I do currently have an external 80 gig "Maxtor" 5400 RPM firewire drive. I have edited several 45 minute - 1 hour programs with 5-6 video layers and 6 audio tracks and havn't had any trouble yet. It requires some serious RAM management, but no dropped frames or freezes. I do realize by writing this down I have just jinxed my next project, but oh well.

I know I won't have "real-time" effects with 3.0, but if I can still use a full pallet if FX and multiple tracks, I'll be happy.

Thanks again for all your help
Kev

Rob, Dan, thanks for the comments:
Dan, no I don't own the DSR-11 yet, but I'm putting together a system config right now, and the Sony DSR-11 is the only moderately priced VTR that I can find that also has some kind of service back up here.
While on the subject of configs, though, how does this sound:
PowerMac Dual 1 GHz
Superdrive (but of course)
1 GB RAM (i.e. 512 MB additional)
17" Apple LCD display + Samtron/LG 17" CRT display
GeForce 4MX display card w/64 MB onboard RAM
56 K modem
80 GB HDD for media + 40 GB for OS and software
FCP 3 + AfterEffects 5 + Boris Red + Photoshop 7
Sony DSR-11 as edit-dedicated VTR
Sony 8" broadcast monitor (8" 'cause this is going with me on shoots as well!)

Any suggestions on what else I should be looking out for/bargaining for? I'm trying to get the system within the next fortnight.

Best,
Ram

Re: Anyone using Boris Red?
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Aaron Frick : I just upgraded on my media100 from grafitti 1.0 to boris red 2.1 and every title I had in my system is now way out of whack. Any suggestions on how to open grafitti once I have installed red? -->>>

Have you vissited Tim's Corner at http://www.borisfx.com? Tim Wislon, who is a regular presenter at my BOSFCPUG meetings here in Boston, contributes to it on a regular basis and he is there to answer any questions regarding the software.

I've just started to get trained on the software and also in using it so I have not yet experienced the issue. However, I will also email Tim directly as well and see about getting an answer for you in case the above url does not help.

Let me know...

Comparison of Uncompressed Options for FCP
 

Is anyone editing uncompresssed video with Final Cut Pro? I'd like to hear from you, your thoughts, opinions, tips/tricks, etc. What capture card are you using, and how do you rate its' performance? Please be sure to list your present setup configuration in your post.

Incidentally, Macworld has just released a comparison of the four capture cards available for uncompressed video editing with FCP: AJA Video Systems' Kona SD, Aurora Video Systems' IgniterRT, Digital Voodoo's D1 64AV, and Pinnacle Systems' CineWave Classic.

Macworld has made the review available online, you can read the comparison at:
http://www.macworld.com/2002/09/reviews/video.html

Happy editing,

Must it be thru firewire?
 

Hi again guys,

I've got a question here... I've read somewhere on this board (can't seem to find the exact post now!) that someone prefers to capture footage from a XL1S through the S-video out and RCA jacks using an uncompressed capture card instead of thru firewire. Apparently, this produces a higher quality/ bandwith picture (despite the generation loss?) If I remember correctly, he mentions that he does this especially if the footage has to be reworked quite extensively.

My question is... is this true? Does it somehow bypass the 5:1 DV compression? or is the compression already recorded to tape? Does it improve the image quality in any way? Are there any advantages to working like that?

Fire away guys!

Thanks

Adrian

Everything on the tape is compressed. I cannot see what the advantage would be of using composite out. It is even more difficult to see how RCA video signal would approach the quality of the 1394.

I guess the question here is whether the live stream is uncompressed or not. If the live stream is uncompressed, you ** might ** get S-video signal to offer some improvements.

The RCA signal will definitely not be better then your firewire.

You **might** be able to curcumvent the 5:1 DV compression
*IF* (and only if) you record directly from that port WHILE
shooting. It would not make much sense that a component
signal will be compressed and then decompressed to be viewed.
That would take extra CPU cycles while not adding anything,
so I doubt that during shooting it has degraded.

BUT, if you are playing back from tape it already is 5:1 DV
compressed so then it makes no difference at all. It can only
get worse, not better.

It might be interesting to compare the SVHS out of the XL1s
while shooting and playing back to see if the signal is different
indeed.

One other thing. Even if the SVHS out while shooting is better
you still need some expensive hardware to make it all work,
namely:

- Uncompressed component (PREFERRED!)/RGB board
- A harddisk system that can handle an uncompressed stream,
sustained! (around 30 MB/s -> you will NEED raid 0 or very
fast SCSI harddisk for that)

So all in all it might not be worth it. But if you already have
such a system lying around it might be an interesting option.
But then you'd have to take that system with you on the shoot
to benefit from it.

