Thanks Glenn.

I appreciate you taking the time to offer advice.
I will now go and have a play with your suggestions and see what happens.

Thanks again,
Hayden

Thanks Greg,

I'm in a real bind, my fcp didn't come with the "data disk" for live type so I have no efects installed (they guy I bought it from sworeit was legit and compleat, live and learn) so I can't use live type.

"Motion" looks like a great program, I've been looking for a reason to buy it.

The downside is I have a mirror drive G4, so I'll have to get a new video card, and from what I've read, I'm very confused about which one to get. When the time comes I'll call a retailer with my specs and intentions and see what I'm told.

Thanks I thought I was really sunk.

is there xdcam support from apple for FCP?
 

My question is simple, can FCP handle the MXF-file structure of the new sony XDCAM optical disk camera's?

I don't believe there is at the present time. It may be supported by some of the third party capture cards available. I would suspect that by the time the camera ships Apple may have an update to accommodate the camera. Or you may have to wait until FCP is updated.

I think xdcam is the next revolution, considering cost, storage and its filebased structure it will be appealing to a lot of shooters and the quality is excellent. Panasonic will have a working p2 camera on the IBC so i am curious about that as wel!!

new g5 imac or 15" powerbook ?
 

OK - OK you guys if you've got $2500 to laydown for a new mac , which would you chose , a new decked out 20" imac or a basic 15" pwb- programs are the usual suspects. thanks Kurth

iMac with the G5 processor wins in every category except portability and weight.

This might just be something you can't fix in post. Hopefully you can improve it though.

G5 vs. Imac G5`
 

greetings to all; if you are doing DV, the Imac is a consideration, because you can use an external firewire 800 hard drive and have the power of a G5 and the cost benefits of an Imac. Rocstor has in upcoming product that will make this an even better option for those that are working with a budget
the question is expansion, here there is no contest, the tower G5 has the connections for any format, the Imac has a limit to firewire conversion
One of the great things about the new G5, my clients that are doing DV have a very easy upgrade path to DV/SDI conversion, direct SDI and direct HDI.
thanks, brian
apple pro video

Color-correction and Posterization fixes?
 

Hello, all! I'm working on a MiniDV feature shot with the DVX100 and edited on Final Cut Pro 4. Now I'm getting to the phase of color-correction, and I need your help.

When I do color correction on a clip with large areas of a uniform color, artifacts show up. Big, blocky, posterization artifacts. These do not appear on the original, unmodified footage, only when I change the colors to make it look really dark and cold. I understand that DV has limitations because of the severe compression inherent in the medium. But due to the nature of the scene (shooting day-for-night) I HAVE to do a lot of color correcting on it.

Is there any way to minimize the appearance of these artifacts? Any color-correcting techniques that I could apply to prevent them from showing up, or to at least diffuse them? I know some people here do color correction by up-rezzing the footage to "preserve color space"... Does this help with posterization artifacts? Would adding a grain-type filter be a solution, or would that just muddy up the final image?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

DVX on FCP problems
 

alright guys, i'm having the strangest problems all of a sudden. i have a DVX100A and FCP HD...
_
i have 2 problems and my guess is that they are related.
_
1) i am shooting in 24PA. i'm guessing that i am not capturing correctly because it always needs to render the sequence file. i know what the settings are, but they don't work. for example, i have the a/v settings set up to capture with firewire NDF at 2:3:3:2 pulldown and to default the sequences to 23.98fps. BUT when i actually CAPTURE the footage, it somehow isnt in 23.98. if i right click, go to properties, and go to Format, it says that the clip is 29.97fps. FCP seems to be confused as well, because under the Tools menu, it usually says Apply Advanced Pulldown or whatever, but instead it says Remove Advanced Pulldown because it thinks it was used, but if i actually click it, it says "Error, no clips found using the advanced pulldown" and whatnot. if i drop the clip into a 23.98 sequence, it won't work without several minutes of rendering. even though it supposdly was captured at 23.98. HELP!
_
2) i'm guessing this has something to do with the _frame rate, but maybe not... anything i DO capture with the above problem has the sound way off sync... like a couple seconds off sync, not just a few frames. sometimes i have this problem, sometimes not. its very sporaddic, but probably 25-50% of the time, i have this problem.
_
any suggestions? this is so weird.... thanks a lot!

DVD Studio Pro 3: Jacket Pictures won't work
 

I am building a DVDSP project, and had just found out about the ability to add jacket pictures to your DVD projects... and its very easy to do, but its not working. I made my picture in photoshop in the standard DV size, exported it as a TIFF file and brought it into DVDSP. I told DVDSP to use that file as the jacket picture, and it seems to work fine in the simulator. However, once I burned the DVD it does not work in the DVD player.

I have tried it in an APEX TV/DVD combo, an ONKYO DVD changer, and a PS2. all 3 play DVD-R discs flawlessly, but none will display the jacket picture. does anyone know why and how to fix this?

thanks,
Chris

Is your render quality set to high? If it is set any lower you will get this.

