Im not sure where your problem is. If you save the file in Motion, for example as "motion.motn" all you should have to do is Import the file in FCP. Then drop "motion.motn" into a sequence and render it in FCP.

Im sure you have already done this, so the one thing that I would recomend is to check your seqence settings to make sure they match in both Motion and FCP.

Adding LCD Monitors to a new G5 2.0
 

Three questions regarding using FCPHD and Motion on a new 2.0 G5:

1. How important is refresh rate in choosing an LCD monitor? Will I regret buying one with a refresh rate of 25ms (versus Apple Cinema Display's 16ms)?

2. Is it necessary (or advisable) to upgrade the standard NVidia 5200 video card if I plan on running two 19"-20" LCD monitors?

3. If I keep the NVidia 5200 card, what penalty will I pay when working with Motion?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Buy the Apple monitor rather than a third party.

A 16ms refresh is much better than the 25ms for CG graphics work / video. Also the Cinema display means you are HD ready and the colour correction and sync is done for you in Panther without long winded setup procedures.

With regards to Motion, basically buy the best Graphics card you can afford and install at least 2 gig of memory. Motion is a highly demanding application on the system, especially if you switch to it with Final Cut running in the background as well.

Best

Jonathan

Hi Patrick. Thanks for your help!!

I figured it out in the end. It was a problem with the QT movie I was using but strangely it didn't throw up any errors.


I recaptured the DV footage and all is well. I must say it does have brilliant integration with FCPHD. I think version two of motion ( one hopes they will fix the lack of sound and give it 3D) will really give After Effects a run for its money.


Best

Jonathan

Hard Drive Set-Up ?
 

just installed a IDE external (Western Dig 200GB IDE Vantec Nextstar case) as well as a Seagate Barracuda 200 GB SATA. I have backed up the entire system HD to the external using CCC. Now for the seagate i am using it as a media drive. I know to set the scratch disk in FCX to the Media drive but what about say pictures and music ? Should they stay on the stock 160 GB or should i store all pics and music on the media drive ? If on the media how do i specify that on iTunes and iPhoto ? Also how do i move all my video that i have on the 160GB stocker to my new media drive ?

I'm not following what you're doing. Is the external drive a FireWire drive? How many internal drives do you have? What size are they?

Sorry, i have the stock 160GB internal, a Seagate 200 Gb SATA internal, and a Western digital 200 GB in a Vantec Nexstar case. I want to use the Seagate for a media drive and the Vantec/Western as a back up. I have backed up the entire system to the external firewire drive. I want to know how to setup up the Seagate 200 for media, pictures, music and such. Looking for recommendations on system setup.

How did you backup the system, what software did you use etc. ?

I used Carbon Copy Cloner.

I would partition the drive first. One partition for pictures, music etc. and the other partition for FCP. Use FCP preferences to setup the various scratch disks, folders etc. to the FCP partition.

Anyone?

Any issues with FCP 4.5 & the new 10.3.6?
 

Besides the Firewire issue?

I have noticed from a lot of different postings, that people are having problems with the 10.3.6 that are on G3 & G4s. Anyone on a dual 2G5 2.5 Ram that hasn't had any problem from 10.3.6. I have two internal 160's. Just wondering if I should take the plundge or wait?

got it. project finally completed and in the hands of fedex now.

thanks so much!

Mac and PC, can I share the love?
 

Ok, what I really want to know is...

I need to give some video I have on my PC to a guy using Pro Tools on a Mac. Is there any format of video (and CD-R) that I can burn on my PC that he will be able to read on his Mac? Otherwise I'm going to have to make a miniDV and he's going to have to get a deck to recapture it, so I'd like to save that step.

Thanks!

PS I have to give it to him this evening, so any quick repsonses would be much appreciated.


PPS... OK, Jobs IS cooler than Gates.

How long is the video? Does he simply need to SEE the video so he can do the audio track? Is that what you meant by Pro Tools? If he just needs to see the video to get the timing, but the quality of the video he works on doesn't matter, just export your movie to AVI or MPEG1 and he should be able to view it. Of course, you could always ask him...

I would wait if your not have any issues with the announced updates for the programs listed. I updated one of my G4's and I'm having a number of issues with Safari, Mail, and booting up (very slow). I probably won't upgrade the schools G5's until December, when the students go on break.

I asked him first, but he didn't know.

Yes, all he needs is to see the video, so he can cut music for it. The video is 10 minutes, so the it isn't going to fit on a CD without some compression.

Can I just burn a CD off my PC with the video in Quicktime format?

CD's burned on PC's should be readable on the Mac. If you make some sort of Quicktime file that fits the CD then he should be able to open it unless you're using a non-standard CODEC.

Re: Mac and PC, can I share the love?
 

The easiest way is to burn a QuickTime .mov file - it's cross platform and easily read by either computer. QT on the Mac will handle most .avi's and .mpg's, but sometimes odd encoding will give it a fit. I've never had a problem with a .mov file, though.

I often go back and forth at home because I cut on FCP, but do my sound work in Sound Forge.

I had enough problems with 10.3.5 that I made the leap. (I couldn't easily go back to 10.3.4 since I recently upgraded directly from Cheetah to 10.3.5.)

I completed a project last night with no problems. I even turned the effects back on, with no crashes. Still early, but I'm hoping.

