[Alex Elkins]

[Jonah Lefkowitz] “My sequence is in AppleProRes HQ 29.97 720×480 CCIR 601 16×9 Anamorphic.
This is somewhat arbitrary given that all of my source material is 8-bit JPGs.”

I’ve come across the same problem when editing with PhotoJPEG material. The only sure fix I could recommend is to transcode all of your PhotoJPEG clips into ProRes using Compressor, although that might not be very efficient depending on how much material you have. In my experience the problem was only when the playhead was paused, so it wasn’t a problem for me as it was just for a rough layoff to tape.

As to why your ProRes rendered files sometimes have the same problem, I couldn’t tell you. Perhaps try selecting ‘recompress all frames’ on the export settings.

Let me know if any of that works.

All the best,
Alex Elkins

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Jonah,

[Jonah Lefkowitz] “Maybe the codec I chose (Photo/JPG, H264, m2v), maybe what mood FCP’s crazed brain is in.”

What codec are you editing with in FCP? Photo JPEG, h264 etc are not editing codecs, which might explain your odd renders. Are you seeing this issue in FCP or only in the self-contained file you’re exporting?

[Jonah Lefkowitz] “Do you ever have problem with your m2v (to Dvd) renders trembling or twitching when your still photos aren’t moving enough? If so, have you found a fix?”

Try adding a de-interlace filter to the still images.

[Jonah Lefkowitz] “Have you noticed that rendering your sequences to h264 (usually for preview purposes) produces a completely washed out render that lacks saturation throughout?”

Yes, and it’s so irritating! I compensate for it by boosting the contrast by 5% in the adjustments tab in the QT export settings. This tends to work alright.

All the best,
Alex Elkins

[Alex Elkins]

[juha vauhkonen] “I thought the point of all those dozens of compression settings in the export window was to free FCP user from hassle to create extra timelines for different compressions…?”

This is the case as long as you tick ‘Recompress all frames’ in the Export window. Otherwise all you’re doing is essentially exporting a DV movie, then converting the lower quality version to ProRes – rendering in the timeline as ProRes, or re-compressing all frames, strips the low quality render and keeps it in the best quality it can.

Hope that makes a bit more sense.

Best,
Alex Elkins

[Alex Elkins]

Thanks David, I was quite vague in my response there.

Set the sequence to ProRes, render, then export using ‘Current Settings’ for optimal quality.

[Alex Elkins]

[Ralph Atkinson] “I’m wondering is there any benefit to exporting the end results as Pro-Res before taking it into Compressor?”

Yes, there is. Things like graphics and any colour correction will be visibly cleaner looking. Definitely render as ProRes.

Best,
Alex Elkins

[Alex Elkins]

We’ve started archiving onto Ultrium LTO-3 tapes. It works out a fair bit cheaper than archiving onto harddrive, and they seem to be built to last too. You can fit 400GB onto an LTO-3 tape, or the step up is LTO-4, which fits 800GB.

With the setup we have, all we need is a SCSI card for the Mac and the player, which in our case is called an HP StorageWorks Ultrium 960, plus the software to make everything talk to each other – we use software called Retrospect.

The backing up takes a bit longer than transferring files to a HD, but you can just leave things running overnight. So far this has been working excellently for us.

Good luck,
Alex Elkins

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Michael,

Firstly, in the browser window in FCP, right click on any of the columns that aren’t being used for your logging (i.e. leave only Media Start, Media End and Name).

Then go to File–>Export–>Batch List. Then in Finder, navigate to the freshly saved batch list, right click and open with [whatever spreadsheet software you use] – you can also do this in TextEdit, although I use Excel.

Once in your spreadsheet software, paste your logs into the relevant columns. So for instance if you have a column called ‘In Point’ in your original logs, past the entries from that column into ‘Media Start’ from the new batch list.

You need to ensure that all of your logged timecodes are exact, including hours, mins, secs, frames, with a colon ‘:’ separating each one, i.e. 01:04:23:01

Once all of that is correct, and you’ve given names to all the clips (or just call each clip something like ‘Day 1_Tape 1’ if it would mean going through the tape again – FCP will make sure all of the captured clips have different names anyway)

Save the spreadsheet as Text (Tab Delimited), then import that text file into FCP (File–>Import–>Batch List). That should give you a load of offline clips in the browser window. Then you simple go to File–>Batch Capture, then let FCP do the rest.

Let me know if there’s anything that isn’t clear. I’ve tried to be thorough but there may be something I’ve missed as I’m writing this from memory.

All the best,
Alex Elkins

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Max,

I agree with Steve and Walter about editing as 1080i.

Regarding the graphics, I’d suggest scaling them up in Photoshop (or whatever you used to create them) into full raster 1080 graphics (1920 x 1080). It’s a fairly quick thing to do to keep FCP from scaling/distorting the graphics to 1440×1080. Keep them progressive.

Just one point about the standards conversion – I’ve not used the Nattress plugin but I must say I’ve had excellent results using Compressor to go from PAL (1080i) to an NTSC DVD. As long as you turn on frame controls and set rate conversion to ‘Best’ the results will be spot on. The advantage of using Compressor is you can set it up to use all 8 cores on the Mac to render it, making it MUCH quicker to convert.

All the best,
Alex Elkins

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Josh,

Bit of a shot in the dark here but are you using a Kona card and did you by any chance go from FCP to Color, then back again? I’ve noticed that when I do that I experience the same symptoms (regardless of the codec used).
The simple fix is to go from Color to, say, Finder (or any software that doesn’t use the Kona output), then back to FCP. It’s an odd one that perhaps has something to do with the two pieces of software trying to use the Kona output simultaniously. Going to Finder seems to kind of ‘refresh’ the output.

All the best,
Alex Elkins

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Gary,

Thanks for responding.
[gary adcock] “you did this is as a software transcode on this same machine using what L&T or did you use compressor? OR was the content transcoded with a different set up like FCP (bad)?”

The transcode was done using L&T.

[gary adcock] “is the flash frame every viewable in the QT file when not playing, ie: can you park the playhead on a green frame, if so then it was the encode to prores that is to blame”

I’m able to pause on a green frame. The strange thing though, is that the green frames aren’t always in the same place – if I restart FCP and start getting the green frames again, they don’t always appear on the same frames.

[gary adcock] “all the hardware spec in the world doesn’t mean a thing without the correct software versions for the OS, QT, FCP, capture card.”

OS 10.5.7
FCP 6.0.5
QT 7.6.2
Kona 3 Firmware Version: 2008/10/01
Kona 3 Driver Version: 6.0.3

Could there be a discrepancy with the above setup? I remember the most recent update for Quicktime that I installed was listed as including inmproved support for ProRes, but alas it doesn’t appear to have changed much.

Thanks for taking the time,
Alex Elkins