[Andy Mees]

Hooo boy, yes, has always annoyed me … when you’re trying to (quickly) pull a bunch of selects from a source clip into the timeline the extra keypress is annoying at best. Personally, I just got used to it, but if its really an “issue” then you can akways use a third party macro app like QuickKeys or VideoMacro to handle the extra button pushing for you.

[Andy Mees]

Anne
Make sure you check for transient audio peaks before you output.
Load your sequence into the Viewer window, then choose Mark menu > Audio Peaks > Mark. This will put markers in your timeline at every point where the audio exceeds 0 dBFS. If you have any, then go in and bring those levels back down to the right levels.
Just asking here … but your audio is all native 48 kHz AIFF, right? No dodgy MP3 audio in there or similar?
Cheers
Andy

[Andy Mees]

just being completely anal here, but thats 00:58:00;00 ( two hours of black is too much … even for the BBC )

[Andy Mees]

Hi Zee

You don’t mention the flavour of XDCAM you’re expecting nor the format it will be delivered on, nor any of the hardware specs of your setup … make’s answering your question effectively a little tricky. You’ve got a lot of answes already but all culd b right or all could be wrong depending on the missing info.

Are these rushes coming to you XDCAM disc, on an SxS card, or on a hard disc, or…? Is the footage DVCAM, IMX, MPEG HD / HDV / EX or MPEG HD 422?
If you’re receiving the rushes pre-imported to a hard disc will they already have been rewrapped to Quicktime files or just as raw MXF?
If receiving on XDCAM disc, can we assume you have the necessary hardware for ingest, ie an XDCAM camera, deck or drive unit?
What hardware do you have on your FCP system for output back to DigiBeta … or are you mastering a quicktime movie to be dumped to tape elsewhere?

Cheers
Andy

[Andy Mees]

A Browser search in my project can take more than 20 seconds, and only throws up hits one at a time.
The Finder’s search of my media assets takes only a few seconds, typically less than 5, and throws up all the hits in a list.

But Paul, the (faster) Finder search does not search any of the metadata nor can you search specific search fields of that metadata (even if you went to the trouble to duplicate the metadata in the Finder’s spotlight comments), nor can you find used or unused within a given sequence etc etc. If FCP’s find is only throwing up hits one at a time then you can always press the Find All button, no? I’m not dismissing your workflow here (nor Conrad’s) just offering up some of the “pro’s” of the argument for using FCP’s Browser.

The sooner Apple … gives us a proper Cocoa-based …

Yeah, well I think we’re all singing from the same page on this one. We live in hope.

Best
Andy

[Andy Mees]

Place your two source clips one above the other in the timeline on tracks v1 and v2, double click the upper clip to load it into the viewer then switch that to the motion tab and adjust the scale and center parameters, do the same for the clip on the lower track. Play around, its not too hard, and you’ll soon get the hang of it. Check out the manual too, all this is in there … If doing it for yourself is not your thing, then grab PieroF’s free Quarter PIP pluginhttps://web.mac.com/piero.fiorani/PieroF_FCE_Effect/Quarter_PIP.html or consider buying Digital Heaven’s DH_Box plugin https://www.digital-heaven.co.uk/fcplugins/dh_box.php

[Andy Mees]

Heee … yes indeed, Daniel, you have it in a nutshell. Its all about effective communication and, where thats lacking, interpretation.
If reckon if we can figure this one out we should be ready for interpreting the bigger stuff, like Hong Kong’s Basic Law, The Deed Sea Scroll, heck, even the Qur’an 🙂

No worries
Andy

[Andy Mees]

Sorry Jochem,
My fault. My post was hopelessly vague! What I meant by “what connections do you have on it” was “what connections do you have on your computer” … obviously if you don’t have the appropriate outputs on your computer (usually via an installed third party I/O interface) then you can’t simply plug in a production monitor. The photo shows what connectors the monitor expects (BNC) but not what formats those connectors are for … is it Analog Composite, or Digital SDI or … ? so telling us what the model number of this particular monitor would help too. It would also help a tad if you told us what computer you;re using as recommendations for an I/O card or device is sometimes computer or platform specific. Remember, we’re not there with you 🙂 Details are everything.
Cheers
Andy

[Andy Mees]

I hear you D., but Kay already specifically noted that that was not wanted
[Kim Mckay] “I”ve had the problem of the 4:3 inside the 16:9 as well and you know that looks very bad!”

[Andy Mees]

Conrad

The bins don’t just contain references to the master clips, they contain a wealth of metadata too, such as reel numbers, shot descriptions, scene and logging notes, clip markers, good/not good etc plus technical clip info. The Browser window is the organizational brain in your project. The footage can easily be collected into bins, appear in multiple bins, be sub-clipped and sorted … certainly you can replicate some of this in the Finder, but not as quickly and as easily as you can in the Browser window.
Respectfully, I’d suggest you;d be doing yourself and your trainees/assistants a disservice by not utilizing the Browser for what it was intended.

Just my 2c of course
Best Regards
Andy