Welcome Daniel!
I am delighted to see you join our community and moderate this forum.

I am a long-time FCP user myself, although not professionally. I, too, am very enthusiastic about the capabilities that FCP (and comparable NLE's) place in the hands of everyday people who want to tell a story. It's a good time to be on the planet, eh?

Interestingly, I was recently considering attending one of the workshops up in Maine (the 2 week documentary class). I think Charles Papert, one of our other moderators here, has also been an instructor up there in the woods.

Dan:
Thanks for your inputs. Unfortunately, JVC doesn't have much backup here in India, where I'm at. Panasonic and Sony provide much better prosumer/pro service and backup.
Best,
Ram

Sure Enough- FCP 3 DOES TC windows
 

Of course FCP 3 allows for you to create a TC window in your timeline that you can then put to tape.

here's how!

1. Save your present timeline with your completed project.
2. Create a new timeline and open it.
3. Drop your completed project timeline inside of the new timeline you just created.
4. Highlight your completed project timeline, which is now being treated as a layer of video.
5. Go to "EFFECTS and slelect VIDEO FILTERS>VIDEO>TIMECODE PRINT to apply the filter to your highlighted completed project.
6. Throw your highlighted completed project layer into the Viewer and click on filters in the Viewer window to highlight the Timecode Print Filter Options.
7. Make sure you set Mode to "Generator."
8. Leave your Format settings at 29.97fps(DF) unless otherwise necessary.
9. you can then center and position the TC window anywhere in your frame and set the size of the numbers in the window.
10. RENDER. Note that this filter takes a longer than normal time to render but the results are what you want.

Happy Editing!

OS X Drivers for RT Mac?
 

If I am correct, the RT Mac does not yet have OS X drivers available, so it is moot point in recommending it as a tool for FCP 3 on OS X at this point.

Jaguar (OS 10.2) Prices:
Mac Mall & Club Mac -
$120 (+shipping) minus a mail-in rebate of $21.

MacConnection: $99.95 (pre-orders only)

It's better than no discount at all.

OK for straight cut editing
 

I presently own and edit with FCP 3 in cutting station mode on an iBook dual USB 500mhz.

I would not recommend it as your main editing station or for final edits needing any sort of rendering. Take it to the next level at this point and purchase a G4 TiBook, you will be happy with your investment down the road when you are in need of rendering.

Check out these articles on FCP 3 set up
 

FCP Book Author and BOSFCPUG member Charles Roberts has written two excellent articles on setting up FCP 3 on OS 9 anad OS X:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/ambitious_fcp_3.html
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/ambitious_fcp_3_x.html

Happy Editing!

Gaffe made with fluorescents - Please help!
 

Hi there.

I'm making my first documentary, self financed, low budget, learning all the way and making lots of mistakes.

I'm from the UK and visited LA to take footage. I was inside a room filled with fluorescents and although there was no noticeable effect through the PD150 viewfinder or screen, when I got the footage back home and watched on my PAL Tv there is a distinctive flicker.

I really really want to use these scenes, they contain that something and I can't do without them. I also can't afford to go back to the States and re-shoot!

Can I get rid of the flicker in the edit? Final cut Pro trickery perhaps? Please help, wise ones!

Cheers

Simon

thank you very much, i tried it and it works fine!!

perhaps you can turn the flicker into something positive, depending on what the scenes are of and if a cinema look might make it more interesting.

Bruce

i have OS X installed on an iMAc dv SE 500(384ram) and it runs fine but i would def not run FCP on this machine.

Thanks Jeff,
I am still putting this system together. I admit, it would have been much easier to just go out and get a new G4 with a super drive (aka Pioneer A04) but I got this older blue and white for FREE, so I'm going to mess with it until I can scare up the $ for the new system.

Like I said, this is a 600mhz blue and white. There's about 22?.00 k of ram in there, but I can get more. It currently has a 6 gig hard drive, but that's soon to change. I'll be inserting a IBM Deskstar 120 internal drive as well as a 40 gig for the software. Both of these drives will spin at 7200 rpm's. I run OSX. I was going to edit on iMovie until I get the hang of the mac and then move upto FCP3 (which I have) I was looking into Toast for mac to make the DVD's with, but I've also heard that iDVD is cool. Will I need both?

