[Alan Okey]

Even the stock Mac Pro from 2007 stomps all over the fastest G5. In January of 2007 I sold my dual 2GHz G5 and bought the twin dual core Mac Pro Xeon 2.66GHz with 2GB of RAM. It slaughters the G5 in every way. Another big reason to go with a Mac Pro over a G5 is ProRes – you can’t capture ProRes in realtime on a G5.

If money is a problem, just buy a cheap 2007 quad core 2.66GHz Mac Pro on eBay and add extra RAM and hard drives when needed.

[Alan Okey]

[tel jaba] “do you suggest that I work in XDCAM and only at the end to down convert to SD? “

Correct. FYI, you can change the project settings so that any rendering is done in ProRes 422 instead of XDCAM EX, even though your sequence will still be XDCAM EX. ProRes will render faster and cause less lag.

As for chroma keying, are you doing your keying in FCP or in an external compositing application?

If you’re doing it in FCP:

First apply a 4:1:1 color smoothing filter to any greenscreen clips. XDCAM EX is actually 4:2:0, but it should still work. This will smooth the blocky edges of the U and V channels and help to make a better key.

If you’re exporting to another compositing application and you’re unsure what keyer will be used, try this:

Place a greenscreen clip in a 1920×1080 25p ProRes sequence and apply a 4:1:1 color smoothing filter. Render the sequence and export the clip as a new, self-contained clip. Do this for each of the greenscreen clips that you’ll need to composite. Depending on the particular compositing application being used, you may have better options for chroma smoothing, so this step may be redundant.

If the compositing is being done on a PC or on another Mac without FCP, make sure to install the ProRes codecs first.

Color grading is the final step. If you’re using Color, make sure you follow all of the workflow guidelines to the letter (no stills, speed changes, time-stretched clips, etc.). Choose ProRes as your project’s export codec, render, and send the finished project back to FCP. Export the final sequence from FCP (make it self-contained if you want to move the file to another system) and use the ProRes file as your master for all subsequent downconversions, whether for SD broadcast masters or web use.

[Alan Okey]

[Tom Brooks] “attempting reverse telecine on an edited sequence with mixed cadence would not work.”

Tom is absolutely correct. If you’ve already edited something together with multiple 3:2 pulldown-containing clips, the cadence will change and you won’t be able to successfully remove the pulldown on the entire piece as a whole. It’s always much better to remove pulldown from clips before editing, then edit in a 24p sequence.

[Alan Okey]

Make sure you’re looking in the root level Library folder, not your user account’s Library folder. As in (System Drive)/Library, not (System Drive)/Users/(username)/Library.

[Alan Okey]

[Rob Hindley] “Is Windows (in its many variants) in ’emulation’ even when it runs on a separate partition on the hard drive? “

No. When you set up a separate Windows partition using Boot Camp Assistant, you are in essence creating a completely separate computer. When you boot to Windows XP, your iMac is a PC, running Windows natively.

[Alan Okey]

There is no need to recapture the footage. You can simply drop your edited DV sequence into an uncompressed sequence, do your color grading and render. If you don’t have fast enough storage for realtime playback of uncompressed, use ProRes, which is visually lossless.

As far as noise goes, it’s unlikely that you can get rid of it. You may be able to minimize it to some extend when color grading (lowering mids, etc.) but working in ProRes or uncompressed will avoid adding any additional compression artifacts. Even though your DV footage is 8-bit, color grading and graphics can still benefit from rendering in 10-bit. You can also apply 4:1:1 color smoothing to any problematic shots (saturated, hard-edged red shapes, etc.) to help get rid of any DV chroma blocking artifacts.

What is your delivery format?

[Alan Okey]

It sounds like the Macbook Pro is missing some Quicktime components that are needed to play back the files you transferred. Try downloading and installing Perian (perian.org) to see if it helps. Other free tools you can try include DiVX Doctor II and Flip4Mac Quicktime components.

[Alan Okey]

This is not normal behavior for FCP. Are you by any chance using an Apple Mighty Mouse? The MM has side buttons that react to “squeezing the mouse. If those buttons are not disabled in System Settings, they can frequently interfere with regular mouse operations if you happen to squeeze the mouse a bit too hard by accident. Aside from that, I’m not sure what could be affecting your dragging and dropping operations.

[Alan Okey]

If you don’t absolutely need a laptop, a Mac Pro offers way more bang for the buck than a Macbook Pro.

[Alan Okey]

[Kevin Matluk] “Would you also suggest importing all my HDV footage as apples Pro Res or Intermediate codec into final cut?”

Absolutely.