[Arnie Schlissel]

FCP has both “Blink” & “Strobe” filters, I’d try applying either of those to a title & see if you can get that to do what you want. Look under “Video” in the Effects menu.

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com

[Arnie Schlissel]

I’m in NY. I can probably help you over the weekend. But there will have to be beer involved. My email & phone # are on my website.

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com

[Arnie Schlissel]

[Chris Poisson] “It’s a G4 dual 1 gig. Do I plug into the back somewhere?”

You need to run the Y-cable from the headphone jack on the back of the Mac to a stereo channel on the Mackie.

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com

[Arnie Schlissel]

[Kenny Powerass] “What are user bits?”

A tasty new snack food! 🙂

Sorry, on a more serious note, you have 2 problems:
1) FCP will not send TC out via Firewire
2) the DSR-11 does not allow you to preset your timecode

The workaround is to find a program called “Simple Video Out” on apple’s website, then export a short ref movie from FCP with the starting TC you want, & use SVO to stripe that to the tape. Then you can layoff your show from FCP to the DSR-11 with an Assemble Edit.

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com

[Arnie Schlissel]

Here’s exactly what I & everyone else here knows about your system:
You’re running FCP 4.5
You have an Io
You have some sort of SCSI RAID that doesn’t work
You used to work on an Avid

Here’s exactly what we don’t know:
Why your RAID failed
What kind of material you’re working with
What Mac you’re working on
How much memory you have
What kind of drive you’re currently working with, and how big, and how is it formatted
In short- everything that would be needed to give you some help

Meet us halfway, tell us everything you can tell us about your system. Odds are that you’re not set up properly, & that’s why you’re dropping frames now.

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com

[Arnie Schlissel]

I’m pretty sure that FCP 5 won’t open up on a system without an AGP card. I seem to remember that happening with some people trying to install FCP 4x on systems that didn’t have AGP cards couldn’t run it. I suspect that the installer might not even allow you to install it, I think it runs a hardware check first.

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com

[Arnie Schlissel]

That B&W image is your mask. Look up “Travel Matte” in the FCP manual to learn how to apply the travel matte between 2 layers of footage.

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com

[Arnie Schlissel]

pluginz.com (you may have noticed their banner adds here on the cow)
toolfarm.com

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com

[Arnie Schlissel]

Ahhh… Sorry, I misunderstood your original post. No. FCP gives no control whatsoever of those curves other than adding & placing keyframes. Have you tried adding a couple of extra keyframes to smooth out the curve a bit? A pain, I know, but that’s all you can do in FCP. It comes back to audio being logarithmic by nature, & FCP’s audio toolset is not that advanced.

OTOH, I just used Soundtrack Pro for the 1st time, & I’m a believer! The audio curves there seem to be linear, but that could just be how they’re displayed. I’m something of an “also ran” when it comes to audio right now, so I may not have the ear to pick out the problem you have.

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com

[Arnie Schlissel]

First & foremost: Audio is not linear. It’s logarithmic by nature. While the display on your M100 may have looked linear, I doubt that it was.

Second: FCP offers 2 different kinds of crossfades. The default is a “+3 dB” fade that is intended to keep the volume on your crossfades constant. The other is a “+0 dB” that sounds much more natural when you use it at the head or tail of a clip. If you haven’t already, try using the +0 fade.

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com