[Andy Mees]

Doesn’t sound like a media file, corruption or virus issue Kel … sounds rather more like the shared workstation you were using has an issue with its setup for working with FCP. Check to see if your project’s saves and autosaves are actually on the local drive of the shared computer you were using rather than your network home folder … visa versa. Hopefully this is a simple issue of not looking in the right location rather than an network administration/permissions issue whereby your changes were not permanently recorded.

Good luck
Andy

[Andy Mees]

what a strange subject to revive Mark … you do realize this thread is a year old now?

[Andy Mees]

Nightmare, Philip. Where I’m am we’ve been working day in and day out with XDCAM HD for over 3 years and have never suffered these problems … but the hardware in question is usually a MacBook Pro, which judging from reports seems to be somewhat inexplicably immune, furthermore those XDCAM HD native timelines are not often more that 5 minutes (mostly news packages turned around in the field) and all long form programme edits are captured and cut using an intermediate codec, not native XDCAM HD. That said, I’m aware of many systems designed around XDCAM HD based edit workflows and certainly the majority are working flawlessly (not surprisingly, internet forums generally attract those for whom things are not working so well, so you’ll rarely hear from the majority in that regard). Those working with native XDCAM HD source footage within ProRes sequences also seem to be having a happy and stable time of things too so I’m hard pushed to explain the root of your problem here …. but I will say this, your earlier note that “I’ve already filled up my 5TB RAID and have begun overflowing onto FW drives” has fire engine red warning bells ringing all over the interwebs, but am assuming you’ve explored that already.

Keep us posted, how you get on with the export
Andy

[Andy Mees]

[Philip Owens] “Will I be able to cut SD DV @ 29.97, SD and HD ProRes @ 23.98 and 29.97 and XDCAM HD @ 23.98 clips onto that timeline? That’s the sum of my media types.”

Hey Philip
Mixed resolution should present no more problem to a ProRes timeline than to your XDCAM native timeline … indeed the nature of the sequence codec should make the rendering of the source clips to the sequence’s resolution much easier on your system. Mixed frame rates on the other hand … FCP’s none too clever with mixed frame rates I’m afraid.
Andy

[Andy Mees]

Hi Philip

What is the target code for your (failing) export, is it XDCAM EX (as on the timeline) or is it a preferred delivery codec? If the former, then you might want to consider the latter. If the latter, then what codec are you exporting to? Either way, what is the step by step procedure are you using for export?

You mention that your timeline was fully rendered in ProRes first … I wonder if you realise that those renders are simply ignored on export when they are not timeline native. Given that your machine seems reasonably powerfully spec’d, you might want to consider adopting a new workflow, that being using a native ProRes timeline with your XDCAM source clips. Your machine should eat it up, and if you’re having a nightmare with your current workflow then you’d probably find the overall experience of handling the XDCAM sources much easier this way. Furthermore, on “Current Settings” exports any interim renders would be used accordingly, not discarded.

Hope it helps
Andy

[Andy Mees]

Dave

As to the why … it’s called “Overscan”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overscan

Cheers
Andy

[Andy Mees]

Hi Dennis

When you plug the UltraHD into your Mac it just shows up as a USB Mass Storage device like any other, no special driver is needed, it works just fine no matter what Mac you are using. (No I don;t have one, but 2 minutes on google and an ounce of common sense will back up what I’m telling you). You then have access to the camera native clips (H264 files wrapped in an MP4 container) that are inside the DCIM folder within the mounted camera storage. You can transcode these just fine with MPEG Streamclip.

Is that clearer 🙂

Best
Andy

[Andy Mees]

The Flip site clearly states that “FlipShare” for Mac minimum requirements for the Ultra HD is 1.66 GHz Intel Core Duo or faster processor.

But why would you want to use FlipShare ? Is isn’t needed … you can just access the camera via its USB connection and copy the raw files onto your local hard disc and transcode them to an FCP friendly edit codec. Your G5 can handle that just fine I should think.

[Andy Mees]

Hi Noah

First off. just try pressing Ctrl-U (the shortcut for Window>Arrange>Standard) … this should ensure that you do not have any widows overlapping the Canvas window which might cause external playback issues.
Also, select your Canvas window and press Shift-Z (the shortcut for View > Level > Fit to Window) … which should ensure your Canvas is not at a zoom level which might also cause corrupted external playback.

Now try your playback again … any luck yet? If not, is there anything non standard about your sequence settings that we should know about? What are the sequence settings (and what are the source clip format properties)? Assuming its all normal, you can also try turning of “Mirror on desktop” in your Audio/Video Settings window > A/V Devices tab … see if that works any wonders.

Failing all that, you might want to try the slash and burn approach of just trashing your FCP preferences … that’s often useful for fixing all manner of otherwise inexplicable issues. (Try Preference Manager for this, not only is it good, its also free).

As for the bigger picture, as it were, of external video monitoring, your Dell S2409W would make a fine companion monitor for a Matrox MXO2 Mini (or any MXO2) or an AJA IO Express box, assuming your MBP is one with an available ExpressCard/34 slot. These boxes allow you to monitor your timeline at full quality, pixel for pixel on your secondary display; as a value added extra, the Matrox MXO2 would also allow you to calibrate its (HDMI) output somewhat to match the display, so that you might better achieve the color representation that you’d get from a professional reference monitor.

Hope it helps
Andy

[Andy Mees]

[Alex Bluffield] “Still don’t understand why fcp’s not returning the sequences to their native codec without messing up the aspect ratio?”

Well, unfortunately it’s because of the unintended mismatch of settings between your source clips and original sequence. You see, FCP was forced to apply a scale and distortion to each and every clip instance added to the sequence in order to make those clips display correctly … although you’ve since changed the sequence settings after the fact, that doesn’t change those scale and distortion properties that were applied, as noted, to each and every clip already edited into the sequence. Similarly, copying and pasting those sequence clip instances to another sequence, regardless or target setting, will not change the properties already attached to the copied clips.

As for options, you could pull an XML trick maybe … export the sequence as XML and then use an applescript to parse through and subtract 33.333 from the value of every Basic Motion Scale element, and to add 33.3333 to the value of every Distort element. That way you’d preserve any scaling and distortion that had been intentionally applied.