting in purchasing UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) device for my NLE system and was just wondering what you use and if you have any tips for me.

Thank you.

There are only two good ones, iirc from my research a couple of years ago. Those by Belkin and, especially, those by APC. If you're not sure, get one by APC.

Don't go by the power hold times listed on the box. Your current draw may differ.

Keep in mind, too, that most power outages don't last more than five minutes. That's plenty of time to quit out of your work and shutdown properly. Of course, that doesn't help with long renders but if you are going to be down more than an hour your UPS won't help you anyway unless you can spend the really big bucks.

I like the APC ones - they appear automatically in the prefs on my new G5, with settings for what to do when the power goes out etc. and battery life. I had a problem with an APC and they shipped a new one straight to me, and were very helpful on the phone.

Graeme

Nesting problems in Final Cut
 

I have a nested sequence. I double click on this nested sequence to bring up a new tab that shows all the individual clips on their various tracks. However when I make changes to these clips and then go back to the nested version it remains unchanged. Why is this happening?

To clarify my problem: The nested sequence is my final version with final filters and audio settings applied. I just want to go in and tweak a couple of the clips, I make my changes to the relevant clips but when I go to the nested version - it shows that the area where I made the changes needs re-rendering but in fact the changes are not there.

Am I being stupid here - what's going on?

What version of FCP are you using?

It's not Pro :( - it's Express. I have done it before on different sequences and it has worked. Don't know why it's not working now.

Moving my Mac
 

Hey guys!

I will be moving in the next month and wondered if you any of you knew or know of any precautions that I should take in packing and moving my G5. During my last move, I lost everything on my PC. I know with PC's there is some DOS command that you can type to lock the hard drive down for a move. Is there such a thing for Mac's?

I kept the box that it came in, so I will be using that, but am still real worried due to past occurances. Any suggestions or help would be appreciated...

Thanks in advance...
Clay

edit: forgot to put that i will be moving in a big penske truck and be travelling for 1000 miles. The computer will have to go in the back of the truck...or i can put my dog in the back and the computer up front...

That's an archaic DOS thing, modern hard drives lock automatically and have done so for many years now. I've never had any problems moving many Macs, and if you have the original box you're even better off.

However common sense should apply. I know this gets difficult with large drives, but you should really do a backup. Consider getting a big firewire drive if you don't already have one. Then you could pack this drive elsewhere (your dog could hold it for you in the front seat ;-)

BTW, I just returned from a 1,000 mile trip in a U-Haul truck, moving my daughter's college apt. Phew... loading and unloading was no problem, but I'm getting too old for 800 miles driving in one day!

Have a good move!

Thanks for the update! I sometimes live in archaicness. The hard drive that I lost last move was an old 1GB drive, and I have no idea if it locked or not when it shut off...all i know is that I got to where I was going and all was gone.

That's a good idea about backing up, but impractical moneywise right now. Would anyone recommend removing the hard drive and keeping it in the cool front of the truck with me and my dog? Or, is this impractical? Thanks again...

Clay

I'd just think about how the mac was shipped to you or the store you bought it from - if it's packed the way it came, it should stand up to your journey. I think backing up important files to CD rom, and the whole drive to a firewire drive is a good idea, and having an extra firewire drive around is never a bad thing... I wouldn't bother to take the drive out of the mac - I don't see any advantage to it.

Good luck with the move.

Graeme

Thanks for the replies. I guess I am just paranoid because of what happened last time. Do you guys think it will be ok in the back of the truck in the heat too? We're talking middle of the summer Texas heat here! I guess UPS guys do it all the time, so things should be fine??? Thanks again...

Clay

Can someone tell me if I'm right about FCP HD?

It claims uncompressed 10 bit 4:2:2 1080p 24 frame support at 90-160 Mbs HD WITHOUT EXTRA CAPTURE AND EDITING HARDWARE? Am I right in assuming you can just run this on your standard G5 with standard Mac card in it, FCP and enough speed and space and you've got a film-screen worthy HD NLE?

Tell me what I'm missing here?

This link to Apple's FCP pages will give you the facts. Here is a list of the supported formats and the I/O's

Supported formats and I/O*


Uncompressed 8- and 10-bit HD (4:2:2, YUV) via PCI card

Uncompressed 8- and 10-bit SD (4:2:2, YUV) via FireWire or PCI card

DVCPRO 50 (4:2:2) via FireWire

DV/DVCAM (4:1:1) via FireWire

NTSC and PAL

HD at 1080i and 1080p (23.976, true 24, 25, 29.97, 30 fps)


Laurence, as you can see the specs for FCP state the an additional PCI card is required. This third party "capture" card is available form several sources. In addition, a RAID 0 will be required for capture and storage of media, at the resolution you want. I'm not sure who made the claims you refer to, but you are being mislead.

