Alex Elkins
Forum Replies Created
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To trash preferences go to User/Library/Preferences/Final Cut Pro User Data and then trash the file called Final Cut Pro 6.0 Prefs. (Have FCP closed when you do this).
Then re-launch FCP. Hopefully that’ll work. It’s a pretty standard thing to do if ever FCP is playing up, which is quite often. The only drawback is you lose all of your saved preferences. You can combat this by using a programme called Preference Manager, which you can tell to backup your working set of preferences so that when the time comes to trash them, you can tell Preference Manager to restore the ones you had backed up.
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Oh, and another thing to add is have you tried opening any other FCS software? Soundtrack, Compressor etc – are they working ok?
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A similar thing happened to me recently on the same setup as you. Have you tried trashing your preferences? That’s what saved me. Could perhaps also try back-dating your version of Quicktime perhaps?
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The company I work for have just purchased a blanket license for http://www.audionetworkplc.com
£3000 for unlimited downloads for a year, which for us as a company using five or six different tracks in any given programme is great value for money. Plus it’s great to be able to say to a client “Take a look at this site and pick any music you want.”Buying single tracks from them is quite expensive, so I couldn’t recommend doing that unless it’s properly factored into the budget from the start.
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I’d suggest that the fastest way to do this is to simply start each clip with a freeze frame with your man highlighted. Then just cut into the action from the frame after the freeze. The BBC do this on Match Of the Day (a football [soccer] highlights programme).
Saves you spending forever keyframing the highlight in relation to the guy’s movement. -
I’m assuming that most of what your using is DV video?? If you render out of AE as DV rather than ProRes you should find you aren’t getting jerky playback. I expect that the reason you are is that your 1tb drive is running slowly – is it quite full? Drives tend to slow down the fuller they get. It varies, but people seem to generally feel that over 75% capacity means it’s time to start archiving.
If I were you I’d want to set my sequence to ProRes, not DV, because any graphics and text you might be using will be affected quite badly by the DV compression. However, if that’s not an option, as I say, render DV from AE, and check how much space you have on your drive.
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No problem, and good luck with it. HD editing is more-or-less exactly the same as SD, just takes longer to render etc.
One thing to bear in mind when you need to output this as HD is that I believe (and you should check with the broadcasters for confirmation) they would expect 1080, not 720 as their HD resolution. Kona products do the cross-conversion in realtime straight into whatever HD deck and monitor you use and with excellent results. However, it’s a 60″ spot so chances are you’ll be able to deliver digitally. If that’s the case then as I say, check what the broadcaster expects, as you may find you need to up/cross convert to 1080, which can be done using Compressor and other software if you don’t have a Kona card. -
Broadcasters centre cut everything (as far as I’m aware) so you need to ensure that graphics are within 4×3 safe area. There’s a psd with these guides available somewhere on the BBC website, and also if you check out https://web.me.com/andymees you’ll find a great plug in that will generate various guides over your video.
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[Lawrence Robbin] “I’ll be shooting on a Sony PMW EX1. I was planning on the HDV format, but I can shoot HD.”
You can shoot HDV on EX1’s? I didn’t know that. Anyway, I’ve done plenty of keying of XDCAM EX footage and it looks fine. Generally anything shot progressive is a bit easier to key, expecially if there’s movement in the frame. Keying in After Effects using Keylight is pretty amazing judging from the tutorials I’ve seen of it – not used it myself as we have the older version of AE. The chroma keyer in FCP is acceptable if you don’t have After Effects.
The trick is in the filming really. If it’s lit nicely you’ll be fine. Maybe check on the Cinematography and XDCam forums for advice on shooting/lighting if it’s something you’ve not done before. -
[Mark Suszko] “I think, is that during compression into the m2 files for burning the DVD, something is making his files so big he can’t fit them all into a single layer. Which seems crazy for stills and audio.”
I got the impression that he was using video of someone doing a presentation with maybe a split-screen or whatever of the PowerPoint stills. If that’s the case then it explains why 9x 45mins wouldn’t fit onto a single-layer DVD very nicely. I think the answer is to go dual-layer, and just do as has been suggested above regarding where to put the layer change. Not something I’ve done before so I can’t offer any help with that.