Ben Holmes
Forum Replies Created
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Just to reiterate what jwedit said, the relevent resolution is that of the final output, not the maximum resolution of the stills – if you drop a large resolution still into an HD timeline, FCP will initially adjust the scaling so it fits in the frame (say 30% scale). You can then adjust this scale back up and reposition each still so that only the relevent part you need is in frame.
You asked what types of still to use. The less the JPEG compression the better. JPEG compression is very visible on video, and will stop you from zooming in as far as you want on many occasions. Try to use whatever format gets you as close as possible to the RAW files. That said, 12mp is pretty big, and I’m not sure how FCP will cope with it. Trial that on a system first and USE A SYSTEM WITH PLENTY OF RAM.
Finally, and as a FCP user who HATES the AE interface, I really shouldn’t say this – but AE does a better job with stills movement. It will allow you to make huge collages of stills and zoom in, out and around them at will. See the excellent “Dogtown and the Z-boys” for examples of this. If you want an elegant solution and workflow for half the effort and twice the useability of AE, use Combustion, it’s great.
I suppose one MORE choice wasn’t what you were looking for? OK, use AE over FCP ANY DAY for this kind of project, there are many excellent tutorials around to help you set things like this up. As I said, I hate AE as a user experience, but it beats FCP for motion effects hands down. FCP is an excellent editing tool, but you need a compositing tool like AE or combustion for this kind of project – IMHO
Ben
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS and FCP specialists
Current Mac systems All Dual 2.7Ghz with Kona 2 and Digital Voodoo cards, 6Gb Ram, Sapphire, SCSI320 Medea and Huge Arrays.FCP projects include Sky TV coverage of the Ryder Cup and US Open Golf – Live OB specialists. Edit/slomo vehicle.
http://www.editec.co.uk -
Not sure, but two things occur to me:
1) Simple one, but are the SD and HD records both at the same frame-rate? I know it’s kind of obvious, but HD records have many more options, so perhaps an error was made on set, perhaps (if you are US-based) you have a drop-frame issue??
2) You have an issue with your capture device and/or an issue with the deck control side of your capture card. If it is an HD deck you are using, are you using the correct control protocol on the capture window – this directly relates to the SMPTE timecode your system reads off the tape. Try adjusting this setting, or try a capture from an SD deck for the SD footage to see if that makes any difference.
Probably you have tried all this, give us all more details (format and decks) and I’m sure someone can help…
Ben
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS and FCP specialists
Current Mac systems All Dual 2.7Ghz with Kona 2 and Digital Voodoo cards, 6Gb Ram, Sapphire, SCSI320 Medea and Huge Arrays.FCP projects include Sky TV coverage of the Ryder Cup and US Open Golf – Live OB specialists. Edit/slomo vehicle.
http://www.editec.co.uk -
Pete’s right, but it raises an interesting point: Wouldn’t it be nice if you could apply attributes to a video track, so that new clips automatically took the new scaling/colour correction etc.?
Just a thought.
Ben
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS and FCP specialists
Current Mac systems All Dual 2.7Ghz with Kona 2 and Digital Voodoo cards, 6Gb Ram, Sapphire, SCSI320 Medea and Huge Arrays.FCP projects include Sky TV coverage of the Ryder Cup and US Open Golf – Live OB specialists. Edit/slomo vehicle.
http://www.editec.co.uk -
I remember when all my FCP problems were this simple… (sigh)
Still took me 5 hours to figure it out when it happened to me.
Still got my copy of FCP 1….
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS and FCP specialists
Current Mac systems All Dual 2.7Ghz with Kona 2 and Digital Voodoo cards, 6Gb Ram, Sapphire, SCSI320 Medea and Huge Arrays.FCP projects include Sky TV coverage of the Ryder Cup and US Open Golf – Live OB specialists. Edit/slomo vehicle.
http://www.editec.co.uk -
No need to recapture! Heaven forbid…
The simplest thing to do is to render the entire timeline as a single file (or a sequence of them if necessary). This is simply accomplished by using export quicktime.
Open a new sequence and set this to be 4:3 (uncheck anamorphic tab)
Import the previously exported files back into fcp. Open the properties for these files (or file) and check the anamorphic tab. Drop this file(s) into the 4:3 sequences, and it will be letterboxed!
The nice thing about this workflow is the original export is nice and quick (no conversion), and the new letterboxed timeline will run in real time on most modern macs…
Happy outputting!