Jeff,

Thanks for your response. Well, I know raids are expensive, but I knew that was coming anyway. Is the PCI card expensive? Have you suggestions on which ones to look at? I'm looking to put togeter an HD system that is good enough for editing productions designed for theatrical release (independent of course).

Ya, I've looked at that page you gave me many times, but I'm a bit of a laymen on the inner workings on computers (I'm not too bad, but really need to learn much more) and assumed if you bought a turnkey system with Final Cut Pro HD it would be included.

Here's a turnkey system at B&H that I assume is HD and can do the 10 bit 1080p. Am I correct?

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...=302873&is=REG

Thanks!

idvd burining on a g5
 

i was wondering if anyone here new how long a 70 min video would take to burn.... i am transfering vhs to dvd imported trought imovie and set it to burn... anyone have any idea -thanks

No, the I/O board they spec will not do HD. You will need the AJA Kona HD board, CineWave HD or the Aurora Ignitor X board. There is another thread here with links.

Widescreen / Keyframe
 

Using FCP, I'm trying to rotate and blow up a video clip without it effecting the widescreen matte I've put on it. As it is now, the matte is rotating and scaling larger also. (I placed the matte after adjusting the clip rotation and size...) Anyone know how to isolate the widescreen matte so it's not effected by filters, movement etc.?

Remover the widescreen matte from the clip you want to rotate - then rotate it and put the widescreen matte on a seperate track (above the rotated clip).

OR what I've found easiest (especially if you need to apply widescreen to lots of seperate clips) is to finish the piece - colour correction, editing, audio etc etc and nest the whole thing in a new sequence - then apply the widescreen filter to that finished nested sequence - that way you only need apply the widescreen filter once (and you will avoid the problems of the matte changing position and/or colour).

So, is this not a problem that should be happening? It doesn't make sense to me either, maybe there's a simple thing that I'm not doing.... anyone...?

The Apple Help menu for FCP has complete, detailed instructions for nesting. It sounds like you are missing a step or have a box uncecked somewhere. I don't use Express and it's different enough from FCP, I don't want to give suggestions only to find out Express has a slightly different configuration. I would read the FCP Express manual and if it's still not working, try the Apple FCP Express forums.

Cheers Jeff, I'll give them a go.

Intelligent Assistance has "Practical Color Correction" a training DVD that is quite good. You can read all about it and get it in the lafcpug store.

http://www.lafcpug.org/store_tutorials.html#anchor12201575

Otherwise there is indeed room for FCP training DVDs focusing on advanced features such as cutting 24P, HD workflow, cutting dialouge, etc.

mike

audio track making a beeping noise?
 

Hey everyone,

got another (probably silly) question...

In FCP4, I am trying to import an MP3 (i downloaded it illegally, sorry) into an audio track and no matter what mp3 I choose, I get the same unwanted result. The clip shows up in the timeline and I can view it in its waveform and play it from the beginning in the viewer, but when I press space bar or hit play to see the video footage accompanying the audio track all I hear is a beeping noise.... beep-beep-beep... what do i do?!!?

Thanks all,

Jerry

The beeping ususlly indicates that the audio track(s) has not been rendered.

I don't know about illustrator files but, the proper size for FCP (DV) is 720x480.
Make sure the illustrator graphics are created in the RGB color space. The legal RGB color range for NTSC is 16 to 235. The color limits I use for RGB graphics are: White: 235, 235, 235; Black: 32, 32, 32; Red: 180, 16,16; Yellow: 210,210,25; Blue: 20,20,210; Super Black: 16, 16, 16.

Hope that helps

As far as the illustrator files go, if FCP won't open them, pehaps they could be exported from illustrator and saved as tifs. Then you could import the tif files directly into FCP.

FCP 4 problem playing back QT.mov
 

I am running FCP 4 on a Dual @ 2 GHz G5 w/2.5 gigs of RAM and 2 internal 250 GB HDs.

I created a series of 110 minute programs in FCP 4. Exported them as QT.mov(s) using QuickTime conversion. Saved a few on my second internal HD that is dedicated for media only, and the others on an external HD also dedicated for media storage. These drives are not partitioned.

I am importing the QT.mov versions back in to FCP in order to make copies of the programs on DV Tape.

I am having trouble playing some of them back. I get a dropped frame error message. No other sequences are open, RT is set to safe, the windows aren't overlapping eachother in FCP...

