quicktime 6.5 no longer works!!
 

all of a sudden (although I guess thats not really true)Quicktime will no longer open up any mediafiles.mov or anything at all. It keeps saying it is not able to open file because of unknown error error number 27728.
Does anybody know what is the problem? I am thinking of getting the installer and reinstalling Quicktime or going back to version 6.4
thanks

I'd just re-install first to see what that does. Looks like it can't
find a playback codec or something.

I did reinstall and yes it works now...I suspect it has something to do with mpeg2 codec installer I have. but thanks Rob... everything fine out there?

Anyone use Shake™©®?
 

I was checking out Shake on the Apple web page, and it looks like After Effects on steriods costing thousands more for some reason.

Does anyone use this software? If so, how is it better than After Effects? Am I totally wrong in assuming that it is an After Effects style of program?

I've only played with Shake at various Trade Shows. It was a purchase by Apple, they are not the original developer. My understanding is that it has very fast rendering and previews. I think this is a major difference over AE. It also integrates with Maya better. Several years ago I had to learn Maya for a client, because of the compatibility of both programs using the same IFF files. I was told that AE didn't support IFF files, I don't know if that has changed.

How to Learn FCE2
 

Looking for recommendations on how to learn FCE2? Is there a pretty good tutorial built-in? What about Apple's Self-Paced training program? Any other good training/learning resources? My only NLE experience is withiMovie.

Thanks.

Glad you got it to work! Everything great here. Trying to write
a few scripts!

I've heard good things about the self paced training course. I haven't seen the materials, so I don't know how basic the instruction is.

Scratchy sound
 

Hi ewerybody...

Last night I edited a skate-video for fun. I converted my soundtrack to Aiff-format as I allways do before I import it to Final Cut Pro(3).

But when I Printed my project back to my camera(a DCR-PC6) I heard some "schratchy-noises"( The sound was starting and stopping, starting and stopping) on my soundtrack... They were very annoying and more important, they were not in my project when I saw it on my computer....

What can the reason be to this??

PLEASE HELP ME....

Chr

Out of sync
 

Mac G4
FCP 3

Can anyone tell me why the audio slips out of sync when re-capturing from a master even though it has been mixed-down.
On re-capture it always goes out by 2 frames. It's not hard to correct but is it possible to avoid the prob?
Regards to all.

Thanks, Jeff. Turns out it was a "order" issue. I should have known; it''s the same way in Premiere.

more on file formats
 

Hello,

Got such good help here before, i am coming back to seek more advice..I am preparing some animations and graphics for a FCP editor across the country( I am working on a PC) and from what I have gathered the Editor is pretty much of a Newbie to Mac and FCP.. I will be sending him some CD's with AVI files on them..What will he have to do to import them into FCP??
Convert to Quicktime?? Instructions please??

thanks so much..
Mike M.

MB & FC(P)(E)?
 

"Specifically, Magic Bullet does not work with Final Cut Pro because Final Cut Pro supports the Adobe After Effects v3.0 API. Magic Bullet is written for the AE 5.5 API."

This is straight from the redgiantsoftware.com MagicBullet FAQ page.

I'm rather new to all of this. Aren't FCP users using MB? If so, how?

(I currently use FCE).

Thanks.

Shawn

To my knowledge, Magic Bullet is an After Effects plug-in. I've never heard of anyone using it outside of AE.

The common workflow would be to finish your cut and then export your work from Final Cut to AE for MB processing.

Upset With Apple!!!
 

Okay brothers & sisters of this forum, we need to pull together. I was one of the proud owners of the new Mac G5. I believed the hype and spent the money for it. One month later they put out a G5 dual 1.8, for roughly the same price as my regular 1.8 (because the original bench tests were slower than they expected) I feel that Apple needs to provide a program to upgrade the people who bought the original G5. A similar program to what they did when they came out with Panther. If we get enough signitures (or support) we can present the case to Apple... SO WHO'S WITH ME!!!

Got it. Now I get to go find out what AE is all about. Thanks, Ken!