Perhaps blue/green/orange screen work in your own studio
or motion control / time lapse / stop motion work may benefit
from this all since it is indoor and requires the best signal
possible...

I hope this all made some sense.

The exception would be doing many layers and graphics. In theory, the adding of layers, effects graphics etc. will require rendering. The rendering and recompressing the file will degrade the image each go around. The slightly lower quality analog footage will benefit by being uncompressed. Each rendering will not degrade the image. Very complex layers and graphics will benefit from the uncompressed format.

Jeff

Pardon my ignorance guys, but how does one shoot/work in uncompressed? If I'm not wrong, all DV formats (DV, DVCAM, DVCpro etc) have some form of compression. Does it mean working in analogue then outputting to the NLE in component? Can digital formats be 'uncompressed' (apart from the zillion dollar prototype cameras)

Thanks

Adrian

I beieve that some professional cameras can send "component" video out. I believe that the new(er) Sony DSR570 and perhaps the DSR370 can send component video out through a BNC connection. This is excellent equipment...but significantly more expensive than a prosumer setup. A basic DSR370 setup will cost at least $20-25k, a DSR570 will run $35-55k.

Frankly, DV's compression effects are way, way down on my list of factors to be concerned about.

If a camera has a 26 pin connection it will usually support Component (YPrPb), composite, and RGB. Then you need some kind of a device that will transcode (encode) the signal into something a signal your computer or NLE can understand. Much of this is accomplished through the capture cards included with some NLE's. During the transcode phase it will be converted from analog to digital. Some high end cameras have will out digital signals directly. The digital signal that they output may be compressed or uncompressed. If and only if, the signal can be kept uncompressed all the way through, you will not have compression artifacts. Very few NLE's have the storeage space and processing power to work with uncompressed files.

Jeff

I'm not afraid that the NLE can't handle those datastreams, it
is more your harddisks. That is way you'll need a very fast and
large RAID array. AVI supports uncompressed native, so you
can use that to store it in.

Again, you only have a benefit with uncompressed if the signal
is coming directly off the CCD's and is not being compressed/
decompressed by the camera. This is something that must be
established first!

You may have solved this already, but I thought I'd forward what I just learned this morning. I guess when FCP sees a firewire device hooked up to it, it automatically will playback video through the firewire. I even imported already-digitized footage from a tutorial, and couldnt hear anything through the computer.
The canopus converter (have one coming in the mail) is supposed to convert everything in the box and send it along the firewire. You shouldnt have to render it.

Hope this info is at least a little bit helpful.

Jeff Patnaude

Just got my new Mac!
 

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to let you all know that my new (and first) Mac was delivered today! I decided to take advantage of the price drop on the older dual 1gHz G4 Power Macs. I've been spending some time getting myself acquainted with OSX and the computer in general.

So far...I love it.

Next step is to purchase some extra RAM and an additional hard drive. Then later this year I'll be putting some money towards Final Cut Pro. Can't wait!

Anyone have any favorite retailers for buying RAM/hard drives, etc? Or do you have any that you like to avoid?

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has answered many of my questions over the past year (especially Ken & Dan) and helped me feel comfortable making this purchase.

I know that I'll have many more questions for all of you and I look forward to the many replies I'm sure to recieve!

OS XVll
 

Can anyone tell me why Mac couldn't come out with OS X 2.0 or OSX1 and REPLACE classic, OS 9 etc, and OSX, so one program can do it all as far as year old programs. Right now we have OS 9, Classic, OS X1.5 and personally I think it's pretty lazy on Mac's part. I know, all the Mac users are going to say"you should see the IBM/PC systems". Or should we just wait for OS XVll?
Bruce

I do some freelance editing and have clients that have the Aurora RT card and the CineWave card. Another client was looking at the Digital VooDoo card, but is now leaning towards the Kona card. He thinks the Kona has higher picture quality (at least to his eye). My system consists of a standard Mac G4 for DV editing. Between the Aurora and the CineWave, I prefer the Aurora. It seems more stable and the type of work they do doesn't require alot of RT effects. But it's hard to compare them fairly because the base systems are not identical. The Aurora has 8 Seagate 15,000 RPM SCSI RAID 0 drives. It never misses a beat. The CineWave I edit on uses 2 Maxtor 10,000 RPM RAID 0 drives. It occasionally has a problem or two. Is it the drives, or the maintance (or lack there of?) or the card itself? I can't tell you. But editing on the Aurora is a very pleasurable experience. Few if any problems and consistent performance, no surprises. Perhaps a little better picture quality too. I'm looking forward to editing on one of the other two cards in the coming months and I'll post my thoughts then.

