Way to lock settings in Final Cut Pro, and another question

[Jeremy Garchow]

[EricRW] “My question is, how do you, or can you, lock the final cut pro settings so that students dont go messing them?”

What settings do you want to lock? It will probably have to do with setting up different user accounts with certian privileges.

can you get a signal out of FCP with that deck?

Jeremy

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

[EricRW] “My question is, how do you, or can you, lock the final cut pro settings so that students dont go messing them?
“

You can’t.

[EricRW] “I have a Dual DV/S-VHS deck made by JVC, some of you may know it. I cannot figure out how to import VHS tapes…”

AFAIK, you can’t (directly.)
But you can dub a VHS to a DV tape and import that… MAYBE.
Because these units are notorious for their DV sections NOT WORKING with FCP.
If you are lucky enough to have this unit be controlled by and can capture to FCP, go for it.

[EricRW] “nor can I figure out how to import an analog signal going through the input.
“

Again, I don’t know that this unit has that capability.
These dual VHS-DV decks are simply not the best choice for working with NLE’s like FCP.

Sorry.

[Ericrw]

I wish to lock “system settings” and “User Preferences” if possible.

and yes, I have all 8 systems setup to preview on an external monitor

[Jeff Carpenter]

My wife used to work in a University lab with those JVC decks. She says, first of all, they were lots of trouble when it came to playing nice with Final Cut. But she DOES seem to remember that you could capture VHS directly.

The problem, as Matte said, is that just getting the deck to talk to Final Cut Pro at all can be a challenge. But once you get the DV section to capture it SHOULD be possible to set the deck to do a “VHS-to-DV” dub and have it capture directly. Of course, that was a few years back, you may have a model that works differently. I make no promises, but looking through deck menus with a remote control is ALWAYS a good place to start with these kinds of issues.

As for the settings, you’re out of luck there. There are ways to lock users out of programs, but not out of particular PARTS of programs. Once you let a user into an application the system assumes they have the right to use everything in there.

[Jeremy Garchow]

You could lock them out of messing with system settings, though. You should download FCP Resuce (it’s free). That way, each student could sit down, trash the preferences easily and start over. Or better yet, they can store the backup set in a cheap thumb drive and restore their preferences before opening FCP.

Jeremy

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

[Jeff Carpenter] “But once you get the DV section to capture it SHOULD be possible to set the deck to do a “VHS-to-DV” dub and have it capture directly. “

Another aspect of this is… you can not use FCP to control the VHS deck… and you will not have any TC so you’d just have to “Capture Now” and manually play the VHS tape.

In a learning lab, this is very poor technique to teach young editors.

I strongly suggest the “dub to DV” approach and then using FCP to control a DV deck with TC.
It will allow PRE-LOGGING, BATCH CAPTURING, anduse of TC fro re-capturing (off-line-to-on-line, or otherwise)… something that should be standard operating procedure, especially in a production class situation, IMHO.

[Zak Mussig]

Eric,
I worked in the editing lab of my college, and my first job was teaching FCP to high schoolers… I definitely feel your pain about guarding your system settings. That said, I don’t know what there’s a way to do it. I think there’s definitely a market in extending FCP to give lab supervisors more strict control over their editing systems.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about these JVC DV / SVHS decks. Here’s my experience…

Yes, they suck. It’s a low grade JVC deck. JVC decks and FCP get into fights, and stop speaking to each other, just like the students who use these decks. It’s a deck for the education market, and it’s cheap.

Dubbing to DV would be ideal for the reasons others have mentioned… timecode, deck control, and capture now is a sloppy /bad practice to teach. That said, yes, you can capture directly from VHS using these decks. Set your FCP device control to “non-controllable device”. On the deck, make sure the dub direction is set to go from VHS to DV (the arrow is pointing left). I believe there can’t be a tape in the DV deck during this. You have no device control, but at least the remote has a jog / shuttle wheel on it, right?

Unfortunately you can’t use the opposite method to export directly to VHS. I’ve always theorized that you could change the dub direction to DV to VHS, and record both formats at once to get a VHS copy without waiting double your run-time, but I’ve never tried it. Make sure to hook up a TV to the video outs on the deck, so you can see what’s happening. A real NTSC monitor would be infinitely better, but the high school that has those in their budget is rare.

Hope that helps,
Zak