Adolfo Rozenfeld
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Nobody knows how good image qulity will be until it ships, but FWIW Canon has been using CMOS technology in their SLR still cameras (even the $8,000 ones!) with outstanding resolution and color rendition. Bear in mind that a pro SLR doesn’t use 3 chips and color rendition and exposure latitude still is vastily superior to any video camera- maybe using 3 separate chips is not so much a technological requirement anymore, but rather something video users just expect there. They are no compressing the image with low data rate MPEG-2, though 🙂
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Great, Richard!
Let us know if you find anything interesting!
BTW, does it come with printed documentation for all applications? Particularly, is there a printed copy of the Motion manual?Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
I don’t know if this is also true for MPEG-4, but for MPEG-2 playback Quicktime player has always (correctly) scaled PAL and NTSC material to the square pixel equivalents. It’s a playback behavior, not the actual frame size of the file.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
I don’t know if this is also true for MPEG-4, but for MPEG-2 playback Quicktime player has always (correctly) scaled PAL and NTSC material to the square pixel equivalents. It’s a playback behavior, not the actual frame size of the file.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
I used to have the GVD-300, which is basically the same thing minus the LCD screen. It worked fine for a couple of years of production use, but then it started having several different mechanical problems, up to a point where I understood I had to leave it for dead. Service guys explained me the DV Walkman has the same tape mechanism of a Sony VX camcorder, ie, not exactly designed for heavy duty editing applications. Given the price difference, I would say that getting a DSR-11 (or the equivalent Panasonic or JVC models) is a better idea, and they are also PAL/NTSC switchable, if that’s useful to you.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Justin: There are so many items in your message that I can’t cover them all in a single reply. As an overall thing, you’re right that many things are not limitations of the software but just part of getting used to a different tool.
FCP comes with excellent documentation, and most of your questions are covered there.“Lack of full Photoshop integration”
The irony here is that, even though Photoshop is an Adobe application, Final Cut Pro might have deeper support for PSD files than Premiere. For instance, when FCP imports PSD layers in a sequence, they retain the orignal transfer/composite modes. Last time I checked Premiere didn’t support transfer modes. This could have changed in most recent updates, though.
I don’t know why you’re getting problems. FCP imports multi-layered PSD files as nested sequences. You can choose if you want to use that as a single clip or use the layers as separate clips (either command drag to the canvas, or double click to open as a separate sequence). Alpha channel interpetation is automatic. You can also use the “open in editor” command to modify content in Photoshop and have it updated in FCP.“Transition Limitations”
What you discriribe for PSD clips could be related to the next item.
MP3 and other compressed audio formats are a no-no in FCP. It’s a professional application that works with uncompressed audio (with the exception of the MPEG audio in HDV). Convering an MP3 to AIFF or WAV takes seconds. Can be done in QT Player, iTunes or FCP itself.“Timeline Limitations”
Go to FCP preferences and set the default still duration to whatever duration you want. You have to understand that FCP imports PSD files as sequences, not clips. Thus, it creates a 12 second sequence when it imports them. Easily solved by the preference item I just mentioned.
“No built-in Titler”
The original FCP text generators are competely awful and don’t support PS fonts. They are still around for legacy compatibility and quick slates, mostly. FCP comes with Livetype, an animated text application which is capable of things a “titler” can’t dream of. It also comes with 8 GB of text presets, animated fonts, effects, backgrounds and graphics elements. Also, read this: Livetype projects can be imported as if they were clips into FCP, and you can again call Liveype from FCP (they can both be open at the same time) modify it and get the results in FCP.“Realtime Playback Abilities”
You really need to read the manual 🙂
You’re surely in “RT – High” mode, which only tolerates RT effects with final or near final quality results. If you switch to the different Unlimited Modes (high, medium, low) you will easily get the 11 layers you used to have. The RT menu is in the upper left corner of the timeline window. This will be more automatic with FCP 5, since it has the “dynamic” mode.“Importing Limitations”
Vector graphics import is a notorious omission. MP3 and AAC were already discussed.Hope this helps.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Unfortunately, Motion doesn’t yet have wall/floor region parameters, like particle systems in other applications have. They will surely add that functionality in a future version. The soliution you came up with is as good as any other, I guess.
You shouldn’t have to apply it to individual cells, though. I achieved what you want to do (or what I understand you want to do) by applying the behavior to the emitter. The key parameter is “drag”, which forces the whole system to stay “glued” together. Also “fall off rate”, which controls how the the cells spread.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Specialcase: As I said in Apple’s forum (or better yet, if I didn’t say it!), the Motion community is so greatful for the great experiments your doing with XML and Motion! Keep up the good work. The Collector and the Illustrator shape exported should be downloadable from Apple’s Motion page, IMHO 🙂
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
How fast FCP does run? Well, I think this will speak volumes. The other day I was trying to explain to some students the nature of FCP’s orange and green color codes in the timeline, usually associated with the unlimited RT mode. I started dropping effects (including color correction, several motion transformations and gaussian blurs) and the thing kept playing in RT without stopping. This in a dual 1.8 Ghz G5, with the stock 5200 card, not exactly bleeding edge at all. I am using a Decklink Extreme. If you want to do uncompressed SD instead of DV, that’s better in terms of RT- the uncompressed streams are lighter to decode and thus the RT power is more, not less than with DV. Some effects, like speed changes and time remapping, usually play in preview quality. But the color correctors and many others work in true output quality.
I think you will be impressed. There are specialized Apple film/video resellers who should be able to give you a demo of the system.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
It isn’t technically a shift in the Blacmagic codec (they wouldn’t make such a big mistake!), but a small compatibility issue in the way images are decoded by Final Cut Pro. It was extensively discussed a couple of months ago, but as far as I know there isn’t a fix yet. It’s a signficant issue, but it wasn’t clear to me if the solution has to come from Blackmagic, Apple or both 🙂
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com