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Activity Forums Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy motion to fcp transfer problems

  • motion to fcp transfer problems

    Posted by Jack King on January 5, 2010 at 9:23 am

    I am really losing the will to live here. Not even joking, i am sick to death of this project i am working on, i’ve spent the good side of 2 weeks trying to get round a bug in fcp 7. I am on the verge of tears here, i feel so ill!

    Basically, fcp 7 does not support smoothcam export. (that’s right, apple have royally screwed me and many others) Now i finally have motion 4 and i’ve worked it out (sort of), all i have to do is send my clip to motion and export, and the smoothcam jitter is gone when i put it back into fcp 7 and export to mov. however, nearly all of my smoothcam clips are joined onto others with a cross dissolve transition. my problem is – WHY WONT IT ALLOW ME TO PUT THIS TRANSITION BACK ON BETWEEN CLIPS?????!!!

    Does anyone have a quick fix for this???? What am i doing wrong? or is this another bug the apple engineers can’t be arsed fixing?

    thanks so much. jack 🙂

    p.s i’ve tried sending the clip with the cross dissolve and the attached clip all to motion together, but motion spots this and rids the transition. wth!!!!

    Arnie Schlissel replied 16 years, 4 months ago 4 Members · 5 Replies
  • 5 Replies
  • Jack King

    January 5, 2010 at 9:44 am

    please ignore.

    its because the clips are too short, i need to transfer the master clip to motion and back again. i am so frustrated with apple and the project that i am losing my mind.

    jack

  • Shane Ross

    January 5, 2010 at 11:54 am

    Your frustration has nothing to do with Apple, but in not understanding how a few things work. If you want to do a dissolve, you need to have more footage in your clip than just the few seconds you want to show. These are called HANDLES…extra footage to allow for a transition. So all you needed to do was send the clip with a second or two at the head and tail of the clip, or send the master clip, and things would work out.

    Your frustration will lighten when you learn more about how things work.

    Shane

    GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
    Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

  • Kevin Monahan

    January 5, 2010 at 5:50 pm

    Yeah Bro, you definitely need handles there. Apple peruses these boards regularly so try and be more kind to our peeps. They are real people that work hard every day on our behalf. If there is a problem, they can solve it. It’s usually just a matter of time.

    That being said, I do wish there was an option in Motion to do a Send To “with handles”. You see? There is a feature request in all of this. Your workaround today will help others in the future.

    Kevin Monahan
    60 Blu-ray Templates for Final Cut Studio 2009
    http://www.fcpworld.com
    Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro

  • Jack King

    January 5, 2010 at 8:09 pm

    your both right, and i’m just a film maker who has never been able to find an editor he trusts, so I find i have to do (and actually prefer) the editing myself. But getting to grips with the little things that aren’t obvious, but actually are probably cleverly thought out and save time for those who do this professionally, takes a little more time than i have when i’m doing everything else too! But again, your right, i’ll get there.

    I love apple really, of course I do, but it seems they really have botched up with the smoothcam plug in, i’ve spoken with technical support about it and it really is something the engineers know about but haven’t sorted. I’m not saying they should fix it right now, i appreciate they’re busy with other things, but if they’re aware of it there really should be warnings. You can appreciate how much things slow down towards the end of an edit (on an imac with HD anyhow), so I could have worked around this at the beginning if apple had merely said that smoothcam doesn’t export in fcp 7.

    I’ve calmed down anyhow. and thanks for not being too harsh on me. I did figure it out seconds after i posted, i was a little blinded by my frustration, i just wanted to get a post out early just incase i didn’t sort it!

    Cheers guys. Jack 🙂

  • Arnie Schlissel

    January 6, 2010 at 3:14 am

    Most people don’t understand how stabilizers work.

    All stabilizers, Smoothcam included work by analyzing the camera motion and moving the clip in the opposite direction of the camera motion. If it sees the camera move up or left, it moves the clip down or right.

    If you’re working with interlaced footage, moving the clip up & down can cause the fields to be reversed, causing the jitter.

    This is not a bug in FCP, it’s a shortcomming of working with interlaced video.

    You can work around it by deinterlacing, but that will soften your footage. I suspect that you’re deinterlacing your footage in Motion (not necessarily on purpose), and that’s why it’s less jittery.

    A better workaround is to either use a tripod or SteadiCam or to shoot progressive. And use a tripod anyway, I’m tired of shaky cam video.

    Arnie
    Post production is not an afterthought!
    https://www.arniepix.com/

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