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS and FCP specialists
Current Mac systems All Dual 2.7Ghz with Kona 2 and Digital Voodoo cards, 6Gb Ram, Sapphire, SCSI320 Medea and Huge Arrays.FCP projects include Sky TV coverage of the Ryder Cup and US Open Golf – Live OB specialists. Edit/slomo vehicle.
http://www.editec.co.uk -
Steve
Two thoughts: Firstly that is a lot of the drive to use – 80 percent usage of an array will cause seek times to be increased, as final cut goes scrambling all over the place to find your video. This is a very likely cause of this delay.
Secondly, changing over the scsi cards without clearing out the media is probably no real use, and a little scary – not sure I’d attempt it with 800 gig on the drive. You need to find other storage to copy the data over to (a few hundred clams on a firewire drive should do it, a small price to protect a lot of work) and clear the drive completely and restripe it in disc utility. You are now using a faster scsi card, and I am suprised you are reading any data at all. If you have problems copying over the data, then you probably have bad data or bad sectors on your scsi drive. Try copying files over in small groups and see if you can identify the bad files.
If you are playing a rendered timeline, it could just be a bad render file that is causing all of this – and let’s hope it is. Clear out all the render files using render manager, and re-render everything. See if that helps at all before you try all of the above.
Still – I would always be wary of filling up a drive too much – What you describe is a classic drive seek problem.
Ben
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS and FCP specialists
Current Mac systems All Dual 2.7Ghz with Kona 2 and Digital Voodoo cards, 6Gb Ram, Sapphire, SCSI320 Medea and Huge Arrays.FCP projects include Sky TV coverage of the Ryder Cup and US Open Golf – Live OB specialists. Edit/slomo vehicle.
http://www.editec.co.uk -
Reverting to a previous saved version will cure this problem – then save a copy and use media manager to back up.
I don’t believe this problem has ANYTHING to do with a lack of physical ram on the computer. I have two systems with 6 gig of ram, and still get this occasionally. It has been extensively discussed before on this forum – a search under ‘out of memory’ will, no doubt, add numerous advise on this. I have been led to believe it can be caused by a computational ‘divide by zero’ or recurring number error.
If you didn’t have autosave on, and you have no other versions, you may have a big problem – although the previous post sounds interesting, so let us know. This is an ongoing problem in final cut.
Ben
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS and FCP specialists
Current Mac systems All Dual 2.7Ghz with Kona 2 and Digital Voodoo cards, 6Gb Ram, Sapphire, SCSI320 Medea and Huge Arrays.FCP projects include Sky TV coverage of the Ryder Cup and US Open Golf – Live OB specialists. Edit/slomo vehicle.
http://www.editec.co.uk -
You’re talking about putting an actual 4×3 clip into a 16×9 timeline right?
All you do is drop it in this leaves black on the left and right of the picture.
Now open the motion tab and change the scale to 133, or a little higher if the blanking is still visible. This zooms the centre out to fit the frame. Adjust the y-position of the clip up and down if required (if the heads are cut off for example).
Obviously this reduces the quality a little, but that’s unavoidable.
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS and FCP specialists
Current Mac systems All Dual 2.7Ghz with Kona 2 and Digital Voodoo cards, 6Gb Ram, Sapphire, SCSI320 Medea and Huge Arrays.FCP projects include Sky TV coverage of the Ryder Cup and US Open Golf – Live OB specialists. Edit/slomo vehicle.
http://www.editec.co.uk -
Just remembered – this video out is called ‘desktop 2’ in FCP.
Sorry if this solution amounts to stating the obvious – and not exactly what you asked, as it’s not via firewire. I am 99.9% sure that firewire ONLY supports DV streams. Don’t know if this option is even open to you…
Ben
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS and FCP specialists
Current Mac systems All Dual 2.7Ghz with Kona 2 and Digital Voodoo cards, 6Gb Ram, Sapphire, SCSI320 Medea and Huge Arrays.FCP projects include Sky TV coverage of the Ryder Cup and US Open Golf – Live OB specialists. Edit/slomo vehicle.
http://www.editec.co.uk -
Jerry is right – if I get your system right.
BUT – you would be better having one computer screen and one SDI monitor (for a vaguely equivalent cost) as you will never be able to see how your project will look to the viewers on a TV at home – for a start computer monitors are progressive scanning, and you cannot see the real interlaced look of your original video.
If you have just bought 2 new 20-23-inch monitors: Send one back and get a Sony monitor with an SDI input – they are not as expensive as you think…
Hope this is taken as constructively as it is meant.
Ben
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS and FCP specialists
Current Mac systems All Dual 2.7Ghz with Kona 2 and Digital Voodoo cards, 6Gb Ram, Sapphire, SCSI320 Medea and Huge Arrays.FCP projects include Sky TV coverage of the Ryder Cup and US Open Golf – Live OB specialists. Edit/slomo vehicle.
http://www.editec.co.uk