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Problems With Final Cut????
I do a lot of editing for an advertising agency. Once finished, we send stuff to a dubs company to put on digibeta and broadcast.
I’ve had a lot of problems with the guys at the dubs company saying the QT files look bad when put on tape and watched on a TV monitor. Sometimes between cuts there’s a strange strobing frame. The footage itself can look a little jittery when the source is a QT file. Even text I import from photoshop can be jittery. I’ve been told there are field issues, but I don’t fully understand that.
One guy at the dubs house said I can’t do any “moves” in Final Cut. That means no zooms in, zooms out, panning, resizing, etc. Also, no text should be laid down in Final Cut. Anytime I want to manipulate a clip I’d have to send it to After Effects, do the work there, then send to Final Cut. This seems unbelievable to me.
Anyway, it’s getting very frustrating. I’m obviously not the most tech savvy editor, but this seems to be more difficult than it should be!
Thanks so much for any help!!!!!
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6 Replies
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First & foremost, do you have a broadcast monitor connected to your FCP system? And do you use that monitor to check your text & graphics as you work?
If you do a search on this forum (try variations on “bad text”), you’ll find that most problems that sound like yours are somehow related to not using a broadcast monitor to check your work, or to using fonts that are too thin or colors that are too hot.
Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog -
They guy at the dub house is a MORON!!! I’m being as polite as I can on a public forum. There is nothing wrong with FCP. Everything you are trying to achieve is relatively simple. You’ll need to give us a few more details. What codec are you working in? Where is your source footage from? What type of QT file are you exporting for the dub house? What is your workflow?
FCP is a full featured professional editing system used to offline and online hundreds of hours of daily network and cable programming. Don’t let a biased individual at a “dub” house tell you anything different. You just need to learn how to use the tools properly.Michael Alberts
Ambidextrous Productions, Inc.
http://www.ambidextrous.net -
You sent him a QuickTime file. What’s a QuickTime file? What exactly are you sending him, and how are you sending it to him?
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 3.5 HD Editing Workshop” -
Also, realize that unless you are at 100% on your canvas, you aren’t seeing both fields of interlaced footage. It’s easy to make field mistakes if you aren’t looking at your footage on a broadcast monitor.
Gordon Gurley
Director of Operations
Stanford Video -
Thanks for everyone’s help on this matter. It seems to me there were two problems…
1. I would get uncompressed QT’s from outside sources and drop them in Final Cut. Somehow this created a field issue. I figured out I can bring the QT into After Effects and export another QT with the setting “Apple FCP Uncompressed”. This seems to work better.
2. The text issue must be a problem with really thin fonts or too bright of colors. Again, I can fix in After Effects with the “Reduce Interlace Flicker” filter or by reducing the color level.
What still gets me is the comment about how I shouldn’t do “moves” in FCP. This would seem to me to defeat the whole purpose of an editing program! With my job, I have to do lots of zooms, resizing things, dissolves, etc. I don’t think I should feel limited with doing these kinds of things.
To answer a couple questions, I usually export a QT either uncompressed or DV. Size NTSC 720×480.
Thanks again for the responses! In film school editing class they taught us how to tell a story, but all this technical stuff is pretty new to me!
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[James Whittington] “This would seem to me to defeat the whole purpose of an editing program! “
You said it right there. FCP is an editing program, not a motion graphics program. FCP used to be an all-in-one edit/graphics/motion app, but sadly, Apple has decided to break that functionality out to different apps (Motion, Color, etc). There are lots of things that FCP used to do well that just don’t work anymore. There are probably many that disagree with me, but I find I have to use other apps much more now to get acceptable results.
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