Jeff

Mike, that's great news! I'm confident that you'll have a long positive experience with this Mac and the next, and the next,...

After nearly 20 yrs in a PC-only world I was skeptical. No more.

Have a blast!

Hi Bruce,
In brief, the underlying foundations of OS 9 and OS 10 are as architecturally different as you can imagine. OS 9.2 introduced the facilities for OS 9 to be invoked by OS 10 ("Classic mode") as a bridge to enable older apps to continue to be functional under the new OS.

Actually, I'm quite surprised at how good of a job Apple did at making this transition in light of how different the old and new environments really are. Because Apple holds such absolute control of its market OS 9 will not be around long.

I'm a Mac user and I'm not going to say you should see how PC works. Couldn't care less. And there's no way I would say you should wait for OSXVII. OS X 2.0 is a beauty.

All Classic is is around 20mb and with a few other controls just starts up OS 9 inside X. So for all intense and purposes OS X is just one big system. You can of course move OS 9 to another drive, or bin it altogether if you think you're never going to need it.

As Ken mentioned, the architecture is very different and could not therefore allow X to run OS 9 apps without Classic. Some apps do run natively in X after some modification. Have you updated your apps to do so? At the end of the day it works incredibly well, I was sure surprised how good it was when I first tried it, but I now launch Classic or boot into 9 very rarely.

"…personally I think it's pretty lazy on Mac's part." Don't blame your poor Mac it's how "Apple" made him. ;-)

For software companies Classic has been a way for their applications to continue to be vialbe even with a new operating system. But the best thing Apple has done is create Carbon. A programmer can take their Classic application and change a portion of the code to make it run on both Classic and OSX natively. Because of that, Photoshop and other great applications can run on either OS. THAT is pretty impressive!

By making an application Carbon, it extends your products self life. This satisfies two goals, providing existing customers a product if they haven't switched (OS 9) and also satisfying the need for OS X applications. It also buys the developer time to make the software OS X native (Cocoa). Cocoa apps run quicker in OS X and can better take advantage of multi processors.

Jeff

Help! Advise for selecting rotoscoping / compositing software
 

Hi, I'm a newbie to rotoscoping and compositing.

I'm about to invest in a powerbook G4 and FinalCutPro3 for editing.

I want to do compositing and rotoscoping:
(I want to combine objects from one footage into another footage).

1. What software should I go for without having to sell all of my belongings?

2. I would also appreciate info of good books and online information on how to do this.

I'm using XM2 camcorder from Canon.

E-Mac DVD Burner
 

I am thinking about getting the 800 Mhz, Super Drive Emac for editing with Final Cut Pro. I have two questions concerning this box.

1. Is anyone currently using this box to cut with FCP and what are your thoughts/complaints/praises on it? (not the program but the overall system)

2. DVD burning w/ Super Drive. I have heard that ther might be some compatability issues on DVD's burned on the Superdrive playing back on other DVD devices. I heard from quite a few people that they had been urged to wait on a DVD burner that will be more compatable with other devices. Has anyone caught wind of this?

I have already wasted my time and money once before, I would like to avoid this situation again.

Thanks,
Dan

ive had no problems with dvds playing in dvd players from sony/toshiba/panasonic/apex/GE(rca) and several PC's but most of these players are recent models and the only problems i have heard of happened in first generation dvd players

compatible players

http://www.apple.com/dvd/compatibility/

Here is Apple's page with tested DVD players:
http://www.apple.com/dvd/compatibility/

Apple's FAQ for iDVD has some good info:
http://www.apple.com/idvd/faq.html

For DVD Studio Pro:
http://www.apple.com/dvdstudiopro/specs.html

For DVD Studio Pro they say this: "A partial list of compatible consumer DVD players can be found here. This compatabilty only pertains to Apple branded DVD-R media. Projects that are sent to duplication houses should be 100% compatable with all players."

As for burned DVD-Rs working on computers with other drives like DVD+R or DVD+RW drives, I couldn't find it, but I am sure you can find links on the web if you care.

Hi Dan,

I haven't personally edited on an eMac with FCP 3 and I guess my concern is how it would respond. What length of projects would you be doing? Would you use a lot of effects (rendering time)? If you're not doing anything very lengthy or loaded with layers of effects it may be fine for your needs. I just got my wife an iMac G4 flat screen and put FCP on it. It is slower than my G4 450 dual processor. I found myself doing a lot of waiting. Have you had the opportunity to use an eMac with FCP yet? If not maybe try to test drive one at a CompUSA or an Apple Store.

Jeff

Adobe's AfterEffects and Pinnacle's Commotion Pro make a very good, and relatively economical, pair for compositing and rotoscoping.

