[Andrew Rendell]

I’m using FCS on the 17″ MBP without any particular problems – it’s a bit slower than a good desktop system and even a 17″ screen is a bit small for everything I want to have up on it, but it’s doing the job 🙂
BTW I’m using an esata adapter for my storage, which you can only use on the 17″ MBP, so I wouldn’t use a smaller one. You don’t NEED that extra memory you mention, but (like the faster processor) it’s worth having if you can handle the extra money.

[Andrew Rendell]

Oh, and there’s a bunch of downloadable technical stuff here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/dq/contents/television.shtml#Standards

It’s specifically BBC, but they adhere very closely to the ITU-R standards so they’re normal to everywhere that’s PAL.

Channel 4 do a similar thing here: https://www.channel4.com/corporate/4producers/resources/documents/FullTechnicalRequirements.pdf

[Andrew Rendell]

This doesn’t have everything, but it’s a multi layer photoshop file which has most of it, including a pixel counter so that you can make up anything else you need. SD, but as you’re including 14:9 I guess that SD is what you need.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tvbranding/picturesize.shtml

[Andrew Rendell]

I just overheard two guys in a restaurant, one saying to the other “Do you know that Apple’s just booked space for next month so that they can make some big announcement in London at the same time as they make it in California”…

Am I the only one who really doesn’t care whether my kit is exciting or not, I just want it to sit there and work quickly, smoothly and above all reliably so that I can basically ignore it while I get on with thinking about the pictures and sound?

[Andrew Rendell]

I agree that a good post on DSLR and a separate one just for h264 in the FAQ section would probably answer 90% of all queries that relate to them (after all, it’s very common for the answer to include watch Shane Ross’s tutorial).

However good the next version of FCP is, I don’t see how you can get around the fact that h264 is a system where the data that you need to display a frame is, for many of the frames in a clip, spread across several frames worth of data, so whenever you edit a shot there’s a very high probability that you’re removing data from the stream that is required to display some of those frames and it’s a pretty big job for a computer to remake the data stream to put that information back in every time you make a cut.

[Andrew Rendell]

[Andrew Rendell] “I think FCP5 has ProRes so I’d use that”

[Zane Barker] Nope Pro Res was introduced in FCP 6. With FCP 5 you are limited to DVC Pro HD or uncompressed.

Thanks for clearing that up, I wasn’t sure whether I’d remembered correctly or not.

[Andrew Rendell]

It’s hard to diagnose what’s going on without some more technical information, but my first guess is that a “little Canon HD camera” is probably one that records in a non-editing format, probably AVCHD. If you look around the threads here you’ll see that this comes up quite a lot and the advice is always to convert it to a proper editing codec before you start editing. The problems you’re having are typical of what can go wrong if you don’t and I think that what you’re going to have to do is convert your footage to something suitable (I think FCP5 has ProRes so I’d use that, anyone know better??) and do it again. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Again, regarding the “pro” camera, it’s probably another format/codec thing but without knowing what camera and settings were used to make it we’d really just be guessing.

[Andrew Rendell]

When you have a finished timeline put an in point at the start and an out point at the end of the timeline, the highlight it in the browser window and do an Export as Quicktime Movie. You want to select Settings: Current Settings and Include: Audio only, give it a title that means something to you and choose where to save it (I usually make an extra folder on my capture drive for things like this, but that’s my own habit). Then when you’ve exported the file, do an Import file (or you can just drag and drop it into the FCP browser) to make it part of your project. Duplicate your sequence and delete all of the audio clips on the copy and drag the exported/imported file onto the audio tracks. I’m sure that you’ll get the hang of it 🙂

[Andrew Rendell]

I don’t know, but I’d make a couple of points. I came to FCP after being very experienced on Avid and made the mistake of trying to set FCP up to work like Avid, but I realised quite quickly that FCP works best if you get used to working it the way it’s designed (and it’s designed so that everything, really everything, can be done at least 3 different ways and with a bit of practice you can find what works best for you). What works best for me (and I think lots of others will agree with this) is to use quite a few of the keyboard shortcuts with my left hand and the mouse in my right, so the concept of “not having to reach for the keyboard” doesn’t arise. (E.g., you could click on the zoom icon with the mouse and click on the pointer icon when you’re done, but I’d think most of us would find tapping the Z and A on the keyboard quicker/more fluent).

[Andrew Rendell]

There are a couple of ways of doing that. I’d send the clip to motion and do the zooming in there, then when it’s back on the FCP timeline it wouldn’t affect the size/position on your composite.