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Avid editor moving to FCP
Hi all,
I’ve worked on avid for the past eight years and am about to cut my first show, full offline through to online on fcp (wish me luck!!). I’ve worked my way through the great FCP for Avid Editors and FCP Beyond the Basics but still have a few burning questions….
– The show I’m working on is shot 16×9 PAL but delivered 4:3 letterboxed (don’t ask me why!?!). How do I achieve this? I was so reliant on the reformat effect in avid that I don’t know what the manual increments for stretching the frame size to a different aspect ratio are. Does FCP have a reformat filter??
– I have to deliver a split track mix, specifically channel one – full mono mix, channel 2 – mono mix minus voiceover. In avid I would do an audio mixdown of all and then another of all except voice giving me two channels which I would then pan left and right. As far as I can figure the best way to do this in FCP is by nesting but that gives you a stereo pair rather than a convenient one channel. Is there a better way of doing this??
– One thing which is frustrating me in FCP is the lack of ability to put effects directly onto a filler track. One good example is the trusty ol’ Boris Colorize Glow effect used as a transition between two shots. In avid I would place the effect on a filler track above the transition and keyframe accordingly. It seems to me the ways to do this in FCP are to apply the filter to both clips at the transition point (time consuming!!), or to create a nest and apply it to the nest (then losing clip reference info if the sequence has to be reconformed at a later date). Is there a better way to do this??
– How do you create basic lines which you can make in the avid title tool? Is this something you have to delve into motion for??
Many thanks to anyone who can provide some help.
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4 Replies
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Do you have a capture card on the station you are using? If it’s a Kona3 you can letterbox on output using the SD>SD panel = letterbox. so you preserve original framing throughout and upon “edit to tape” or monitoring as you cut you are seeing the output you want to deliver.
Build your audio tracks so they make sense. VO on 1 (or 1,2 if stereo) bed on 3 blah blah.
by control clicking or right clicking on the track icons in the timeline you can assign the output of each track. your sequence needs to be set up for a dual mono output (sequence settings)
I often cut everything stereo then in the browser duplicate sequence and name it accordingly then do my track assigns. Usually they will want other deliverables DVD h264 etc and this workflow makes it easy to deal with.
in FCP the transitions themselves are the effect themselves like wind blur, flash frame etc. If you find one you like copy into the favorites bin in the effects window and you can drag it from there to the timeline any time. watch out for excessive levels with some effects (over 100 IRE). there is no effects layer in FCP it’s clip by clip. Nesting in FCP won’t track events so your EDL is boned. down and dirty if you can’t get all of it legal, export video use current settings bring it back in on top of a timeline and legalize thatNot sure what you mean by lines but boris 3D (video generators) is the best text generator on board and repeated underscore otherwise photoshop. motion if you want but it’s slow. photoshop or AE is much faster
Doug Beal
Editor / Engineer
Rock Creative Images
Nashville TN -
Or you can use Lifetype…which, for some reason, no one seems to use…
…although I use it all the time for titling. Go figure.
Tom -
I haven’t seen the systems just yet so not sure about capture cards… But is it also correct that if i drop my 16:9 sequence into a 4:3 project it will give me 4:3 letterboxed??
Thanks for the advice
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[James McIntyre] “But is it also correct that if i drop my 16:9 sequence into a 4:3 project it will give me 4:3 letterboxed?? “
You really don’t want to do this as FCP is not that great at scaling. FCP will give you whatever you want. Letterboxed or Center Punch depending on how you set the scaling.
For HD to SD I only use AJA Kona products as they provide outstanding downconversion in realtime.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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