[Anthony Willis]

I’m not surprised about your ranting. The situation is rather frustrating. My 2006 Mac Pro is dying and I need to order a new pro machine pronto. With the uncertainty about the Mac Pro and this boring avoidance of Open CL (other than this mobile Radeon card) from Adobe, I’m surprised more people are not pretty irritated.

Either Apple should be fitting more Nvidia cards to iMacs (perhaps Macs in general) or Adobe should support AMD’s technology.

Maybe the forum can help me; does anyone know if any of the measly three Nvidia CUDA cards that work on Apple computers can be fitted to the current iMac?

Either way, this seems a shame since the Radeon card is clearly an incredibly fast and capable piece of technology. Furthermore, perhaps TV professionals like me should dismiss this whole Mercury Engine thing anyway and get on with making stuff and not worrying ourselves with gimmicks…

Anthony

[Anthony Willis]

Hey Jason,

You don’t need to render the timeline in order to export it. Rendering makes media files in the format native to the sequence settings. I would generally render first so you can watch the program properly and it makes the export quicker too, much quicker if you are exporting in the native format i.e. File>Export>Quicktime Movie>Current Settings>

Were you to export using ‘Quicktime Conversion’ you would not notice as much advantage if the sequence was un-rendered, but still some, perhaps half the time.

However if you are up against it, it might save you time…

Anthony

[Anthony Willis]

Hey Andy,

Sorry to be pedantic, but first of all do you mean ‘capture’ rather than ‘import’? I assume you are trying to capture media from an HDV tape in the JVC deck.

Secondly are you saying that you are using FCP 4 or 5? You really should use the latest version as it is rather difficult to help when you are using obsolete software.

I’m also not sure what you mean by “I will tell it to capture a 20 minute clip”, are you doing this is the log and capture window?

So anyway, if you are capturing from HDV tape via firewire you are probably encountering timecode breaks. The User Preferences window (Final Cut Pro>User Preferences>) has an option to ‘Make New Clip’ when it encounters a TC break. You can set this to ‘Warn After Capture’, but I would not recommend it. This setting will keep the TC running from the start of the capture and thus the video and TC will not match after each consecutive TC break. You should keep the sync between the TC and the video in case you need to re-conform the edit later, though this is often horrible with HDV as it is a pretty rubbish format.

I would suggest you get used to working with lots of little clips rather than one large one anyway as it makes little difference to the edit process anyway. Experienced editors break long captures into subclips to make each clip easier to work with. FCP is helping you by making these separate clips.

Anthony

[Anthony Willis]

Hey John,

Thanks very much. I thought that might be the one, but I’d been concerned by misleading earlier posts. I shall order one asap.

Cheers,

Anthony

[Anthony Willis]

Thanks David & John,

These AVIs were created by the Sony HD recorder, I’m afraid I can’t recall the model number,
they were not created by another application.

They are bog standard AVI files and actually play back perfectly in FCP without audio as they are also 720 x 576 DV PAL. I shall use them mute anyway so it is not terribly crucial to have sound thankfully.

I was more intrigued as to why FCP 6.0.2 cannot recompress them as it works fine with everything else. Furthermore it is perfectly reasonable to expect FCP’s Media Manager to work with these files, it is one of a group of things it is exactly intended to do. i.e. convert HDV to SD or proper HD, convert MPEG codecs to non GOP formats etc.

Media Manager is just another host of QT, and since the AVIs work well with all the QT apps on this machine, then it must be a bug or an un-published incompatibility.

Assuming FCP’s Media Manager just does not work with AVIs at the input stage, what I would like to know is what the intended workflow for Sony DVCAM media recorded onto these drives. XDCAM I understand has a simple workflow with FCP, why not this?

Oh and yes John, Compressor does indeed convert them fine as does plain old QT Pro. I guess you are both right in that FCP just isn’t designed to process these AVIs…

Hmm

Anthony

[Anthony Willis]

Cory,

I’m afraid I don’t know whether there would be any issue with interference from the CRT, I very much doubt it. Maybe someone else will be able to clarify that.

I think your plan is a pretty good one, as an extra monitor for bins etc does free up the space on the main display. I still feel that Apple has made this edit suite work remarkably well on a single wide aspect monitor. You may find the new Dell you’ve ordered is just perfect by itself! Then you don’t need to have a vast CRT placed next to a elegant and space saving LCD…

Also, CRTs and some LCDs radiate too much light for the clarity and contrast they provide. This not only dries your eyes, but can lead to headaches and fatigue. I find the Apple 23 inch LCD more tiring to work with than the Dell 24 inch.

Maybe it is time to ditch the CRT completely, just like the manufactures have. I think they are only superior for interlaced television playback.

Cheers Cory, good luck!

Anthony

[Anthony Willis]

I think the Dell 2407 WFP is a great monitor, especially for FCP and AE. However, I think two monitors is not quite as practical as you might think especially in wide aspect ratios. Having two 4:3 monitors is a legacy of Avid Media Composer suites really.

One of the suites I use regularly has two of these Dell monitors and it is just too wide a screen area for proper use. Apple have made FCP work very well with one large screen. When I work on this FCP machine I often end up cursing the awkward area and reverting to the standard workspace on one screen. In fact using one of these 24 inch monitors as an HD display is pretty good…

But, I would seriously suggest you consider a single 30 inch Dell or Apple display. FCP and AE are glorious with this kind of screen area, far better than two 24s…

You will have so much more room for your timeline and you don’t have to glance a few feet away to see your record viewer pane!

You may not agree, but I think you should try it out.

Cheers,

Anthony