[Ben Holmes]

Solution: Find a friendly facility for doing your own transfers. Share large drink with them after passing on cost to client! Don’t forget many digi decks will play SP as well, so this isn’t an expensive proposition (depending on your circumstances).

Gin and Tonics all round! Make mine a Bombay Sapphire!

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.
https://www.editecuk.com/OBServer2.html

[Ben Holmes]

Which tablet specifically was it? Love to know how you find it on the MBP. I have been thinking about doing the same myself, and the Intuos tablets are too expensive. Do you use motion or combustion?

Be great to have your thoughts on it after a little bit of experience. Does it help with RSI as much as everyone says?

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.
https://www.editecuk.com/OBServer2.html

[Ben Holmes]

On the odd occasions I have worked with HDV, sometimes I have found FCP unwilling to open the HDV specific capture window. I think it needs to see the deck/camera and have the correct set-up loaded before you start – you can’t just flip to HDV capture presets and expect it to respond every time.

If you can’t get it to see the deck, try the HDV easy setup, save your project and restart FCP. This may jog it into seeing everything. Make sure you are using the HDV deck control option.

Hope this helps.

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.
https://www.editecuk.com/OBServer2.html

[Ben Holmes]

I’d explain the situation to them regarding quality – see if that sways them regarding hire/transfers. Get a price for getting your own transfers done locally (maybe a little bit in this for you!) versus their hire costs.

I’d also find out if you can get hold of an anamorphic setup for your SP, it might not be so easy or cheap these days.

You have my sympathies for an awkward situation – but at least now you know the consequences of shooting letterboxed16:9 for an SP edit, so I really would try to talk them out of it. I just can’t emphasise enough how unhappy they will be with cropped/zoomed footage. I’ve seen plenty rejected and re-shot, even when the budget was tight, and that’s in situations where a Digibeta cameraman has accidentally shot 4:3 – and obviously that looks better than it would on an SP shoot.

Also I’ve re-read your original post, and see you can’t use a monitor. That makes an anamorphic shoot even more awkward. Shoot it on digi.

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.
https://www.editecuk.com/OBServer2.html

[Ben Holmes]

Robin

Just to weigh in here, please note that by far the best way to deal with this TECHNICALLY is to shoot with an anamorphic lens. You can use an external monitor when you shoot with a 16:9 button on it to correct the distortion, allowing you to preview everything on the shoot.

Why? Because although all the info you have been given about cropping is correct, you are not shooting film. With film, cropping in post causes no appreciable loss in quality. Here, the editor will have to crop what you shoot, and the zoom in on the picture to get his letterboxed image to fill the 16:9 frame (that’s assuming he’s not doing a letterboxed edit, which I doubt from your post).

Even when shooting on a pro format, this will look bad. Worse than the 4:3 original by some margin, as the pixels you shot do longer coincide with the pixels in the final edit, causing jaggies and other zoom artifacts. If you use an anamophic adapter/lens you can give him a full height image which FCP can automatically stretch to fill the frame in his 16:9 timeline – all he has to do is check a box on the capture to get everything correct. It’s easier for him, and ultimately easier for you, as you can use the full sensor on the camera to shoot. Yes, the image you shoot is stretched horizontally, but that is not NEARLY as visible in post.

This is a far better workflow. Feel free to ask if what I’ve said isn’t clear. In the UK we have been dealing with 16:9 issues for years, so I think I can be of some help.

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.
https://www.editecuk.com/OBServer2.html

[Ben Holmes]

Cory

I know the price is good on the WD drives, but I beg you to consider a better drive if you can – data is always more valuable than the drive you put it on (unless you own an XRaid, ho ho ho). I have had to use DiskWarrior a couple of times recently to repair WD MyBooks after near-catastrophic data losses, in both cases the b-node tree on the drives was damaged.

You get what you pay for with drives, and in my experience (and others here if you search posts for these drives) these are not reliable. The cases are cheap, the connectors not great (athough I would level the same complaints at Lacie) and the drives not as reliable as others. Is your application critical? Putting 2Tb on one of these terrifies me.

Certainly, the Lacie is better, although I no longer use them after problems – one of mine died, the other suffered from failure of the FW connections, the ports only being secured by the solder attaching them to the board. If you need a mobile drive, I can recommend G-Raid. You can see prices at http://www.g-techology.com.

There are many many posts here about Lacie and Western digital arrays here – have a search and a read (the last few months should turn up a few) before you commit to this purchase.

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.
https://www.editecuk.com/OBServer2.html

[Ben Holmes]

Have you checked the RT tabs in the timeline? Sometimes it’s the simple things…

Btw, what do you mean by ‘offline’ in your post? It’s a G5, so I assume you’re just capturing and editing in DV? That would give you plenty of RT performance. Set the rt to unlimited and resolution and frame rate to dynamic. Also check your sequence settings match the capture. Failing this, trash your prefs and restart. This should make fcp re-profile for RT.

Hope this helps.

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.
https://www.editecuk.com/OBServer2.html

[Ben Holmes]

Just noticed that if you click on the ex-1 picture on the ad on the left there is a link on the promax page showing you the fcp workflow step by step. Easy!

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.
https://www.editecuk.com/OBServer2.html

[Ben Holmes]

Jonny

Have no direct experience of the ex-1 – but am thinking about it after seeing this:

https://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=121427

(video linked in first post in thread).

Looked very impressive to me for such a low cost camera. The workflow for fcp should give you no problems. A cameraman friend of mine described the lens to me as ‘amazing for the money’.

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.
https://www.editecuk.com/OBServer2.html

[Ben Holmes]

Hi MIchael

I think I’ve seen what you’re referring to – this can happen when you have an empty track between already used tracks – eg: you have mono fx on track one, nothing on track 2 and stereo music on tracks 3&4. Sometimes, FCP will attempt to use that empty track 2 and the next empty track (track 5 in the above example) as the next available “pair”.

You can solve this by creating new audio tracks, and dragging your errant audio down to them. If it has lost the stereo linkage, you can rejoin it by using the ‘make stereo pair’ command (default keystroke alt+L ) to rejoin the tracks. I would suggest that when you put new audio into the timeline you drag audio to the correct tracks, and make sure you assign stereo audio to an odd/even pair (eg. 1/2 or 3/4 etc).

All the pan and track assign options can be seen in the audio mixer.

Hope this helps.

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.
https://www.editecuk.com/OBServer2.html