[Alan Okey]

Your post is a bit confusing. Can you please explain a few things first?

-What is the original video source? Screen recordings? If so, how were they captured?

-What is the resolution, filetype and codec of the source video?

-Was the source video created on a Mac or a PC?

-You mention that your client uses Premiere. Is the client providing you with files exported from Premiere? If so, what type of files? What resolution and codec?

-What are your project/sequence settings in Final Cut Pro?

Do this: In Final Cut Pro, once you’ve put the source clip in a timeline, double-click on it and look at the motion tab in the viewer. Is the original clip being upscaled to fit the frame size of your sequence, i.e. is the scale greater than 100%? In the samples you provided, the second image appears larger than the original, so I assume that the source clip is being upscaled to fit the frame size of your sequence.

Image quality of imported footage can be degraded both by the codec of the sequence (DV is notoriously bad for graphics) and by upscaling the original clip dimensions. You might achieve better results by both (A) not upscaling the source clips to fill the full frame size of your sequence (if that is indeed what’s currently happening) and (B) working in a sequence that uses a higher quality codec like Uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2.

Also be sure to render your timeline prior to viewing playback. As a previous poster mentioned, you should ideally be viewing playback on an external broadcast monitor for the most accurate representation of how your video will appear on video (not computer) devices.

[Alan Okey]

Your proposed system specs look good. I’d definitely vote for the Kona card above the other options you listed. You’re definitely doing the right thing by getting rid of the Firewire 800 drives and moving to eSATA. RAID 1 is also slowing down your disk I/O speed to a certain extent. An eSATA RAID 5 storage solution should be a big improvement in throughput speed over your current setup.

You might also want to consider transcoding your XDCAM EX footage to ProRes prior to creating a new FCP project, and then working ProRes sequences instead of XDCAM EX sequences with ProRes rendering. It might help with the timeline lag and slow export times you’re experiencing.

Uncompressed HD requires the least amount of CPU overhead for editing and rendering, but requires much beefier storage performance (around 350MB/sec. for editing HD comfortably) and a lot more storage space.

[Alan Okey]

“Brightness” and “Contrast” are inaccurate labels for the controls on video monitors. It would be much more accurate to think of them as black level and peak white level, respectively.

It’s common knowledge how to calibrate a monitor using SMPTE color bars and the blue only switch, but you’re correct in that commonly found instructions on how to set the peak luminance (white) level are more subjective in their description.

The more scientific and accurate way to set peak white level (‘contrast”) is to use a probe/sensor to determine the monitor’s peak output level. The actual value required will vary according to the display technology and room lighting conditions.

Post your question in the Color forum for expert advice.

[Alan Okey]

[Rafael Amador] “Nest the clip with the 422 and the CK, then apply the Spill Supressor on the nest.
Don’t nest the background. “

That was the first thing I tried, and it didn’t work. I can’t explain why it doesn’t work, but it doesn’t. That’s the whole point of my post – it just doesn’t make sense.

[Alan Okey]

[John Fishback] “In FCP, the bottom filter acts on the one above it.”

I understood this to be the case, but for some reason the CC filter wasn’t following the typical pattern.

[John Fishback] “. The Primatte keyer in Motion is excellent. That might have worked better for you.”

If I have the time to do keying outside of FCP, I’d ordinarily just use Combustion, but thanks for the suggestion.

[John Fishback] “Another approach might be to export the FCP-keyed layer using the Animation codec to preserve the alpha channel, and then put your supression CC on that after importing it and replacing the original track, although, that’s probably as time consuming as the method you described. “

I had considered that method, but in the interests of time, went with the solution I described. To be honest, I was quite surprised that I was able to get as good of a result with the FCP keyer as I did.

[Alan Okey]

Try double-clicking on a clip in the timeline, selecting the viewer window, then export the audio clip. This should export only the selected clip, not the whole timeline track.

[Alan Okey]

Steps for setting up a Qmaster cluster:

1. Make sure all machines are connected to each other via gigabit Ethernet. GigE switches are cheap – pick one up if you don’t already have one.

2. Install Qmaster and Compressor on all machines. While it’s necessary to have a separate license of Final Cut Pro on each machine linked together on the same network, I don’t know if this is the case with Compressor. I don’t know if Compressor snoops the local network to check for other systems using the same serial number, or if it has an unlimited render node license. The systems I have set up have used unique serial numbers.

3. Open the Network control panel in System Preferences. Unless all of your cluster machines are connected to the same router with its own IP address, Choose DHCP for the network interface that you will be using to connect the machine to the cluster. Click Advanced, and check the box marked “make AppleTalk active.” This step may not be necessary, but without a router it may help the machines in the cluster to see each other more easily. If you do have a router with a dedicated IP address, you can set up your machines using static IP addresses and enter the router’s IP address in the router field.

4. Open the Sharing control panel in System Preferences. Make sure File Sharing is checked on. Click the plus button under Shared Folders and add the system drive of the machine. Click the plus sign under Users and add the username and password of the primary user account that you use on what will be the cluster controller, most likely your primary editing machine. Change user permissions for this account to Read & Write.

5. On the Setup tab of the Qmaster control panel in System Preferences, select the following for all machines except the primary workstation, from which you will be submitting batches – the primary machine will be the cluster controller.

