[Andy Mees]

the Matrox MXO2 desperately wants to be the obvious answer but until it ships the IoHD is it

https://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/mxo2/features/

[Andy Mees]

you can make it as easy or as difficult as you’d like really

shoot the footage of yourself against a blue or green screen or other neutral color that doesn’t clash with what you’re wearing, your skin tone etc

now slap that footage over the top of your movie scene and add the chroma key filter to it. sample the background color as the color to key out so that the background disappear leaving just your image superimposed over the top of the movie scene

use the motion tabs scale attribute control to shrink yourself down to size

then use a garbage matte or other mask so that you appear to be behind or amongst the other objects / people in the scene

thats it … except matching lighting / film stock / camera motion and motion of the objects / people in the scene … if you want to keep it simple, only use static scenes!

[Andy Mees]

I think Jerry is right … at least, I don’t know of any existing VST plugin management utilities for Mac (AU yes, but VST, no) … but if you or a colleague is comfortable with a little basic applescripting then it would be relatively easy to write a launch script fro FCP that moves those plugs out of the plugins folder automatically.

[Andy Mees]

well you have the plain vanilla DV PAL or DV NTSC settings … use these setups if you’ve shot bulk standard 4:3 DV

then you have the Anamorphic variants ,… use these if you have shot in “widescreen” mode with your 4:3 DV camera, or in DV mode with your 16:9 HDV camera

then there are the “Firewire Basic” variants … use these if you are having problems getting your camera to be recognised or controlled with FCP (most commonly this is needed with Canon’s DV cameras)

[Andy Mees]

as ever with FCP theres load of ways to skin whatever cat you are currently giving the treatment

another means to your desired end is to use nested sequences
create a different sequences for each position, add the clips as wanted to these sequences, and then edit the sequences to each track or the master sequence. then apply the wanted motion attributes to each of the nests rather than the clips within the nest. you can easily keep this as a template, chopping and changing each sequence of clips as and when required

[Andy Mees]

sadly Scott, Sony are drip feeding us with the obvious features one might want or need.
as it stands, the current release does not support naming of subclips …. nor does it allow adding, naming or renaming of essence marks, nor importing or exporting of logging data nor many other desirable features …

that said, it does what it does well, and is an actively evolving app, so for now you just have to work around the functions that don’t yet operate as you’d like (given the introduction of continuous clip recording in their higher end cameras and decks, it seems likely that the need to name subclips will become more obvious to the back room boys who do the coding)

cheers
Andy

[Andy Mees]

take a look at this alternative (a rare example of good, free and fast)

https://www.digitalrebellion.com/pref_man.htm

[Andy Mees]

>The file size is larger with XDcam HD footage than an IMX 50Mbps.

Nope, wrong way round.

The data rate of XDCAM HD in HQ mode is 35 Mbs, which equates to around 4.5 MB file size for each second of footage … a standard 23 GB XDCAM disc can hold a little over 60 minutes.
The data rate of IMX50 is 50 Mbs, which equates to around 6.5 MB file size for each second of footage … a standard 23 GB XDCAM disc can hold a little around 45 minutes.

>Can it be a factor with importing speed or just the data rate that really matters?

Yes … and the data rate is what dictates the filesize.

—

To cut a long story short, you’ll see faster transfers with XDCAM HD at the HQ setting (35Mbs) as compared to your experience with XDCAM / IMX50 … but those transfers will not be as fast as with XDCAM / DV. To achieve faster transfers speeds than you may have seen previously, you might want to consider getting (or asking for) one of the new PDW-U1 drive units, as these have the newer faster optical mechanism (max read speed of 120 Mbs versus the older max read of 72 Mbs)

[Andy Mees]

>must be a recent upgrade cause I remember it only being HDV when fcp6 got first released

nope, you remember wrong on this one Ben, HDV to DV was cited specifically in the documentation, but only as an example. realtime format conversion for any of the native codecs has been there since the 6.0 release. just an fyi

[Andy Mees]

hi Michael,

the rewrapping of the core codec from its native mxf wrapper to a quicktime movie file wrapper is not really a significant factor in the transfer speed. what is a significant factor is quite simply the file-size. the IMX files transfered more slowly than the DVCAM because the data rate of the codec is higher for the IMX (30 / 40 / 50 Mbps) than the data rate for the DVCAM (25 Mbps).

just like IMX with its data rate variants, so XDCAM HD can have different data rates (18 / 25 / 35 Mbps and with the new F700, 50 Mbps).

how fast these files will transfer to your Mac will depend of the data rate you’re shooting … do you happen to know which camera you will be using? and what codec you’ll be shooting?

cheers
Andy