FCP and HD

[Russell Lasson]

[RayRayT] “3rd) I try to do a VO record through our AJA box (which has worked with all of my Beta projects) and the HD side doesnt want to take it. “

Most likely this is because the AJA IO doesn’t input HD. It sounds like it’s time for you to get a new card/box like AJA LHe or Kona 3 or upcoming IO HD.

[RayRayT] “1st) When I add disolves to the HD project and bring it too SD the dissolves look like crap. “

Can you give us more info on what you’re doing?

[RayRayT] “2nd) FCP closes down out of nowhere and I have to open it back up. Happens alot during Rendering time. Also happens when I try to put HD Nested Sequences in to the Viewer…It sometimes works and sometimes it doesnt.”

This could again be because the IO doesn’t output HD, but did you try trashing your preferences?

-Russ

[Gary Adcock]

[RayRayT] “3rd) I try to do a VO record through our AJA box (which has worked with all of my Beta projects) and the HD side doesnt want to take it.”

the IO you have will not load the drivers with an HD timeline.

“1st) When I add disolves to the HD project and bring it too SD the dissolves look like crap. “
Check your quality settings- sounds as if you are relying on RT too much.

“2nd) FCP closes down out of nowhere and I have to open it back up. Happens alot during Rendering time.”

depending on what version of the OS your FCP may not be compatible.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

[Raymond Tuquero]

Hey guys thanks for responding so quickly…

Answer to your questions. Well, I have the latest OSX … til Leopard decides to come out.
And I do indeed have an AJA LHE card that inputs HD-SDI.

It took me awhile to find a work around through FCP to make a HD project play on a Standard DVD Player. Well, here is my work around. (By the way, I cannot take all the credit…I have ran into a lot of people and put different ideas off of theirs to get here)
1) Anyways, I Log and Capture all of my HD footage…
2) then Create an HD timeline with the same setting as the HD Capture Log.
3) once I create my timeline, do some editing, I am ready to send to DVD.
4) I create another Sequence in SD NTSC mode.
5) Drag my HD Sequence (Nested) to the NTSC timeline.
6) I make sure the Filter (Flicker and Shift Fields (-1) are on)
7) I also make sure that motion playback is set to Best instead of Linear in the Sequence Settings.
8) then from there I am able to create the DVD normally.

Now Update… I fix the Crappy transitions with some tweaks of the Flicker Filter and Shifting the Field from +1 to -1.

But I still run into Program Crashing. Oh and every once in awhile I get this funky sound instead of my audio when I play back the timeline. (Only happens here and there / Closing and reopening fixes that … but again a Headache)

Oh and I have thrown away my prefs…tons of times throughout this trial.
I am coming to the conclusion that this is a glitch in 5.0 FCP and that the new FCP will fix this issue.

Thanks again,
-Raymond-

[Russell Lasson]

I rarely use FCP for standards conversions. Instead, I use compressor and I’ve had satisfying results. Here are my custom settings:

File Extension: mov
Audio: multi-track passthrough
Video Encoder
Format: QT
Width: 720
Height: 480
Pixel aspect ratio: NTSC CCIR 601/DV
Crop: None
Frame rate: (100% of source)
Frame Controls:
Retiming: Nearest Frame
Resize Filter: Linear Filter
Deinterlace Filter: Line Averaging
Adaptive Details: On
Antialias: 0
Detail Level: 0
Field Output: Progressive
Codec Type: Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2
Multi-pass: Off, frame reorder: Off
Pixel depth: 24
Spatial quality: 100
Min. Spatial quality: 50
Temporal quality: 0
Min. temporal quality: 50

You don’t have to go to 10-bit uncompressed, but as I have the space normally, it can’t hurt. (DV50 and 8-bit uncompressed should look good too)

-Russ

[Raymond Tuquero]

I appreciate it Russ…but sadly I feel that work around wouldnt be to good for Productivity for me. Reason is I burn DVDs and send them to clients to approve them. If not approved I revise. Plus, when a Client comes to my office I revised it for him/her here as well. And compressing it that way, might take too long. Thats why I use the SD sequence work around.

-Raymond-

[Russell Lasson]

Have you tried letting your Kona card downconvert it to SD on output and feeding the signal to a DVD recorder? That could be a good option for you.

As far as why your computer is crashing, I don’t know what would be causing that except maybe a bug in FCP 5.0. I’ve never trusted nesting in FCP as I’ve had some bad experiences with it.

We do the majority of our approvals using H.264 or MPEG-4 and deliver it over the internet. It saves us a lot of time. When Final Cut Server comes along, it will really help out as everything like this can be automated.

Good luck!

-Russ