[Andrew Rendell]

I think you’re discovering that high quality video files are big. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is. Compression = compromising quality, so the answer to “how can i compress these files a lot without risking quality” is; you can’t. If you could, we’d all be doing it.

😉

[Andrew Rendell]

(Apart from having no idea why anyone would want to do this) I can’t think of a “standard” way of doing it in FCP’s toolset, but there are ways you could go about it, so as a first suggestion:

make a new layer; load something inconsequential into the viewer (e.g., text); set the duration of the clip to whatever you want your length to be; edit it into the new layer as many times as you need (so you have a continuous series of clips all at the same duration with cuts); select the blade tool and check that snapping is on; run along the vision layer you want to divide up and click as the cursor jumps to each snapping point.

I expect that someone will have a better way of doing this.

[Andrew Rendell]

[Jason Porthouse] “Though who knows where we’ll be in 3 or 4 years’ time. Cutting on iPads?”

Maybe, but the issue for me has always been that I want a way of inputting my intentions faster and with more subtlety and control than current, and current for me is either a mouse or a wacom pen in my right hand and my left hand tapping keyboard shortcuts.

TBH, it wasn’t that big a deal transferring from Avid to FCP and going back to Avid has been pretty painless.

[Andrew Rendell]

You use a white card for color balance, the mid grey one is for exposure.

[Andrew Rendell]

What codec is your source material?

The 5D and 7D record in a version of h264 which needs to be converted to ProRes (or another edit-friendly codec) before editing. Canon supply an import utility for the purpose (a plug-in for the log and transfer function).

I suspect you’re trying to edit with the long GOP files and the computer is unable to interpret the data stream correctly, so you’re getting garbled frames until the stream reaches the next i-frame (at which point the computer can cope again).

If that’s what’s happening, you’ll have to reimport the media (either converting it as it comes in with Canon’s plug-in, or converting it with something like MPEG Streamclip before importing it) and remake your edits.

[Andrew Rendell]

Open Disk Utility and choose First Aid (near the top of the window) – you should see two buttons at the lower right side called “Verify Disk” and “Repair Disk” – you probably need to do a “Repair Disk” to bring it back.

I’ve seen pretty much the same thing (I can’t remember the precise error message, but what you’ve written sounds similar) after unplugging a USB drive without unmounting it first (I got it back after a bit of fiddling with the Disk Utility).

BTW, usb drives are handy and cheap for backing up data, but you shouldn’t use them as media drives for editing. Firewire or eSata is much more reliable (not just because of the speed, but I’m told that there’s something about the way usb works which makes it unsuitable for digitising or rendering [something about undefined file sizes???] which TBH is beyond my technical knowledge but confirmed by my experience). I expect someone will be able to either confirm or refute that…

[Andrew Rendell]

Don’t forget that operating the kit is only a very small part of the job. Editing is mostly about knowing what to do with the pictures and sound in order to achieve the required result (aka, telling the story, but it can be a bit more complicated than that phrase might imply). Operating the kit is the necessary evil that allows you to get the job done.

Also, remember that you don’t get employed because you can operate any particular piece of equipment (although that does come into it). You get employed because people trust you to get the job done to a particular standard, which has both technical and emotional/creative aspects.

[Andrew Rendell]

+1 to what Michael posted (in particular making sure that the audio is at 48kHz sampling rate), but there’s another thing that might be worth checking as well;

when FCP imports an audio file it adds a time stamp – it’s possible that you could have got a time stamp on the audio file within FCP that is a different frame rate to the sequence, and if that’s the case FCP will play it back at the “wrong” speed, so it will gradually go out of sync with the pictures. More info (and how to sort it) here: https://library.creativecow.net/lyon_matt/fixing-fcp-assets/1

[Andrew Rendell]

Um, there was recently a story going round over here that people who use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer are/were less successful than people who use Google Chrome (or Firefox), which got into a couple of newspapers as well as internet news sites. It turned out to be a misunderstanding of a PR puff-piece, and essentially meaningless.

[Andrew Rendell]

Well, to my mind, there are two types of computer: desktop and laptop (which I tend to think of as fixed and mobile).

So the desktop range goes: Mac Mini – iMac – Mac Pro. Take out the Mac Pro and it goes: Mac Mini – iMac.

So with the Mac Pro in the range, lots of people will buy the top spec iMac (because it’s seen as the median in the “good, better, best” hierarchy). Take out the Mac Pro and the top spec iMac becomes the “best” option and it’s a lower spec iMac that most people will buy.

The marketing contention is that people in general don’t work out exactly what specification they need and buy precisely that, they buy on a compromise of many influencing factors, some of which are purely psychological, so there is a degree to which the top spec Mac Pro really is there to say “look, we have really expensive shit, too!”, because that drives price perceptions lower down the range.

Then, if you’re only going to sell a few of your top spec machines, you only make a few of them. Surely no one’s obliged to manufacture the same number of units of a small selling item as they make of a big selling one, are they?