Virtual PC, Windows Media Encoder
 

Lately I've been playing around with Windows Media Encoder and really like the results. However, as many of you know, I'm basically out of luck when it comes to running this program on my Mac. But what about Virtual PC?
Basically I'm just hoping to hear from someone that already has Virtual PC installed on their Mac. Will it run the free downloadable Windows Media Encoder?

I can't really relate to your situation, but Apple is one of those companies that does not focus very well (anymore). Customer satisfaction is far from top priority. Releasing incomlete software is commonplace, letting the people who purchase it beta-test for them (saving Apple money). Apple figures that there is no reason to release finished software, since they can always fix it with a "patch" later. This goes with the OS as well. They just wanna get it out the door and nothing more.

I love Macs and all, but if you do choose the Apple platform, your a-hole will eventually begin to hurt at some point. But that's typical with many companies nowadays. (Mods: I tried to say that as politely as I could).

Ted, that is officially know as BOHICA (pronounced bow-he-ka), which stands for bend over, here it comes again.

A company like powerlogix might come out with a dual processor upgrade.

The 1.8ghz G5 wasn't a very good buy at the time. I suppose you should have waited a bit.

I don't use Virtual PC, but I haven't heard of a compatibility problem. However, many programs that involve heavy processor work, like encoders, run very, very slowly on Virtual PC.

It will be better (higher quality) if the file is uncompressed. Your friend can import the uncompressed avi into QT Pro and convert to whatever format he needs.

Search audio sync in this forum and you'll see some of the usual suspects to round up and look at.

A lossless codec like animation (Quicktime) will be the same quality as uncompressed by at around 40% of the size. The Microcosm codec (costs money) compresses more than animation. If you need to go even smaller then a lossy codec is in order, but you could probably just span CDs with something like winRAR.

FCP color balancing against Macbeth?
 

Anyone have a good method for color balancing against a Macbeth card? I'm looking for a way to use it as an RGB reference, but can't find a tool to balance anything but for what white is, or to manually tweak the image to taste. Nothing for specific colors on the card.

Most cameras are designed to white balance to white or a neutral shade of grey. Higher end cameras (and to some degree the DVX100) have the ability to use a curve to adjust the color responce.

Some of the squares in the Macbeth card have known RGB values that could be measured with a color picker tool. Then a curve would have to be applied to match those colors and the scenes rendered.

Yeah, after a bit of research, it seems as though I would be better off just buying a cheap-o PC running Windows XP. Supposedly, and likely, Macs communicate just fine with XP. As long as I can move files back and forth, I can use the PC and Windows Media Encoder to crunch the video into .wmv files.
I know the two computers can be linked together via ethernet, but is it possible to use firewire? Would the PC mount on the Mac desktop? This isn't really a big deal, I'm just wondering.

So, are you saying to create a red, blue and green color/gamma curve based on a sample RGB value on the color card, then create a profile? I've done that in Photoshop. I wasn't aware it could be done in FCP

You would need to do that in After Effects. Why do you want to use a Macbeth color checker and what issues are you having with color?

I'm looking at taking video from telecine sessions and performing an accurate color grade that will represent what the final release print will look like before I have it finalized. I want to be able to previsualize my final grade and make changes on the desktop before getting into the expensive color timing phase.

Adding a 3rd HD - Mixing Brands An Issue?
 

Hey everyone,

I'm looking to add a third HD because I'm taking on a rather large project (35+ hours and counting) and want the room to maneuver.

Right now, I have the stock Apple 80 gig HD that came with my G4 and I added a 160 gig Western Digital Caviar (8meg cache, 7200 RPM).

The question, before I buy a 3rd HD, is: Is there any issue in getting a 3rd HD from another company or should I stick with Western Digital? (Not that WD isn't great; I've had zero problems so far. <knock on wood>) And though I seriously doubt it, is there any issue in jumping up to a 200/200+ HD (Western Digital or otherwise) on this G4?

And of course, any brands that I should stay away from in particular or hover to...in the past, I've heard recommendations of IBM, Seagate, WD. How about Maxtor, etc?


