• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Print to Tape – Image Drop Outs

  Posted by Fernando Eloy on March 14, 2008 at 6:01 pm

  Hello there!

  I am trying to print to tape an HDV video but it keeps failing. It fails on two occasions:

  – when I have a countdown animation (each number last for one frame one frame and it goes on faster and faster)

  – at the final roll credits (I have used the built in roll credits from Final Cut)

  What happens is that the image goes black or gets stuck on the tape for a while and then resumes normally. Sometimes the roll credits roll fine, sometimes not. But the animation never outputs well.

  However, when I play the movie from the FCP timeline project it never drops out;

  After exporting it as a quicktime movie to make a DVD it never drops out also. The file runs well in the quicktime player as well and even inside FCP if import it there;

  The DVD also runs smoothly with the same file.

  At first, I thought it was my camera (a Sony FX1) that could not record it well. Then, I went to a studio and the same happened with a very good HDV deck

  Unfortunately, in the place where I live, not many studios are Apple based, so now I have to either sort this out and print the tape or go to a PC based studio (running Premiere) with a file so that they try print it to tape themselves.

  Therefore, I have 2 questions

  1. How can I prevent the recording from getting stuck?
  
  2. If I cannot sort the problem out, what kind of export shall I do in order to keep quality and allow the PC based studio to read it?
  
  Technical details:

  Software: Final Cut Pro 5.1.4

  Computer: Apple Book 2.16 Ghz Intel Core Duo
  2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

  Video
  Format: HD Pal 1440×1080

  In a couple of days I will have the new Mac book pro and FCP’s last version. Hope it helps.

  Thank you so much in advance for any help that may come since this movie is for a film festival and the deadline for deliver has already past.

  Fernando Eloy replied 18 years, 5 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Thaxter Clavemarlton

  March 15, 2008 at 1:05 am

  There is a function in FCP that is often overlooked… and it can help with many audio and video “skipping”, “sticking” and “missing” problems.

  You should “Mixdown” the Audio for playback before you dub out of FCP, or during the edit, if you have audio/video stuttering, drop-outs, sync-slippage, or freezes.

  NOTE: Mixdown has even been demonstrated to help with slipping, skipping problems (or “missing” audio clips) for files being EXPORTED as QT (or similar) files out of FCP.

  First, SELECT ALL of your audio tracks (highlight them) on the timeline, then:

  Sequence Menu > Render Only > Mixdown.

  You should see a dialog box telling you its rendering.

  It might seem to make little sense that “Mixing down” even simple audio tracks will “fix” complex video “freezes” or random audio dropouts to tape or export, but it CAN.

  NOTE: It does not matter of you only have one audio track, if there are random freezes during output, you should try the Mixdown.
• 

  Fernando Eloy

  March 15, 2008 at 1:56 am

  Hi There Thax

  Thank you very much for your help.

  I cannot test it now because I will only have the camera later on in the day.

  However, since I have the same problem when I print to tape using the Final Cut Movie file I believe that the mix is made already since I only have 2 audio tracks (stereo)

  When I tried to do the mix down in the original sequence after a bit of rendering it failed giving me the answer “File Error: the specified file is locked”. With the quicktime file (FCP video file) it went smoothly.

  Another thing: could it be that the problem may come from the text I’ve used. I’ve used the default FCP text, the one you access from the viewer. Should I replace it with Boris?

  thanx again

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