Tom,
This is actually a very handy feature of FCP, called "Offline RT". Discussed recently. See this thread for more pointers to what's involved.

Carlos,

"but then, what's the point in editing in NTSC or PAL from HD footage? it's like working on a 1/4 size proxy."

In my opinion, there is only one reason you'd want to edit in full resolution HD: If you own a high def monitor and you watch your edits in HD realtime. Otherwise, you're looking at the same size clips anyway, might it be full 16:9 DV or Third HD on a cinema display.

After going back online, you can do color correction which doesn't require realtime playing.

mov file editing
 

i have a question about cutting quicktime mov. files together. maybe this question is answered in the previous treads, but i couldn't search it out.

i have got some footages from my friend in mov format and need to put it together. i was able to drag it directly into final cut pro but it needs to be rendered for playback. just a 50meg file takes forever to render.
i wonder is it rendering to change the format to AVI or ?? why is it take such a long time to render such a low resolution file?

If you just need to cut it and do straight edits this can be accomplished in Quicktime Pro alone.

Getting pixelated/choppy playback when recording
 

Hi All,

I'm trying to lay back some footage to miniDV using my camcorder. I know the camera is capable as I've recorded back to it using the G5 dual at school. I'm now at home with a G4 single processor. The footage is playing back in the system fine, but it comes thru the camera stuttering with pixels. Can I change any settings in my system to get rid of this problem? I'm working with FCP4.

Thanks,
Suz

final cut pro hd
 

anybody seen it in action? any info

torrey c. harris

Viewing on TV while editing?
 

I know I can view edits on TV if I run the firewire to the camera and then connect the camera (or deck) to the TV but is that the only option?

The graphics board on the G5 has two outputs. Apple makes a DVI to TV adaptor (s-video, RCA video, no audio) but does that somehow just pick up the TV part of the signal in editing software? I talked to the salesman at the Apple store and he seemed to think that all it would do is allow me to set up a TV as a second monitor - not much help.

Suggestions?

Thanks.

You can use a video monitor/TV connected to an additional monitor port without problem. If you have the monitor connected and working then just go into the FCP A/V settings dialog and your second monitor will appear on the drop down list of external video devices. Just choose it from the list instead of firewire and FCP will send the previews to that device. Another option would be to add a second PCI graphics card that has s-video output (assuming these are G5 compatible... not sure here, but I have one that works fine on my G4).

I also use a Sony standalone DVD recorder that has firewire input. I send video over firewire from FCP and have my monitor connected to the component video output of the recorder.

Final Cut Pro uses Quicktime (MOV) as its native file format, however they must be 720x480 and compressed with the DV codec to avoid rendering. If that's what your file is but you still need to render then there must be a mis-match between the file and your FCP sequence settings.

But if the .MOV file has been compressed with some other codec (like Sorenson) or if it's a non standard size (like 320x240 for example) it will require rendering. Or at least that's the case with FCP 3 on my G4's. Perhaps FCP 4 on a faster machine would provide some sort of RT extreme preview, but I think you would need to re-render for final output regardless.

Do you have any problems with it? I'm upgrading my comp to 768.. According to specs only 512 is necessary isn't it??

Thanks.

Can you not set FCP to use a different output codec for the project? (i.e. the same codec as the .mov) thus it might not have to render averything. I used to do this with Premiere on the Mac. I don't have FCP4 at hand right now so I can't test this.

Wow. I didn't know you could do that...

However...

If you want to be able to judge your colors correctly, and external monitor routed thru your camera or deck would be the only way to go. The footage viewed thru a CRT monitor are not as true as those thru an NTSC monitor.

well, if you own 4.0 you get an upgrade to HD automatically.

I haven't edited any HD footage yet but all the other upgrade elements seem pretty nice.

Little speed increases, refinement of a few tools.

nice upgrade for free!

here's a great review of it:

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage...hd_jordan.html

Uh..... I think you need to check you link, it goes to some airline.


The keyboard you get from EZ is a regular keyboard but it has all the shortcuts on custom color keys so it's easier to see them and use them.

If your USB keyboard works connected to your powerbook (ie: you can type, all the keys work like a mac-made keyboard) then there is no reason you can't just replace the keys or add tags to them for the shortcuts.

I bought an EZkeyboard for FCP and like it--- it's helped me get my shortcuts down so I can use it or another keyboard quickly.

The thing I also like is the Shuttle Pro. I don't use the pre-sets buttons as much but I love having the jog shuttle wheels available to me.

you can NEVER have enough RAM.

The more RAM you have, the smoother things will run, the faster things will run, the more actions FCP specifically can load into memory at once and speed them up.

Max it out.

One thing to look at is finding the REAL specs on how much memory a computer can hold. My older G4 says it can only handle something like 768 but it holds a gig of memory.