Thanks,

Joshua

It won't matter at all. I'm using a variety of HD's on my system. I used to be a total Maxtor fan until they were bought and have had a lot of reported problems. But..looking at my portables and G4 system, I've got a mix of IBM, Maxtor, and WD, plus even a Seagate in there.

FCE2 Capturing Technique
 

Warning! Total Newbie question...

I just installed FCE2 (eMac 1GHz, 1GB, 80GB), my only experience is with iMovie.

I have about 45 minutes of tape shot at my son's 7th birthday party last week. I want to edit it into a coherent story and add some music, then burn a DVD.

I started to capture it clip-by-clip, but the camera whirr-click-buzz seems to eat a lot of time and put a lot of wear and tear on the hardware.

Should I just transfer the whole tape in one big chuck and then chop it up in FCE2, or is the clip-by-clip transfer the better way to go? How do you usually transfer whole tapes?

Also, i feel really overwhelmed by the complexity of FC, I assume it's not as huge as it seems at first? How long will it take to become reasonably competant with this software? I figure I can spend one hour per day learning it.

Thanks...

Hang in there Dan.

Was in your situation 9 months ago. Now I would not go back to iMovie. (even though it is a great programme too.

Import your total footage. It is not worth wasting time and effort selecting clips here and there. (Having batch capture would have helped here but this is not FCP!)

My tip is

Create 2 video tracks
Drag the whole clip (45 Mins) to one of these and drag it over to the right of the time line to give you room to create say a 10 minute movie starting at zero.

Go to the section you want.
Use the blade tool (keyboard b or b+b to cut video and audio) to cut to create a clip
If the snapping to the nearest cut is on (and this annoys you), toggle this setting by pressing "n"
copy and paste (again use AppleC and Apple V)
Place in in the 1st track
Get next clip and repeat
Put this in the 2nd track with a small overlap of the first
You can adjust the boundary by dragging the edges (To get the arrow pointer back at any time, click A)
Repeat this process until you have your movie
The top track will always superimpose on the lower when you play back
Whilst doing this going back and forth, get used to using the z tool to zoom in ans Z+Z twice to soom out.
For transitions, open the transitions and drag to the clip edges you want.

Hope this helps.

Regards P

Frame size for offlineRT
 

I have a DV project which is taking longer than I would like to render on dual 2 gig G5.
In the middle of the project I decided that I would try offlineRT, so I exported the clips as offlineRT NTSC and converted the timeline to photoJPEG then I reconnected the DV NTSC media to the exported offlineRT media.
Due to the 320x240 frame size of offlineRT the each of these clips appear to need resizing to 720x480, this seems cumbersome. Do I resize all of the clips then shrink them down again after I recoonect the original DV footage?
I am sure that I am doing something wrong here, can anyone point out what it is?

Formatting Media Drive between projects? What do you do?
 

Do you guys all do a quick format of your media drive at the end of one project before starting another? Any advantage or disadvantage to doing it?

And is there any harm to not partitioning your drives (maybe because they're too big - 160gb or 200+gb)?



Joshua

Promax recommends IBM drives since they were the most reliable in their experience with thousands of drives. Seagate and WD come #2, and they don't like Maxtor. Generally IBM, Seagate, and WD are fine. Seagates are slightly slower but they are the quietest.

If you want to RAID later then get 2 drives of the same model. Otherwise I'd just get the largest WD/IBM drive you can afford. IBM sold their drive division to Hitachi, so they're Hitachi now.

You don't need to partition your drives. It *may* help in reducing fragmentation since fragmentation stays on one partition only, and you can selectively clean up that partition by defragging it or deleting everything on it.

Fragmentation really isn't a problem if you keep only large files on a drive. Some people just quick format their drives when they're done a project so they don't have to worry about fragmentation.

That's what I do personally, just format the drive and start all over again!

Western Digital Caviar 250gb
 

Thanks for any input guys. I just went out and bought the WD 250GB 8mb cache HD at Best Buy. $259 + $90 rebates and I had 80 bucks on a gift card. So in the end, it worked out alright for me.

That and I already have the WD 160gb so it just felt right. WD's done alright by me so far. <knocking on wood some more>