Capture settings for 24p an 24pA on the DVX are identical to that of normal NTSC DV - ie you must capture at 29.97fps, then let FCP remove the pulldown. They you can set your timeline to 23.98fps.

Graeme

It might help to set Final Cut into ?high definition rendering? mode. The one that uses 32-bit floating point numbers. This will avoid problems with rounding errors (causes banding).

If your problem is something else (you see 4X4 blocks), try using a color smoothing filter. FCP4 has one (labelled something like 4:1:1 color smoothing or something like that).

2- If that doesn't work, post a picture of your original footage plus one after CC.

i'm aware of that, but it wasn't working. my hunch was that the settings were just messed up somehow... i trashed them and set them up again, just the same, and somehow it worked. whaddaya know?

g5
 

had any one used medea/g-raid drives?

Thanks for the replies.

Shane - I believe everything is set to highest quality. Just to be on the safe side, which setting specifically controls the quality of a render? Is it the one in user preferences? Or System Settings, or something else I'm missing? It doesn't look like when I've applied a filter and it's in preview mode without rendering, where it looks all pixellated. That's not the problem. I'm looking at the footage on a Sony NTSC monitor, and the unmodified footage looks perfect (no artifacts of any kind), but the color correction adds these big blocks anywhere there's a large solid color, like a wall or sky.

Glenn - How do I render in High Definition mode? If that doesn't work, I'll try the color smoothing filter and post the results.

Thanks again.

Quick Start Problem FC4
 

I've started capturing yesterday at school on Final Cut 4.
My short was shot on 24p advance with the DVX100a camera. The setting was set on 24 frames when capturing maybe I need to change that to 23.98?. When I shot the video the shutter speed was on 1/24. But don't see any problems when watching it.

Everything looked fine when the capturing was being made. But when I tooked the captured work from the school's G5 into my laptop. The footage looks bad, there is buzzing of the video, just doens't look good at all. :(

Any of you know what could be wrong, any settings on final cut 4 I should look for when capturing 24pa.

Thanks

Thinking of Apple's Cert. FCPHD course???
 

Hi All.

Does anyone have any comments on taking the Final Cut PRO HD certified course? What would be the advantages more then product knowledge?
Will this, can this increase billable work?

Thanks tons in advance.
Tom

Archiving Projects
 

Anyone use products like this:

Movie Archive 1.0 for Mac OS X

Movie Archive enables you to capture, compress, browse, and organize a multi-tape video library. Movie Archive requires Mac OS X 10.2 or later and a DV camera connected via FireWire.

http://lqgraphics.com/software/moviearchive.php/

16:9 and Letterboxing
 

Okay so, I've recorded all of my media with the 16:9 mode on my Canon XL1s. I logged and captured it into FCP4 with the anamorphic button clicked. My sequence presets are for anamorphic 16:9 as well.

However, a handful of my clips are letterboxed. Why is that?

I created an initial sequence with all of the interview footage for my film. Here the clips appear as 16:9 and are not letterboxed. After I pasted portions of this sequence into other sequences (to construct different scenes), they alone were letterboxed, but none of the other clips added to the new sequences were.

Why would some clips be letterboxed and others not within a given sequence? And, why would those same clips not be letterboxed in another sequence? Furthermore, how do I get them back to normal anamorphic 16:9 without letterboxing without redoing each of my edits?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and I apologize if this was handled in a previous thread.

Do the clips appear this way in both the viewer and the canvas?

yes, the offending clips appear letterboxed in both the viewer and the canvas. But thier source clip in the browser is not letterboxed, when brought into the viewer.

If I open the letterboxed clips in the viewer and click on the motion tab, then distort and change the aspect ratio from -33 to zero that removes the letterboxing. Will this degrade the video quality? Is there a way to do this for multiple clips at once? Would it be better to re-edit the clips back in from the browser (very time consuming)?

Also, why would those few clips aspect ratios have been changed to -33.33, and thus be letterboxed if I never changed them.

Sorry for all the questions, I am a newbie with FCP.

I think it's probably very simple. Check the sequence settings on the letterboxed clips. If you drop a 16:9 clip into a 4:3 sequence then FCP will automatically letterbox to fit. All you should need to do is go to the sequence settings dialog and check the anamorphic box. However, any clips that have been dragged to the sequence will probably not "de-letterbox" by themselves. You will need to drop those back into the sequences. If that gets complicated (such as existing edits you don't want to lose) you should be able to open the clip by double-clicking it on the timeline, click on the motion tab in the clip's viewer window and select the distort property. Set the aspect ratio to 0 and I think that will restore the clip to the proper proportion such that it fills the 16:9 window.

In the future, just make sure the clip and sequence settings are in agreement before proceeding!

The only advantages of the class are better knowledge of the software. It might help a little on the resume, in terms of letting your prospective employer know that you know FCP very well, but it won't make them hire you outright. Nor will it increase your billing rate.

Just because you are certified on the equipment, doen't mean you can edit. What I mean by that is that just becuase you know HOW to use FCP, doesn't mean that you know how to edit a story. That part is all creativity and imagination...and something that you won't get from the course.