Any ideas on how to improve playback performance would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Paul

What size are the windows set to? Try fit to window.

ok. thanks, that worked - i rendered the audio track. but do i need to do this for each track i put in the timeline? it seems like sort of a time killer - especially when i usually try out 4 or 5 songs before i am set on which one i want to edit with...

As long as the music is in mp3 format, FCP is going to have to do extra work, which means some amount of rendering.

FCP will be much happier if you convert the music to aiff and then import it. iTunes can do the conversion for you.

ok great, thanks alot!

Thanks Jeff, I double checked and the viewer and canvas are set for "fit to window".

You could try trashing the three FCP preferences files. This works for many errors. You can get to the link from here.

taking footage offline
 

Hi all

I've been playing around with final cut pro hd (4.5) and wondering how to get the offline footage to work.

let me explain the setup first: I have a powerbook g4 1.5G with 80G onboard disk. I've logged a huge amount of footage onto an external firewire disk and I need to edit.

So, first I've converted the footage to photo jpeg and saved the resulting project to my hard disk. It makes a huge difference to the size and it's easier on the G4 to handle and it leaves me with loads of headroom for other bits and pieces I mess about with as I learn this huge package.

Ok, so I have a nice small project working on the internal disk and I can edit it easily. Question is, what is the procedure to convert this offline footage back into a full blown DV clip that I can output back to tape as a master?

I am going to read the manual in more detail tonight but for the moment I'd appreciat some tips on how to use this feature correctly.

thanks
Donie

G5 1.8Dual and Sony VX-2100
 

I'm about to get a Sony VX-2100 in a few days, along with a cta battery (don't know if i'll use/keep it), a NP-F960 battery, 4 year extended warranty, and a lens.
I've also had the G5 1.8ghz dual for more than a few months.
I also got FCP4 and DVDsp2.
My question is, since im sorta of a noob to DV(used to work with a Sony VX-3 Hi-8), is what else do i need or should have to video and edit films, movies, ect?
Any tips, suggestions would be appreciated(like quirks of the cameras, software, minidv tapes, ect)

Donnie,
I think this thread might give you some insight. Basically, you work with a highly-compressed (JPEG) version of the footage, do your edit, and then re-capture the footage in full DV format to finish up.

Well firstly, you need skill/talent/experience.

And you also need an idea and things to shoot.

I don't know what else you need since I don't know what exactly you plan on shooting and editing, but generally to make a great video you will need (in addition to camera + NLE):

good sound gear (which gear depends how you shoot)
good monitors if you are going to mix
headphones to monitor sound

tripod

NTSC monitor (depends on your needs)

lights (depends)

2- The VX2100 doesn't need an additional lens. Maybe you mean something else?

3- Extended warranties usually aren't worth it. It's up to you though.

Hi Ken

thanks for that. I had read it already and was hoping to get some input from somebody who actually uses this feature and has the time to discuss it's shortcomings/benifits.

I gather from that thread that the original capture is done using photo jpeg? Am I correct? In that case I should not be logging these massive DV format clips?

I edit using the photojpeg clips and then I re-capture?

There are lots of options and I suppose I want somebody to hold my hand for fear I'll screw the whole lot up. I don't mind playing about but if I'm going to commit and edit using this mechanism I'd like to be sure I'm doing it right...

What confuses me are options like "take offline". What does it do? When I select it on a clip it just removes the link to the original media. The manual is great but I think it lacks a bit in describing this area, or maybe I'm just too dumb to own a computer ;)

regardless, I'm going to try playing about a bit more and try to tame this this thing they call FCP (Freggin Complicated Program).

thanks for a great site, it'a a lifeline for me...
Donie

firstly, you need skill/talent/experience.

Got it, over 4 years of Hi-8 shooting

And you also need an idea and things to shoot.

Got it

I don't know what else you need since I don't know what exactly you plan on shooting and editing, but generally to make a great video you will need (in addition to camera + NLE):

What's NLE, by the way?

good sound gear (which gear depends how you shoot)
good monitors if you are going to mix
headphones to monitor sound

Apple 17" flatsceen, I don't think that's the best for editing, but that's what I got.



2- The VX2100 doesn't need an additional lens. Maybe you mean something else?

Century Optics .3x ultrafisheye

3- Extended warranties usually aren't worth it. It's up to you though.

Was $149, includes one head cleaning per year, as well as repairs ect., seems like a good deal

NLE: Non Linear Editing. We usually refer to non linear editing softwares to NLE. You said that you have Final Cut Pro 4, so you already have a NLE.