How to change item properties for multiple clips

[Tom Wolsky]

In what way do they look awful? The fields should be identical.

All the best,

Tom

Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP6,” “Basic Training for FCS2” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop”

[Jeremy Garchow]

It’s not the footage, it’s FCP. When the footage is not tagged as progressive and you are editing in a progressive timeline, FCP can kind of faux deinterlace. Even footage that truly is interlaced and you put it in a progressive timeline, if you don’t tag the file as progressive and put it in a ‘none’ sequence, FCP screws it up.

From 11/2007, check out interlacing changes section:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/garchow_jeremy/final_cut_pro_6.php

Jeremy

[Nils Fridén]

That’s not my understanding. Very similiar, yes. Identical, no. Since there is no temporal shift each set of fields holds 50% of the spatial resoultion in a progressive frame. Deinterlacing means throwing one set of fields away and replacing that with interpolated data. You are basically throwing half the frame away. (Field blending excluded.)

Or simply take a look in the monitor. After the media manager the frames looks like crap. By crap I mean like frames missing 50% of their vertical resolution. There is no way that will get past me or anyone else interested in quality output.

[Nils Fridén]

There is a way of changing multiple items in the item properties dialog. But its more of a bug than a feature, there is no visual indication of what’s going on. It’s kind of tricky and usually takes me 5-10 tries to get right.

Carefully click exactly on the text (Upper/lower/none). Press and hold the shift key and carefully move the mouse in the same row. Click exactly on the text on the last item in the selection. Right click but dont move the mouse a single nanometer while doing it. Select the new value. If you got it all right multiple items will get the new value. But dont expect it to work the first time.

There is some crucial step that takes me a couple of tries to randomly get right. Still haven figured out what it is.

[Robert Broad]

Hi Nils, I just stumbled over this thread, as I also need to change the field dominance of literally thousands of clips in an hour-long timeline. We’re trying to up-res an old SD show that was unfortunately mastered in letterbox format even though it was shot in DV 480p 16:9 anamorphic… this effectively reduced the usable vertical resolution from 480p to 360p. 🙁

Our plan is to nest and scale the original 4:3 letterbox sequence into an 854x480p or 1280x720p ProRes timeline in order to avoid re-composing all the content. This works great for everything (keyframed stills, text, graphics, etc), but the main video clips look terrible unless their field dominance is set to “none” (the material was shot in a progressive 30p format on a Sony DSR450WS… great camera/format even by today’s standards, btw).

Do you have more information on this “bug” trick you found to change item properties for multiple clips in a timeline? I cant figure out how to get this to work… any help would be *very* appreciated!

thanks,
Robert.

[Nils Fridén]

Can’t get it to work in recent versions of FCP. XML is way more reliable…
I do it this way:
1. Select your timeline. Export to XML. (Latest version.)

2. Open XML in Text Edit.

3. Use Search and Replace to search for:

replace with:

Replace all.

4. Save

5. Import XML back to FCP.

Done.

If you are dealing with PAL or certain flavors of HD you need to search for upper instead of lower.

[Nils Fridén]

The code tag doesen’t seem to work so I’ll post an image instead:

Hit replace all.

Save, import to FCP and you are done.

[Nils Fridén]

The code tag doesen’t seem to work so I’ll post an image instead:

Hit replace all.

Save, import to FCP and you are done.

[Robert Broad]

Works like a charm, thanks Nils! Oh, and credit to Andy for the original idea… I just didn’t have the stomach to go down that road until Nils walked me through it. 🙂

God bless XML… can’t wait until we get it in FPCX! 😉

Robert.