You can know everything there is to know about Microsoft Word and formatting a document, but it doesn't mean you can write.

You will get hired because of you storytelling ability. Your demo reel or showcase of past projects will big the biggest asset in selling yourself, and able to bill more for yourself.

Thanks
 

Thanks Shane.
That's what I was looking for. I have the creative talent for still
photography, imaging but want to unleash some creative talents
on the vid side.

I will assume that learning FCP with a solid base will be the
way to start and then see if some talent can be applied.
No doubt it will take a great deal of commitment which I
can apply.
Thanks again.
Tom

Is there no loss if the codec is set to "DV -- NTSC" in Video Settings or does one have to select "none" for the codec?

Help!: How do I do this effect in Final Cut Pro HD?
 

I'm working in FCP HD and need to make that effect you see on so many low-budget video shows where they blur out just a portion of the screen (like when they need to remove someone's face or hi-profile logo or whatever). Can I do that in FCP HD? Or do I need something like After FX?

Thanks!

Yes you can do it. There are probably several ways, but this is how I would go about it.

(I don't have my editing system in front of me so this is from memory).

You need two copies of your clip, one on V1 and one on V3. Temporarily hide V1.

On V2 you need to place a matte that is the shape (and at the location) that you want the blur to appear. Use the shape generator to create a white oval, then adjust the parameters to get the size, shape, location, and edge softness about right. Place that shape on V2.

Select the clip on V3 and set the composite mode to Travel Matte - Luma (Modify->Composite Mode->Traval Matte - Luma). Now all you should see is an oval "window" of your clip on a black background (if you hid V1 as suggested above). At this point you can fine tune the location, shape, size, and edge softness of the matte shape on V2 to zero in on the area you want to apply the blur.

Now add a blur filter to the clip on V3 and adjust the blur as desired. Turn V1 back on and you should see a blured oval with the rest of your image nice and clear.

Often the area you want to blur will be moving in the frame, making it necessary to keyframe the location (and sometimes the size) of your matte shape to keep it over the area you want to apply the blur.

Again, this is from memory. Sorry if I got a detail wrong or missed a step. I'm sure someone will post a correction. ; )

I'll give it a shot!

Thanks so much!

any suggestions?

Can I send DV deck analog a/v to Aja IO and still have deck control?
 

A few questions...first, would I be able to send audio and video from a dv deck through composite/analog to my AJA io and have it routed to the computer via firewire, using one of the 8 or 10 bit uncompressed capture settings, and secondly, at the same time have the DECKS firewire going directly to my G5, and set FCP up to use this connection solely for deck control? My deck does not have serial deck control. I know that the capture/deck control presets in FCP are independent. I feel that I cannot take advantage of the uncompressed captured options with the a/v not being routed through the IO. And I might add that right now I have my IO firewire and the decks firewire connected to my G5 at the same time on different buses with no problems.

thanks.

-paul.

You need to capture at 29.97 fps then let FCP remove the pull down and change your timeline to 24 fps.

I've never used it nor do I know anyone that has. But that doesn't mean it's not a good product. If you try it, please post back and let us know how it works for you.

Thanks. My original sequence was a 4:3 as I changed my presets after that one was created. I appreciate the help and the rapid responses.

Why do you want to add an additional D/A and A/D conversion to your footage?

The footage on tape is already converted by the camera from analog to digital and compressed for the DV format. Bringing it into the computer via FireWire maintains the digital data, which is in as pure a form as you are going to get.

Going through the DV deck and AJA system adds two additional A to D conversions - the first is done in the deck as it takes the digital DV data on the tape and converts it to analog, the second is the AJA system that takes the analog output from the deck and converts it back to digital. You may be getting a "better" digital format by going through the AJA (less or no compression, more bits per pixel) but the image quality (resolution, compression, etc.) was already established in the very first step - in the camera. The additional processing steps in going through the deck and the AJA, no matter how good the conversions, can only degrade the image. Maybe not by much but certainly noticeable if you look carefully.

Mike,

I was told, and maybe I misunderstood the person, that by going analog out from a dv deck to the IO, and capturing 8 or 10 bit uncompressed would yield higher quality footage. Now the reason why I inquired is that if in fact I connected the deck directly to the IO and not the computer, I would lose deck control, because my deck does not offer serial deck control. Now, I can capture 8bit 10bit uncompressed, and/or DV/NTSC by just changing the capture setting, and still have fire wire deck control.

Am I on track?

-paul.

That's the whole point of my post - you can't get any higher quality footage than what was originally recorded by the camera onto tape. In this case that camera recorded in the DV format which is defined as: 4-1-1 color space, 720x480 resolution, 5:1 compression, etc.

Every D/A or A/D conversion you do is going to degrade the the image in some way. It may be a small amount, but it is always going to happen. That's why you want to keep the number of conversions to a minimum.

Your best image quality will be maintained by importing the DV footage from the deck over FireWire to the computer.