Don't Upgrade To Fcp 5.1!!!
 

DON'T UPGRADE TO FCP 5.1!!!

FCP 5.1 has SERIOUS banding issues when rendering footage that has Super White areas in the image!

I didn't want to upgrade to 5.1 because I was happy with 5.0.4 and wasn't going to be buying an Intel machine for awhile. But I made the HUGE mistake of letting a friend talk me into it.

Last night I set my system to render a new cut of my reel after making some tweaks and this morning I was shocked to discover that the new render has SERIOUSLY BANDING in the any area of the picture that contains Super White whites. I thought that perhaps IO didn't have the "Super White" box check in my sequence settings. But I did. I had my settings set to High Precision, Super White, Best Motion, 100%, Progressive, etc. Everything was set up correctly! I've been working with this footage for the last month as I tweak my reel and downconvert material for my DVD's. And I NEVER had a problem with 5.0.4. Now the same footage that looked great, looks like complete sh*t!!!

And just to be clear, this is footage shot in HDCAM with the F900R, captured as DVCPROHD 1080/23.98, and ALL of my settings were set correctly to handle Super White YUV etc, etc... Anything that I didn't touch from the reel before I switched looks great. But anything I touched since I switched is unusable!

DO NOT CROSS GRADE TO 5.1 UNLESS YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO!!! And even then, know that you'll be working with an inferior product than you had before!

FWIW, the "crossgrade" to 5.1 is no longer available. The only option now is an upgrade to FCS Studio 5.1 from earlier versions of FCP for $699.

Personally, I decided to sit this one out myself and am still happily using 5.0.4 on my dual G5. There are lots of rumors about a new version possibly being shown at NAB. Perhaps it will address this issue?

Indeed.

I should've said, if you cross graded but haven't loaded the new version, hold off on loading it! Continue to run 5.0.4! The renders in V 5.0.4 are noticeably superior!

Jon,

Have you downloaded OS X 10.4.9 and FCP 5.1.4? www.macfixit.com has some solutions, too.

heath