[Andrew Rendell]

In my experience it’s pretty rare for a problem to require reinstalling operating system and software (not exactly unknown, but unusual). More likely is corrupt media files or project. Try creating a new project and importing the media files into that (perhaps do a few at a time and see if there comes a point where you suddenly get a problem) and creating new sequences in the new project, don’t copy sequences directly from the old project, copy and paste from the old sequences into the new ones. See how that goes.

[Andrew Rendell]

What comes to mind is the camcorder settings. You can do things like down convert HDV to SD, for example, which would give you this sort of error message, so check whether the setups in the camera’s menu match those on the computer.

[Andrew Rendell]

highlight the clip and go: Modify-Audio-Pan Centre
keyboard shortcut: Control + Full Stop

[Andrew Rendell]

A couple of comments I’d make straight away. YouTube videos are heavily compressed and how you go about doing the compression can make a lot of difference, so I’d recommend taking a look at this https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/youtube_compressor_gary.html then compressing yourself rather than letting YouTube do the compression for you.

1080 50i being the best? Well there are many who would argue that progressive scan is better than interlaced (so that would be a p instead of an i after the 50) for technical reasons, but 1080 50i is what’s transmitted as high definition in the UK.

There are various reasons why the stage lights can be blurry like that, not least of which is the quality of the lens you have on the camera. Increasing the shutter speed will reduce the blur that’s caused by movement (both the camera and subject), but you will have to open up the iris which will narrow the depth of field, making focus even more critical, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it could give you the problem of the general light level not being enough to get a proper exposure in this kind of situation.

[Andrew Rendell]

Thanks for the advice. I’m trying that now. Incidentally, in the frame control section in Compressor “Upper” isn’t an option, but “Top First” is, so I assume that’s the same thing.

I’m slightly disconcerted that it says that it’s going to take 3 hours to do, when it took about 20 minutes to do it without changing the field dominance, is that normal?

[Andrew Rendell]

Thanks, the IMX specs there are for Upper(Odd) and I’ve got footage in DVCPRO50-PAL which shows up as Lower(Even). How do I change it?

The odd thing is that it plays back perfectly on a grade 1 monitor via the blackmagic box as it is.

[Andrew Rendell]

Personally, I wouldn’t take that kind of risk with my tapes if I knew the tape mechanism was on the way out. Also, if I had a ton of HDV tapes, I’d get a cheap HDV deck like the Sony HVR-M15 just for capturing rather than use a camcorder to do it (whether it’s financially efficient rather depends on how many tapes you’ve got but if it’s a lot it probably is).

[Andrew Rendell]

With that budget I’d spend it all on the headphones. I’d recommend trying a few pairs on as what you need for editing is the ability to wear them for extended periods of time without them really annoying you, so check that they sit comfortably on your head and aren’t too tight, but don’t actually fall off when you look around. I’ve got some Sennheiser HD480s next to me right now which are fine for me, also I like Beyer DT100s, but I think they’re probably a bit above your price range.

Decent speakers are going to be a lot more expensive than $100, (unless anyone else knows something I don’t).

[Andrew Rendell]

You could import the stills back into FCP, then have a sequence where you’ve got your original footage on video track 1, place the still on video track 2 and drop the opacity of it to 50%. Then if you scroll along the lineline there should be a frame where the double image disappears and that’s where the still came from. Rather you than me though, it’s going to take a while if you’ve got more than a couple of minutes of footage to go through.

[Andrew Rendell]

One reasonably quick way is to put a “Four-Point Garbage Matte” effect on the clip, then move one of the corner points to the next corener, so if you move point 1 (top left) to coincide with point 4 (bottom left) you’d be cutting out the top left hand portion of the picture.