[Annaël Beauchemin]

[Blub] ” It was clear to me that the film had been messed with in the transfer.”

I was going to chime in in this thread but refrained from it since I have no experience with film (at all).

But I did have the chance to do some experiements with 2K scans in 12-bit log (cineon files), and when doing the conversion from 12-bit log to 8bit linear, you have to adjust clipping of the lows and clipping of the high. I was told (right here on combustion forum) that there are standard values for this clippings, but that you can change them when dealing with over/underexposed footage.

But if you just take the black at 0 and white at 65536 (when working in 16bit), the luma range will be compressed abnormaly and you will see awfull lot of grain, with no detail in both shadows and highlights. This is of course the worst case….

So if what they showed was digital scans of 35mm footage, maybe they “tweaked” the conversion to disadvantage… they could probably have tweaked the optical print, probably.

But I *DID* see very ugly shadows in footage shot on a cinealta. Of course this was due to a badly lit scene, where 35mm would probably fail as miserably, but this does prove the idea that good lighting is essential to good picture.

[Annaël Beauchemin]

[Mark Raudonis] “My experience with this feature on multiple large projects with long timelines shows that “Dupe detection” turned on in ANY of your projects (open or not) WILL cause a slow down.”

So even a closed project (no bin, no timeline) would cause slowdowns ? I’m not sure how this is possible. Dupe detection is contained in the project file, not media… how can a *closed* project could ever affect other projects ? Are you sure it’s not coincidence ?

btw… in my experience scrubbing and scrolling stay fast with dupe detect, but trimming can become really slow (1-2 sec lags).

[Annaël Beauchemin]

[Toby Angwin] ” but I do think that so many discussions get needlessly bogged down in going over the basics instead of actually being constructive.

It’s normal that ppl start by stating the obvious when responding to a problem like yours, since it’s both uncommon, relative and broad. There are lots of things that can influence performance. So the first logical steps are always to start with the obvious and procede by elinimation. And you know, even “advanced” may miss something obvious.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful about the boards because they are the best tech support there is, but could we start an advanced user sub-forum like 2-pop has. “

And then how do cut between advanced and not adavanced. This is community support, not a paid service where you can have expectations. I’m not sure where an “advanced” forum would go…

——-

As for your problem:

-Which kind of RAID are you using ? (driver issue?)
-Did you try disabling video output ? (this would rule out video card problems)
-Spotlight in Tiger does slowdown the system alot when it’s indexing, and sometimes it will index and then re-index for obscure reasons (my experience). Load up Activity Monitor and see if “mcs” (or whatever process) is using CPU time.
-Any third party plugins?
-Are you experiencing this lag on clips that have no filter? (RT processing does induce a small lag)
-Are your Viewer/Canvas set to fit to window and not overlapping any other window? (sorry for stating the obvious)
-Like Andy Mees has asked, are you using the Apple uncompressed codecs or something third party like blackmagic ?

[Annaël Beauchemin]

[Dave] “That is poor advise. I have three G5 2 Gig machines and will probably upgrade one more time to the fastest G5 before the Intel Macs arrive. I will not upgrade our main suites to the first generation Intel Macs. Go for what you need now not what might be in a year.”

I would add that it’s not just a question of hardware either : what tells us that a *fully optimised* version of FCP for x86 will come out at the same time as Mactels ? Especialy since FCP is not (as far as I know) written in cocoa

[Annaël Beauchemin]

I noticed that the vectorscope window slows down scrubbing noticeabily, even if it’s hidden behind another window.

[Annaël Beauchemin]

if you want to mix 24p and 29.97 footage, you’re better shoot in in 24p STANDARD, and work in a 29.97 sequence.

The other possible workflow would be to shoot 24p advanced, work in a 24p timeline (in fact 23.98) and convert the 30p/60i footage to 24p using a plugin such as Graeme’s Standards conversion (www.nattress.com). This workflow could give you a slight headache, tho…

[Annaël Beauchemin]

[Oliver Peters] “Now, if I had Symphony’s CC + Autodesk’s Color Warper for secondaries it would be the best NLE CC available.”

the Color Wrapper you’re talking about… is it similar to the new Diamond Keyer in combustion 4? It sure would be welcome.

“I’m hoping Synthetic Aperture starts shipping the newest versions of Color Finesse shown at NAB. This will be the best CC solution for FCP other than FinalTouch, which is it’s own animal, of course, and not really tied to FCP.”

Does the new Color Finesse have a way to scrub the clip? I find the impossibility to scrub to be a major caveat. And you can’t animate CC either…

At least we got some sort of secondary color correction. Avid DS doesn’t even have this 😉 (but it can always be cheated with a keyer..). Not too shabby for a 999$ software…

[Annaël Beauchemin]

[Oliver Peters] “- Curves in color-correction tool”

Ahhhhhhhh! !
so I am not alone!

I say that without curves, FCP can’t be REALLY considered a online editing software…

[Annaël Beauchemin]

I personaly find it easy to read. There are other things in FCP that are much, much more “obstrusive”…

if you insist on finding a way to change the font, maybe you could open the timecode reader FXScript to see if you can change the font in the code. But for me it’s time to open a beer and relax 😉

[Annaël Beauchemin]

in your sequence settings: video processing tab, is Quality set to normal or best quality (ie, it’s NOT set to Fast) ?

are you fully rendering? You can’t judge the RT rendering on stills. Make sure the rendering status above your still is light purple-grayish. If not, render.

you didn’t tell me if you were seeing the problem on an external video monitor. This is important.

btw, to reply, use the “Reply to this post button”. It makes reading on the forum easier.