Once interesting new "effect", though, is that the Viewer and Canvas video appears slightly out of focus when running -- it sharpens up when stopped. That's even with the Res set to high.

It's still OK on the external monitor, so it's not a big problem, but it's one I hadn't seen before 10.3.6.

Gotta love Apple....!

Done!
Thanks guys!

Capturing straight from VCR....??
 

I have the VCR hooked up through the DVI to Video Adapter and am looking to capture with Final Cut Pro and I changed the settings to uncontrollable. The problem is FCP is not recognizing the VCR.....?

Any suggestions why?

Your description is not very detailed, but from what I gather you are trying to capture video from a VCR through the DVI/VGA port of your Mac (what model?).

The DVI/VGA port does not do video in, only video out.

The traditional method to capture VHS material is to connect it to a DV (or Digital8) camera or deck that does "pass through" conversion and import the video over the camera's firewire.


Mike.

So you are saying the Adapter is only for exporting to a VCR or TV, it isn't used to import anything...? Cause that could be my problem.

I have a G5 and I have the VCR hooked up using the yellow video wire hooked up to the DVI adapter. I figure this would be all I needed to do but like i said it did not recognized the VCR.

I have a GL2 that I could use but the VCR is pretty old and it doesn't have a S-video outlet and since I have the adapter I thought I could just hook the VCR up to the G5 and it should work. But it i guess it is only for exporting...

Now, can I go through the GL2 into the computer without having to copy it to a DV then capturing it?

The GL2 will do nicely. Connect the GL2 to the VCR with the cable that came with the GL2 (minijack on one end and 3 RCA jacks, white/red/yellow at the other. You may have to go into a GL2 menu to emable the pass through mode, check your manual.

Connect the GL2 to the computer via FireWire. In FCP the device preset is "not controllable". To do the capture bring up the Log and Capture window, start the playback on the VCR, hit Capture Now to start capturing. When you want to stop the capture hit esc.


Mike.

Thanks Mike I appreciate the quick response.

Missing audio waveforms in FCE
 

Some of the audio waveforms in a sequence in FCE are missing. I know that there is audio there, because I can hear it. One clip even has about a third of the waveform and then it just stops.

Has anyone seen this or know how to fix it?

No, & I haven't experienced it yet. But I'd like to hear about a fix, too.

Anybody?

JS

Try trashing the preferences files.

I would quit FCE and through away the files in the folder "Waveform Cache Files", then relaunch.

Mike.

I tried all of the Mac fixits that I could think of and nothing helped.

I tried opening the project on my powerbook and all of the waveforms were there. I moved my hard drive back to my tower and opened the project there. The waveforms returned.

I'm not sure why, but all is well now. Thanks for the replies.

PS in FCP
 

Very basic question.. it seems alot of people are using photoshop to colorcorrect.. How does that work? Can you work with moving images in PS too? If you can do you then export it to QT file for FCP import?

Is PS that much better for correcting than FCP?

Thanks.

Alfred,

You can't color correct video with photoshop. I'm not sure where you got that impression from.

I might have misunderstood here.. but every now and then I see how people refer to PS as how they have tweaked their video..

Wayne Orr (sorry Wayne, I might be misquoting you here..) said in the "sex thread" ...

"Yipes, Rob. You don't have Photoshop? Most people working in digital video find PS to be an absolute "gotta have it" in their bag of tricks."

What have I misunderstood then? =(

Thanks.

Photoshop is a needed tool when dealing with STILL images and text.

Photoshop is not used for color correcting. Although I do recall reading some thread a while back where they mentioned it...I thought they were crazy. First you'd have to export your sequence as an image sequence, then color correct EACH FRAME individually.

No no no...use the 3-way color corrector. VERY powerful tool that...and more importantly, the appropiate one.

Chrominance channel output in FCP or AE
 

Does anyone know of a way to render output of only the chrominance channel of source material? I think I've figured out how to render out just the luminance channel or seperate red, green and blue channels but I cannot get the chrominance.

It there a way to get both hue and saturation and then combine them?


-j

Look in the free filters section of my site www.nattress.com and download them. G Take will allow you to see, and hence save, the Y, U or V Channels of an image (or R, G or B for that matter) in FCP. Save out the U and the V for what you need. There's not one single chroma channel, but two though....

Graeme

Thanks, Graeme.

I have a new question now, though. S-video is broken into two portions, the luminance and the combo of hue and saturation. Do you know how I can generate that combo of hue and saturation as a single rendered movie?


-j

No, I don't. It's probably part of how PAL or NTSC composite video works, and it would need such an encoder or decoder to work with it, taking the U & V channels and combining them into one analogue signal, to be decoded at the other end.

Can I ask what you're trying to do. Perhaps there's another way to achieve it??

Graeme

Funny you should ask, Graeme. I'm trying to combine the U and V from an S-video capture with the Y of a DV capture. I got the idea from a thread that you were a part of a little while ago:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=32206

As far as I can tell, the S-video picture coming out of my GL-2 shows all of the same artifacting as the DV picture (albeit less sharp) but I think it's a project worth looking at anyway.

My thought of outputting a combined U and V was to a) save me from rendering them seperately and b) to see if I could have the U and V output combine with the L "live" on my TV via a patchwork S-video cable setup.

I admit that although 'a' is useful, 'b' is just a super geek out on my part.


-j