[Andy Mees]

better to Match Frame to Original (Command Option F) otherwise your masterclip retains your speed adjustment rather than just the particular timeline instance

[Andy Mees]

go to http://www.avid.com and follow the links to Avid FreeDV for MacOS X … i believe you have to register to download it, then install it …

if you wan’t send me an email to andymees@startv.com and i’ll send you just the codec
(which you can put into YourHardDisk/Library/Quicktime)

cheers
Andy

[Andy Mees]

ah yes … a legend in my own lunchtime. (but thanks anyway!)

just drop the “AvidAVdvCodec.component” file into /Library/Quicktime … then you should see it as an option in Export > Using Quicktime Conversion…
choose Quicktime Movie and press the “Options…” button
under Video > Settings… you should see Avid DV as a codec option

cheers
Andy

[Andy Mees]

I hear you! we have 16 of them on order along with 2 more fully populated XServe RAID’s and, you guessed it, a couple of the PCIe Fibre channel cards …. now, I wonder what’s holding up our order ???

[Andy Mees]

this is an interesting topic … I’d be interested to know if anyone has any particular reason to believe that FCP4 [i] needs [/i] an AGP graphics card, as opposed to PCIe.

certainly, I can believe that Apple may have implemented this measure, circa FCP4, in order to prevent users trying to run FCP on a system with a slower graphics bus, where doing so may have adversly impacted on the percieved ‘fluidity’ of the FCP experience … an experience that is esentially guaranteed by the marketing blurb. nothing like a rampaging horde of disgruntled users with class action on thier mind ([i]”… it said ‘real-time’ but it isn’t…”[/i])

during the development of FCP5 Apple would obviously have already been planning their PCIe move, and have taken the necessary measures, re: plist checks, in advance of FCP 5’s release (long in advance of the PCIe only Mac release)

i would hazzard that this hack would not in any way affect your system other than to enable it to run, and further, that the lack of an authorised ‘enabler’ for FCP4 on these new G5’s, is simply a means to sell more FCP upgrades … which is fair enough of course, business is business.

undoubtedly, of course, FCP5 is better optimised for these new systems, but FCP4 should run without a hitch.

my advice to anyone in the posters position would be to go right ahead and buy the new PCIe mac and strip those lines from the plist file. then, when you’re ready to upgrade to FCP5, you can do so knowing you new machine will be able to make the most of it.

cheers
Andy

[Andy Mees]

are you using the mojo to route video to the vo booth?
if so you might want to try using the Avid DV codec … you might find that one more compatible
export – compress using quicktime, setting to Avid DV pal, least quality, 25 frames etc

you can get the Avid DV codec as part of the free Avid package available on their website

hope it helps
Andy

[Andy Mees]

simply put …
1. create an empty fcp xml file
2. write an fcp xml bin item to the file
3. read the ALE file
4. for every clip item: rewrite the clip as an xml clip item
5. save the fcp xml file

scripted using php as part of a larger web based project management system
obviously some time and energy in creating the script, but it saves us a lot of time not having to use SebskyTools to first convert ale’s to batch lists, create bins and import (also Sebsky Tools hasn’t been updated for FCP5 multi channel audio, so it wasn’t quite working for us anyway)

[Andy Mees]

probably better to use LiveType (or Motion, if you have it)
otherwise use Effects > Video Generators > Boris > Title 3D

[Andy Mees]

sorry to say this is not a function of FCP

there is a great application for just this purpose, however, and it is loads of fun (but not free)

check out Boinkz iStopMotion at https://www.istopmotion.com/

cheers
Andy

[Andy Mees]

wow … thats an enormous question !

what is XML? it stands for Extensible Markup Language
here’s a link to help you out (but you wouldn’t catch me reading that stuff) https://www.w3.org/XML/

with respect to FCP, XML is an interchange format for describing anything from a clip or sequence to an entire project

beacuse its text based it is a very open format, which means that with a little effort, anyone can write a script to parse the raw xml file and extract or manipulate the data they need

check out Apples pdf on the subject
https://developer.apple.com/appleapplications/download/FinalCutPro_XML.pdf

as to what its good for .. here are some examples:
https://www.xmedit.com
https://www.gallery.co.uk/XMLPro/xmlpro.html
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools/

i’ve used it to parse rtf documents and automagically create text generator items for subtitling, and also used it for converting Avid .ale files to fcp clip bins

whether or not XML is useful to you depends entirely on your workflow and needs

hope that helps
Andy