Currently the A04 works with the mac as a CD ROM drive only. The machine recognizes it as a drive, but it doesn't know what it is. Pro-Tape sold it to me and they don't think they have drivers for it there. Only PC. My silicon valley friends say I just need to proper software to launch it, but my mac friends say the mac should just "see" it and know what it can do. Of course that doesn't seem to be doing the trick...

Any and all your advice is appreciated.
Thanks again
-Kyle

Kyle,

Please use your Apple System Profiler and tell what it reports about your AO4 drive, fireware version, everything. Try to put as much RAM in as you can, it will max out at 1 GB. Does this Blue and White have an accelarator card in it? The fastest stock G3 Blue & White was 450MHz. If it has an accelarator board that may be why the DVD is not being recognized. What version of OS X are you running?

Jeff

Happy Mac Owner! :)
 

Well after sweating an upgrade charge for the new OS, it all ended with a happy ending. I contacted Apple today and did not even get a hassle. It appears that they are giving a tad bit of grace. The upgrade was handled via the web, as it looked up my serial number.

So instead of the $129.00 charge, it was only $19.95.

Thank you Apple!

That was a class act on Apple's part. Good for you...and kudos to Apple.

DVD Studio Pro users: Are you using AC3 or PCM audio encoding?
 

I have a question for those of you authoring DVDs:

I am authoring a music video DVD and have encoded the audio in stereo AC3 format using DVD Studio Pro's AC3 encoding program. I have used the highest quality settings, but compared to the original AIFF audio, the AC3 audio sounds terrible: very compressed and much lower in volume. I have never noticed this before because up until now I've only encoded speech in AC3. My question is, is AC3 supposed to sound this bad? What do you DVD creators out there use? I'd like to use AC3 because the bit rate is much less than AIFF, which gives me more bandwidth more the video stream and less chance of skipping during playback. But since this is a music video, the audio quality should get priority.

Rob,
At what point in your process did you observe that the sound was bad? During previewing the disc or after mux'ing and burning it?

There's no way that I know of to completely eliminate that flicker. I might try changing the frame rate in FCP (to, say, 29.97), exporting to a DV Quicktime and then re-importing to see if it somehow lessens the effect when you ultimately go back out to PAL rate. But I don't think you'll be able to eliminate it completely; some frames are going to be darker than others.

Like Bruce recommended, you might have to consider somehow making it an artistic feature.

I would only encode in AC-3 if I wanted to create 5.1 Dolby Digital sound, which would be on anything I would ever do. Not sure, but I think DVDs also require a stereo mix (AC-3) in addition to 5.1. That doesn't answer your question, I know.

But Dolby Digital (which is what you refer to as AC-3) is not supposed to sound that bad, no. Not at all.

Ken, I only listened to the audio in preview mode. I have not yet built the disc image. Does it sound different after the disc is burned?

Joe, yes AC3 is Dolby Digital. That's why I was surprised at how much the audio quality had degraded after encoding. In the AC3 audio encoding application that comes with DVD Studio Pro, you can choose from among 5.1 channel, 3 channel, stereo channel and single channel encoding. I chose stereo because that's what the source audio is. Do you notice a significant change from the original audio when you encode audio in your DVD projects?

3rd ATA Drive or external firewire
 

Hi Guys!

I've got a little dilemma here, I'm running a G4 500 (AGP Graphics) and I've already got 2 internal HDs, (27Gb original and 45 Gb IBM Deskstar) and as it happens, space has run out again and I'm thinking of adding another HD. There's space (I think) for another HD in the bay and I'm considering getting another ATA drive. Problem is... the ATA controller that came with the computer is already taken up with 2 drives and so does that mean that I have to get another ATA controller (PCI card?) or am I better off with an external firewire drive (more expensive!). Anyone with any experience of firewire drives (to be used as a capture drive with FCP3, dropped frames? 7200rpm? 5400rpm?)

