[Alan Okey]

The terms you use, specifically “professional industry,” “professional editing market,” “professional world,” etc. need to be more clearly defined.

If your definition of those terms means broadcast TV, then Avid is most likely the safe bet. If it means “anyone who earns a living doing video,” then it’s a much more open question.

Several people who post in this forum take umbrage when people equate “professional” with “broadcast.” You have been warned…

😉

[Alan Okey]

There’s nothing to prevent you from signing in to the App Store with your own ID and downloading & installing Motion on your work computer.

[Alan Okey]

It just looks like motion blur to me.

Why is it important that the image look crisp when stopped on a still frame? A certain amount of motion blur helps smooth the quality of motion. Shooting with a higher shutter speed will make each still frame sharper, but at the expense of having the overall motion look more choppy. If you shoot a panning shot with a high shutter speed, you will see more motion judder.

A classic example of a high shutter speed in film would be the beach landing sequence in Saving Private Ryan. If you were to look at each frame individually, they would be sharp, but when played back at normal speed, the quality of motion is very choppy, almost stroboscopic. If that’s the effect you want, then try a higher shutter speed.

At what frame rate did you shoot?

[Alan Okey]

https://www.grassvalley.com/products/advc110

[Alan Okey]

I’d venture a guess that the Mac Pro does not share the same positive sales trend as the Mac laptops or the iMac. I’d bet that the Mac Pro is doing poorly compared to tower PCs from other manufacturers. I think the writing is on the wall for the Mac Pro, and I suspect Apple will drop it entirely

[Alan Okey]

What format is the source footage? In other words, what camera was used to shoot the footage?

[Alan Okey]

An external FireWire 800 drive for your media is a great idea. It’s generally not recommended to use your system drive for media, as it can slow down the performance of the system.

You might consider loading up your iMac with RAM, as FCPX in particular can take full advantage of more RAM.

For FCPX-specific advice, post in the FCPX techniques forum:

https://forums.creativecow.net/fcpxtechnique

This forum is for FCP 7 and earlier.

Good luck!

[Alan Okey]

Demonstration of green screen push-to-white using Conduit:

https://www.dvgarage.com/storage/conduit-samples/conduit2_push2white.mov

[Alan Okey]

Virtual clusters don’t work with the “send to Compressor” option:

https://support.apple.com/kb/TS1099

[Alan Okey]

I have seen the exact same behavior when importing 4:3 stills with the dimensions of 960×720. FCP apparently automatically flags 1440×1080, 1280×1080 and 960×720 stills as anamorphic, presumably because they match the dimensions of anamorphic video formats like DVCPRO HD and HDV. This automatic flagging happens regardless of sequence settings. If you switch the browser to list view and look at the pixel aspect ratio for your imported stills, it won’t be square pixels. I always work in full-raster HD ProRes sequences and FCP still flags the imported stills as anamorphic.

You can highlight all of your stills in list view in the browser and batch change them to square pixels, but there’s a second quirk: once you’ve corrected the pixel aspect ratio in the browser, if you simply drag from the browser directly to the timeline, the stills will maintain the proper 4:3 aspect ratio and be “pillarboxed” in the 16:9 sequence. However, if you first double-click on a still in the browser (opening it in the viewer), FCP will re-apply the anamorphic stretch to the still.

Unfortunately there is no way that I have found to defeat this behavior. The 1440×1080, 1280×1080 and 960×720 anamorphic flagging seems to be hard coded into the program. It’s pretty annoying, as I frequently edit 720p videos and need to edit in 4:3 960×720 slides, maintaining their proper aspect ratio.

You can do one of two things:

1. You can edit the imported stills into the sequence and then remove the scale and distort attributes for each still in the sequence

2. You can change the pixel aspect ratio of all imported stills to square, then drag them directly into the sequence when needed

I find either method to be a tiresome workaround, and I’m frustrated that there is no way to turn off the automatic anamorphic flagging of stills with dimensions of 1440×1080, 1280×1080 and 960×720. It’s a case of FCP being too smart for its own good.