[Alex Elkins]

Hi Emmet

Sorry for the slow response – the past couple of days was a bit hectic.

It’s unlikely that the ‘_1’ file could have been deleted in-camera as the camera would just see the whole thing as one long file. It sounds more like the file hasn’t been transferred to your drive for some reason. Is there another backup elsewhere that might have it?

Failing that, if you have formatted the original SxS card from the camera then I’m afraid it’s a re-shoot or just hope the missing part of the shot wasn’t too important.

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
View Post Blue showreel
Shot on RED @ 100fps, Post on FCP/Color: Capoeira Film

[Alex Elkins]

Never mind, I’ve sorted it – I had the same copy installed on a laptop so was able to use the serial number from the splash screen. Woohoo! Now to figure out what’s wrong with the Mac Pro!

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
View Post Blue showreel
Shot on RED @ 100fps, Post on FCP/Color: Capoeira Film

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Emmet

It sounds like you don’t have all of the clips loaded correctly into XDCAM transfer. XDCAM Transfer knows there should be more at the beginning, which is why you’re seeing the timecode with the ‘no media’ warning.

Right-click on the file in question and go to ‘open in Finder’. The mp4 file will be in a folder of the same name, probably with ‘_2’ at the end. There should be a folder with ‘_1’ as well – this is the missing part of the clip. Hopefully you can find that folder and the relevant mp4 file, otherwise you’re stuck.

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
View Post Blue showreel
Shot on RED @ 100fps, Post on FCP/Color: Capoeira Film

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Dave,

We did some work for a company that uses video effectively in my opinion – they present the videos kind of as ‘how to’ videos rather than directly trying to sell to customers. I think it works nicely as they’re genuinely quite useful (although admittedly a bit dated now – these were done a while ago!)

Check out https://www.etyres.co.uk/

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
View Post Blue showreel
Shot on RED @ 100fps, Post on FCP/Color: Capoeira Film

[Alex Elkins]

If you have FCP 7 then you also have Compressor 3.5.

Just a thought, but a post-production forum catering for professionals may not be the best place to ask for places to illegally download the products we earn a living using.

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
View Post Blue showreel
Shot on RED @ 100fps, Post on FCP/Color: Capoeira Film

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Cooper,

The Business and Marketing forum might be a better place to ask this.

My advice would be to contact the company and tell them precisely what you’ve written here. Only they will know how responsible you would be for things like digitising and outputting.

There are certainly some very important things to learn in terms of broadcast delivery requirements, but remember that all stations will be able to provide their technical specifications. Once you have them, it’s a quick search of this forum to answer a lot of specific questions. If you have half a brain (which you must do, given that you’re asking the right questions) then it’s not too difficult to learn as you’re working. Just make sure that the company in question is aware of anything you’ve not done before, otherwise you might come unstuck.

Best,

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
View Post Blue showreel
Shot on RED @ 100fps, Post on FCP/Color: Capoeira Film

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Brad,

If something looks good on your HDTV, it doesn’t necessarily mean that what you’re seeing is actually right – without accurate monitoring during the colour correction stage you’re simply guessing.

To give it some context by way of an extreme example, let’s say your HDTV is set up so that the picture is incredibly blue because at one point you turned the blue up on the TV. Now when you’re doing your colour correction on your MacBook Pro it looks ok, but when you look at it on the HDTV the picture is all blue.
So what do you do? You change the colour correction by adding a load of red to your clips to compensate for the blue-ness of the HDTV. Now it looks great on the TV, but terrible on the MacBook Pro. The problem is you’ve no way of knowing which screen is actually the most accurate.
The solution to this dilemma is to monitor your video using a screen that has been calibrated to be completely accurate. Color sends the video signal to the monitor via the hardware that Shane has mentioned (Blackmagic, Matrox etc). By judging your colours on this screen you know that regardless of what the video looks like on your computer screen or incredibly blue HDTV, the picture on the calibrated monitor is accurate.

Now I’m sure your HDTV isn’t set up to be all blue, but my point is that without monitoring on a professionally calibrated screen you’re only ever guessing, because each screen is going to be slightly different.
The free option is to attempt to calibrate your HDTV as accurately as possible, and use that as your ‘professional’ monitor.
The next step up would be to hire the relevant equipment for a day just to do your final colour correction pass as best you can.
The best (and expensive) solution is to take your film to a post house and hire a professional colourist to finish your film.

Lots of options, but unfortunately only the expensive option guarantees anything.

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
View Post Blue showreel
Shot on RED @ 100fps, Post on FCP/Color: Capoeira Film

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Simon,

It’s clear that something has changed between when you worked on the old project successfully to now. Firstly, are your video card drivers up to date?

This was actually happening to me the other day. I noticed that System Profiler was only recognising 4GB of RAM when it should have been seeing all 12GB installed in my machine. The fix was simply to re-seat the RAM in the Mac Pro (i.e. take it out and put it back in again). Once I turned the computer back on all of the RAM was picked up and the stuttering was gone.
The suggestion above may have no relevance to your problem but it’s worth sharing in case it was something a little unusual like that. I spent a lot of time scratching my head before realising the problem!

All the best

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
View Post Blue showreel
Shot on RED @ 100fps, Post on FCP/Color: Capoeira Film

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Michael

From what I know of that camera you should be able to drop the files straight into FCP, just as you’re trying. It’s just like shooting with an EX camera except the files are pre-wrapped in the mov container. It sounds to me like you have an issue within FCP, not with the files themselves, particularly as you can play them using QuickTime.

Have you tried trashing your preferences? It’s a bit of a catch-all response to a problem but in this case it seems a likely solution.

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
View Post Blue showreel
Shot on RED @ 100fps, Post on FCP/Color: Capoeira Film

[Alex Elkins]

[Martin Phillips] “SxS doesn’t seem to mind what you do – it just gets on with it. In over 2 years, no hassles with SxS here.”

Same here. Trouble is I’m at the post production end of the process and often don’t have a say in what media gets used. People tend to be turned on by the fact they could record for almost 4 hours on the same 64GB card, something that turns my stomach!

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
View Post Blue showreel
Shot on RED @ 100fps, Post on FCP/Color: Capoeira Film