Any help at all regarding this matter would be greatly appreciated!

cheers!

Adrian

DSR-11 digitization problems?
 

Hi all: Just pulling this off into a seperate thread, 'cause I think this needs to be a question all by itself:
What's a good - economical - VTR for DV work? I was considering the Sony GV D-1000 video walkman, the DSR-11 and the DSR-20. But - hold your breath - while the DSR-11 will play and record DV (it's basically oriented around DVCAM), the specs say -

<<DV Format Recording and Playback
The DSR-11 is capable of recording and playing back DV format tapes (SP mode only)*. The standard-size cassette can record for up to 270 minutes, while the mini-size cassette records for 60 minutes.
* The transition from cut to cut may not be smooth when recorded in DV (SP) format. In between scenes where the recording format is changed from DV to DVCAM, or vice versa,
transition may not be smooth. This is a normal and expected phenomenon.>>

1. Does this mean what I think it does? Are there issues with pulling DV off this VTR, and printing DV to tape on it? Does it only work OK with DVCAM?
2. Now my head's spinning: Can I pull DV footage off this VTR (i.e. shoot DV) edit it, and write back to tape in DVCAM format?

I thought I had my understanding of formats OK, buuut this one has me stumped...Anyone out there know more about these beasts?

Best,
Ram

FireWire drives work fine for capture. Go with any 7200rpm drive or the great big 5400rpm 160gig (size does matter). If you go the internal route check out the Sonnett RAID 0 cards. Sonnett http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_ata133.html builds great cards and that will give you the ultimate speed short of SCSI. It requires 2 drives to stripe as a pair and the card controls them. I think a total of 4 drives can be hooked to 1 card. But FireWire works great

Jeff

Great news Paul. I always like a happy ending. Thanks for the update.

Jeff

I have been working with stereo classical music DVDs using Studio Pro. Early on I printed both the PCM tracks and the AC3 tracks to a test disc just to toggle between the two. Using a playback system of "moderate" capabilities typical of what most consumers might have, I could detect no distinct difference between the two.

Just my two cents worth.

check out the firewire boxes(add your own drive) by granite digital @
www.granitedigital.com. they also make swapable bay drives with cheap bays like $30 so you wouldnt hve to keep buying those boxes if you end up needing more drives.
another advantage over building your own drive is at least you know what kind of ata is inside.

that is if you decide to go the firewire route!

Jeff,
Can you believe that this mac doesn't have a modem in it? I'm typing to you on my PC. I just bought a modem on ebay (26 bucks for a genuine Apple internal thankyouverymuch-ebay) so I'm going to get this thing on line and download every new driver I can. Once I get that done, I'll get back to you with all the details.
Stand by. You guys are GREAT!
-Kyle

It only records and plays back SP mode not LP. This is because of the difference in width of the tracks between mini DV and DVCam. The caution about cuts is meant if you are doing linear editing (tape to tape). You can not mix cuts of mini DV and DVCam when you are doing linear editing. If you do edit mini DV to tape, then switch to DVCam, the scene may break up at the edit. This deck will work fine as a source deck in transferring to a NLE system. It will also be fine to print your timeline to tape. You can mix mini DV and DVCam in a non linear fashion without a problem. It is also listed as being compatable with FCP3 by Apple http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/qualification.html

Jeff

I am using the Tempo ATA100 card, it has worked great so far, I have a 400 G4, and now I have 5 drives running. If you get the PCI card, make sure to put your two new drives on the far left hard drive plate. There are three plates to mount your hard drives to and when I tried stacking two in the middle, I tried closing the door but something didn't quite want to fit right.
There are two extra power plugs in the G4 I think. Follow the power cables, it should be tucked up behind where the cd-rom drive is. Get a long pci cable too.