Visit these sites for more information:
http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/main.html
and
http://www.pinnaclesys.com/ProductPage.asp?Product_ID=110

Commotion
 

Commotion Pro is the undisputed king in rotorscoping...it's compositing capabilities are awesome and astounding- in fact- the movie "Gladiator" used tons of Commotion work- especially in the "arena" scenes-....AE is the defacto standard but Commotion does it all and is a "paint over time/video package" as well......it's sorta like Photoshop for DV.......give Commotion a serious look and get a demo CD- it has awesome video clips showing the capabilities of Commotion- you'll be amazed.

Thanks both of you .. One more question
 

Looks like Commotion is the right tool!

Thanks again for the advise...

How about quality of the end result after finishing compositing and rendering... footage taken with XM2 mini-dv camcorder, XL1s etc....

Do you have some comments on this... :-)

What I'm thinking of here is ..... Is the resolution in the footage from mini-dv and camcorders above good enough to do compositing in Commotion. Will the rendered composited work have approx the same quality as the original footage or will you see the difference in resolution and sharpness on playback...

This might be a silly question.. but I would not end up with buying a tool like Commotion and after find out that the quality of the footage delivered by my XM2 and (mini-dv) is not good enough to produce a "broadcast quality" end result....


Best

Chances are slim....
 

It's doubtful that FCP would already be installed on one of the eMacs at CompUSA or Apple Store, since the focus of the eMac is towards education. It's worth a try though, but you'll probably just see that iMovie is installed.

an eMac is perfect for DVD creation. For FCP editing, though,....I would tend to recommend either a discontinued G4 tower or a flat panel iMac, like the 17incher.

Do check into seeing what price drops are available for a discontinued G4 tower, you may see that it is worth it for you and at that point you will have an upgrade path as you FCP skills increase.

Hope this helps, and welcome to FCP!

The issue would not be that of Commotion Pro. It's perfectly capable of dealing with higher resolution than that of broadcast television.

Do you really expect to have your work broadcast? If so, you'd be smart to check with stations in your area to see how they want material submissions; it's unlikely to be on a miniDV tape.

Quality
 

With big multi-million dollar budgets and production aimed squarely for theatrical release (movies) I'm sure the producers of "Gladiator" looked at every possible special effects package available and they chose Commotion Pro...matter of fact in the DVD there's an interview where you can see G4 Macs with Commotion running in the background- the interviewer was at his editing station and you can see the equippment and scenes from Gladiator still in their compositing setup. (look hard I don't think they made a specific effort to show this)

I'm not good with Commotion at all as I have almost no free time to learn this new software but seeing the demo CD and finding producers using it over AE and Elastic Reality was enough for me to deduce it's the best package bar none (with the exception of proprieatry packages used by ILM and such)

Quality is there- I'm pretty sure you wont see a difference in rendered footage- the whole point of special effects is to fool the viewer that what they're seeing is real or actually happened....in my brief useage of Commotion 2.0 (old version)- rendered material looked exactly like the source footage- it runs very well because it's preloaded into RAM (as you specify)....

good luck.

(I wish I knew of a Commotion class in NYC- if anyone hears of one drop a line on this thread)

Thanks!!
 

everyone, for the feedback.....

Don't forget Boris....
 

Also check out Boris Red, the url is http://www.borisfx.com.

Best of luck!

Text with Alpha Channels in Photoshop for FCP
 

I created several titles with an alpha in photoshop for import into FCP.
I have the text moving from "off screen right" to "off screen left".
At the point where the titles were placed in the time line on V2, the clips on V1 get brighter. I tried putting dissolves at each end of the title clip, but it still "pops" brighter.
I have changed my alpha setting in FCP but that did nothing.

Any suggestions?

Thanks
Kev

Hi Kevin,

Try looking under Sequence>Settings>Video Processing and the first item is RGB proecessing or rendering. I believe the box should be unchecked.

Jeff

That is unchecked.
My text was created in RGB, does that make a difference?

Kev

It might be a Photoshop issue. Read this post http://discussions.info.apple.com/WebX?14@@.3bb96c8e and also this from the LAFCPUG http://www.lafcpug.org/basic_photoshop_files.html Did you flatten the layers?

Jeff

wireframe question
 

am using FCP 3.0 I am editing my clips and making sub clips. I must have hit something by mistake since I_got wireframe on the image inside the viewer. I managed to get rid of that by going under the "View" icon and checking "Image" only. Now I got a jerky image with the audio kinda out of sync with the image! Other clips play well but this one doesn't! Anyone got an idea on what went wrong? or how I can fix it? Thanks :)