A) Under “Share this computer as:” choose “services only.”
B) Under “Services,” check “Share” and “Managed” for the Compressor service.
C) Click “Options for selected service” and choose the maximum number of instances for Compressor.
D) Switch to the Advanced tab and under “Extras,” check “Show Qmaster service status in menu bar” and type in a unique name after “Identify this computer to Qadministrator as:”
E) Click “Start Sharing”

Perform the above steps for all machines except your primary workstation.

On the primary workstation, most likely your editing system, make sure to share your system drive in the System Preferences Sharing control panel and add the username and passwords of the primary user accounts of each of the machines that you set up in the previous steps. Grant these accounts Read & Write access.

Open the Qmaster control panel in System Preferences. This time, under “Share this computer as:” choose “Services and cluster controller.” If desired, perform the same procedure for service instances as before.*

Follow the same steps as the previous systems under the Advanced tab.

Once all systems have been configured and are sharing services, open Apple Qadministrator on the cluster controller system (located in the Applications folder). Click the plus button under “Clusters” to add a new cluster. Give the cluster a name. Next, select your machine name under the Controller button in the Services tab.

In the Qmaster services browser in the lower half of the Qadministrator window, you should see a list of machines that are available to add to the cluster. Clicking the disclosure triangle next to the machine name will display the number of available CPUs on that machine.

Drag the machines (or CPUs) that you wish to add to the cluster into the empty list in the Services tab. When finished, click “Apply” and quit the Qadministrator application.

When you are ready to submit a job or jobs to the cluster in Compressor, click on the Submit button and instead of choosing “local machine,” choose the cluster that you created in Qadministraor. Compressor will automatically distribute the processing of any jobs when possible. For Quicktime movies, video content will be divided into segments and processed separately, then rejoined seamlessly into a single file once all pieces are finished being processed. Some files, such as audio, cannot be segmented and will be processed by a single CPU/service instance.

This method has worked for me. I can’t answer questions about using other methods (quick cluster, for example), and I can’t really help with troubleshooting if these steps don’t work in your specific case. All I can suggest is to read the manuals and participate in user discussion forums on the Apple website.

I would also suggest that any clustering setup that enables Read & Write access between machines be set up behind a hardware firewall for security. Assigning each machine a static IP address in the private 192.168 range would also add a layer of protection. A true network/security specialist would most likely cringe at the thought of allowing read/write access to the system drive between systems on a network, but that’s an entirely different topic. For real network security advice, consult a professional.

**Note: It’s possible to exclude your primary workstation from the Qmaster cluster even if it is the cluster controller. You may wish to do this if you want to send jobs to Compressor to be completed in the background while you continue to edit, utilizing the full CPU power of your editing system. Be aware that your editing system’s drives will continue to be accessed by the cluster if any source media for your Compressor job batch is contained on it. It is possible to set up centralized cluster storage on a machine other than your cluster controller, but any source media used by Compressor will need to be copied there or located there from the start. Cluster storage is beyond the scope of this discussion. For further details, RTFM.

[Alan Okey]

If you haven’t done so already, set up a cluster in Qmaster using all available computers, connected via gigabit Ethernet. Compressor takes advantage of distributed processing, so rather than having your spare machines sit idly by when you use Compressor, put the extra horsepower to work by utilizing Qmaster.

I’ve had good luck using managed clustering, setting up the host machine as the cluster controller and setting slave machines to “services only.” I recently set up a cluster for an editor friend who was going to buy a used dual G5 for $850.00 to increase her rendering speeds (she has a first-generation dual G5), until I explained to her that adding a new Mac Mini and setting up a cluster with Qmaster would not only save her money, but would run circles around simply upgrading to a slightly newer (and still outdated) G5. She’s quite happy with the results. The new Mac Mini absolutely trounces her G5 in rendering times – it’s easily twice as fast. While the Mac Mini is not a good choice for a dedicated editing machine, it’s hard to beat for cheap CPU horsepower in a cluster. The caveat is making sure you connect everything via gigabit Ethernet and have plenty of RAM.

Unfortunately, FCP doesn’t utilize distributed processing, so a cluster won’t improve render times within FCP. But for any Compressor jobs you might have, including compressing to web, DVD or doing format conversions, putting all of your available computing horsepower to work by using Qmaster will benefit your render times considerably.

[Alan Okey]

I wouldn’t put too much hope into further LiveType development. I have a sneaking suspicion that in the next release of Final Cut Studio, LiveType will be dropped entirely and Apple will push Motion as its replacement.

[Alan Okey]

There’s an even faster way:

1. Open the source angle clip in the viewer
2. Add CC filter
3. Adjust CC to taste
4. Drag CC filter from viewer tab to browser
5. Drag CC filter from browser onto first instance of respective multiclip angle in timeline and HOLD over clip without releasing mouse button. An overlay will pop up with two options.

From the FCP User Manual:

To apply a video or audio filter to the active multiclip angle in the Timeline:

1 Drag a video or audio filter from the Effects tab of the Browser to the multiclip in the Timeline.

An overlay appears with two options.

2 While continuing to hold down the mouse button, do one of the following:

– To permanently apply the filter to the active angle: Place the pointer over the Apply to Source Angle overlay. This permanently applies the filter to the active angle, even if you switch or cut to another angle.

– To apply the filter to the currently active angle: Place the pointer over the Apply to Multiclip overlay. This option applies a filter to the active angle, but the filter is not retained unless you use the Switch with Effects commands when switching to other angles.