I had an external firewire drive, after I upgraded to OS9.2, it wouldn't recognize the drive so I have to re-initialize it, a big hassle since I had over 500 video clips for a project I'm working on. I ended up batch capturing all the footage to my internal drives, now I don't use the external anymore. when I get a laptop, I'll use it for that. Also make sure the external drive you get is fast enough to capture DV. Mine wasn't as I found, playing back was okay, but I had to capture to my internal drive, then copy the clips to my external. A direct capture dropped so many frames, it was useless to use it to capture directly. I was in a bind and needed some extra space in a hurry, it was the fastest drive they had 7200, but Logitech makes bad drives. Spend the extra money and get a fast, big, external drive if you go that route. That extra money for a good drive is worth it.

That's interesting news. Which bit stream mode and compression preset did you use? Did you encode it as a stereo track, stereo with a sub frequency channel, 5.1 or...? I listened to the audio through a professional pair of studio monitors, so maybe that's why I instantly noticed a difference. I'll try encoding my audio again -- and this time experiment with various settings, burn a test disc and listen to it on my cheap surround sound system.

Jeff:
Thanks a ton! I was aware of the LP/SP issue, but the ambiguously worded specs made me suspicious. I couldn't find the DSR-11 being used for DV among the local digital filmmakers - though more than one is using it for DVCAM. [And therein lay the rub... :-)]
Incidentally, I believe printing to tape on the DSR-11 creates audio issues, with a loss of somewhere near 6 db reported by a few filmmakers I know - since the DSR-11 doesn't have a VU diplay, they've learnt to set levels by trial-and-error. Just for the info of all the folks out there...
Best,
Ram

My first choice would be to replace the 45 Gb Deskstar with the newer 120Gb Deskstar if you can off-load the 45's contents temporarily. You'll easily be able to move that 120Gb to a new system when you upgrade and it will buy you plenty of breathing room.

Second choice would be to use an external Firewire drive, such as Maxtor's 160Gb drive. It's only 5400rpm but that will be fine for handling DV captures and edits. Frankly, if you're editing video frequently, a large Firewire drive is just a good thing to have around and not prohibitively expensive.

Remember that you do not have to keep footage online when a FCP project is completed. The small project file has all of the information required to re-capture and recreate the project. You can dump your capture and render files when you're finished.

Also remember that (if you're using FCP3) you can use the more highly compressed offline RT file format for your edit footage. That can save alot of space with little or no sacrifice to your edit process.

OS X 10.2 is available for $69 on the educational discount plan from the Apple Store. My son, 9, is eligable. Lowest price I've seen yet and no rebate form.

Jeff

Screen Captures on a Mac
 

Is there a software package out there that will capture screens on my Mac. On the PC I know you can hit "Prt Screen" and place the capture in a document. I've got to imagine that the Mac has a similar function....but I would prefer a stand alone application.

Shift+Command+3 for taking a picture of the screen. Shift+Command+4 let's you mark a portion of the screen. On OSX there is an app called Snapz Pro X that is dedicated to doing stuff like that.

I use Snapz Pro X and really like it. You can get it here http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=11530&db=mac It saves your grabs as Quicktime movies or tiffs, jpegs etc. It's very usefull.

Jeff

I guess I am a little confused. Does Snap Pro X come installed on the Mac or do I need to purchase it?

artifact problems
 

Hi new friends! I have a problem. I am in post production on the motion picture Zombie Planet. Check us out at www.zombieplanetmovie.com . Well I am now viewing our tapes for the edit. We have made clone copies of everything and once in a while we would catch these big block artfacts. We were told it was cross tape usage so we started using only JVC tapes. But now I am playing the tapes back through a brand new Sharp VL-SD20U and I am seeing lots of them! We have seen this before and then played them on the small JVC I have and they are fine! Can anyone tell me what is causing this? Thanks very much in advance.

Paul,

Do you have System 9 or X? If you have X, then a program comes with it called "Grab." Look for it in the Utilities folder inside your applications folder.

You can download Snapz Pro X directly from Apple at http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/snapzprox.html. If you like it, you'll have to pay to keep it.

But why spend money? Like Martin_M says, just use the control+shift plus either 3 or 4 and you'll get the screenshots you need.

John,

Thanks for the reply. I figured it out after messing with it. My OS version is X. I guess my Mac "newness" is showing through.