[Ben Holmes]

I’m not really clear what you are trying to do, but perhaps this may help:

In FCP, if you have a seperate layer with the matte on it (in the optical sense of a black and white image matte), you can put this underneath the layer you want to key and select the composite mode “travel matte luma” on the upper layer. This allows you to output seperate matte layers from software like photoshop when embedded alphas are not supported. Only certain types of stills, like targas, support alphas in FCP, and I suspect this is the root of your problem. psd documents do work in FCP, but not every time – it’s not totally reliable in my experience.

I hope this general advice helps, and is not stating the blindingly obvious to you.

Ben

[Ben Holmes]

Bit small I think – but a preset on the Lemur for FCP, Motion and Colour would be nice…..

Ben

[Ben Holmes]

Congratulations.

You have finally won the competition to link FCP to the Slovak tradition of Christmas Carp. Unfortunately due to the original terms of the Cow Charter, the entire site will have to be shut down, and instead host a ‘Carp is for life, not just for Christmas’ public information site.

I hope you’re happy.

[Ben Holmes]

Joseph

I would recommend having a good look in the FCP manual, as many of your queries can be answered there.

If you plug a Cinema display into the DVI port of your MacBook Pro (which is what I assume you mean by Powerbook) you will find the option to select a secondary cinema display preview in the external video section of the view tab, as I previously mentioned.

Ben

[Ben Holmes]

I third or fourth that. We always use the JVC DTV 20-inch monitors and they are top-notch. Next to them, we have probably the best flat screens on the market, at a higher price than the JVC, and it’s far softer.

Stick with the CRT for now.

Ben

PS – I think there’s a link to a picture of the JVC in place on my sigfile – I forget.

[Ben Holmes]

I’m guessing you’re not a broadcast user (since you’re using a firewire camera and -uh- you’re asking this question) so you could connect your TV to your unspecified Mac using a DVI or VGA to DVI or DVI to HDMI cable and then when the Mac sees the TV as a second monitor, under View/External Video, select secondary display cinema preview.

There are a 1001 ‘buts’ in this answer – the TV needs to be of sufficient resolution, and that needs to be supported by the Mac video card etc etc. Also, this will not be a properly scanned output, so it may have some interlace issues (to say the least). You may be able to get sound via a mini-jack to RCA audio cable, but beware of audio sync issues compared to firewire.

That said – and broadcast snobbery aside – I often do this when showing clients videos, and it can look great!

Have fun.

Ben

[Ben Holmes]

Simple – but often asked question.

Open your new file in quicktime player. Click on ‘window’ in the menu bar then ‘show movie properties’. Click on the video track in the top of the box and the ‘visual settings’ tab and alter the ‘scaled size’ dimensions in the boxes on the right hand side of the box to the correct size (say 1920×1080).

Save the file (with the video on the first frame as it remembers this) and it will now play in a correctly scaled box (irrespective of the overall sizing) on any computer you play it on, including PC’s. I do this all the time for anamorphic videos, works great, unlike changing the export sizes…

Ben

[Ben Holmes]

[Hellena] “I sincerely hope that the number of people on a stand is not what makes you commit to a product – but the product itself.”

That’s not what I said – although I expected a certain amount of AVID/FCP backlash from my comments. I said I knew I had made the right decision (some time earlier) when I saw the levels of interest for the two products. I will not debate the pros and cons of the systems here, but at the end of the day, that’s what they are – systems.

What any product line needs to survive is the support of talented people – Apple have made great inroads to the ‘big’ work because they gave people an affordable start, and therefore created a large talent pool, which is growing exponentially. This is now paying dividends in broadcast, and may hurt Avid more and more in these core ‘high-end’ markets they still control. it took Avid far to long to see the danger – I hope (sincerely) they can reverse the trend.

[Ben Holmes]

Ron

I don’t doubt that the market has changed, but I’m not sure that just because it makes little sense for YOU to be at NAB (you’re an online business) that it makes little sense for AVID. As expensive as shows like NAB and IBC are, they also signal intent on behalf of the company to be in a market, to allow direct comparison of their products to others, and to build personal relationships with buyers and new customers – particularly the new consumers that will become their userbase in years to come. For hire companies and post-production houses, the shows present a unique opportunity to do business with multiple companies over a short time period – often this is a money saver, not a drain on time or resources – and I speak from personal experience here. I know many companies who do a great deal of business at NAB, millions of dollars every year.

I suspect that some of AVID’s reasons may be more prosaic. As I long time FCP user, I knew I had made the right choice in technology when I visited NAB a few years ago and arrived at the steps down to the post hall. On my right was a huge Apple stand PACKED with people, many of them younger professionals taking a look at the latest builds of FCP etc. To the left of that aisle was AVID, in a large but almost entirely empty stand. The staff manning it had a slighty bemused look every time I passed.

There may well have been a paradigm shift – in editing – and I think AVID may have been on the receiving end….

Ben

[Ben Holmes]

As a personal aside – it looks like my AVCHD camcorder will now actually work with FCP. Damn – now I have to actually cut my home movies….