[Ben Insler]

You can take a DF clip, put it in a NDF sequence, and then export. Or you can take the clip into cinema tools and alter its Timecode. Just two ways that immediately popped into my head.

-Ben

[Ben Insler]

Really depends on what you’re editing – How much detail is reqeuired in your footage. I’d capture at DV25 Anamorphic (so that you preserve your 16×9 aspect). 60 hours of footage will take up just over 800 Gigs, but using DV will preserve a lot of the detail. I’ve been doing some offline work in OfflineRT HD (Photo JPEG), but you really lose a lot of the detail. If that’s important and you don’t want to be capturing your final cut with handles and tweaking the edit, I’d say go with DV.

-Ben

[Ben Insler]

I guess I’m just particular about the way my browser is orgainzed. You can still both work at the same time and then merge the projects, but then if you select a clip in the timeline and hit shift+F, you will not be able to see the master clip in the browser from the sequences that your assistant sent you (or more appropriately, those master cilps will end up in that misc. master clip folder in the browser). You can still match frame, open source footage, etc. You’ll just end up with some duplicates in your browser. Regardless of how you did this in FCP though (even if you and your assistant were both using the same DVCPRO HD footage) you’d be pulling sequences and footage from one project to another, and that always results in master-affiliate disconnection, and FCP cannot just look through the browser and reconnect them. To be honest, this is not a necessary thing. I just like to know that everything in my sequences is organized the way I like it in my browser.

[Ben Insler]

You’re looking at about a minimum of a $6,000 gift with the camcorder.

MacBook Pro 15″ 2.16 GHz Intel Core2Duo – might want to up it to more than 1 Gig of RAM though.
Final Cut Studio

Camcorder you’ll have to do research on.

-Ben

[Ben Insler]

Under Sequence Settings, do you have number of outputs set to 4?

Under “Final Cut Pro::Audio/Video Settings” menu, go to ‘Device Control Presets.’ The one with the check mark next to it is the one you’re currently using. In the Summary to the right, is “Audio Device Control mapping” set to 4? If it’s not, select that preset, then hit the edit button and change it, then click ok.

If all these are right, did you set your outputs in your timeline? Right clicking in the empty source area of the source/destination patch for ecah track will reveal an “Audio Outputs” field that lets you set the destination output track for each audio track in the timeline (you may have to move the little ‘v1’ ‘a1’ ‘a2’ patches, as you can’t get the appropraite right-click menu when they’re in the way.

-Ben

[Ben Insler]

[cls105] “I was wondering if i can transcode the media to dv (which media manager says i can) and give all the footage to an assistant so that can assemble some segments. Then when he is finished, can i get his project file and relink it to the dvcpro hd media?”

Media Manager does this. I’ve been doing this constantly with a project – Working on it in DVCPRO HD at work and in OfflineRT HD(Photo jpeg) at home. One thing to be wary about. You can’t just transcode your footage and have it link up to both projects – your timelines are looking for DVCPRO HD, but your assistant’s footage will be DV. The scale and format of the image will be incorrect for your assistant (in this case, he/she will be viewing a tiny DV center cut of the overall HD image… and the DV footage won’t play back natively). To fix this:

1. First, make sure that only the project you want to transcode is open. If you’re planning on doing may project, each containing similar as well as different media, this may get very confusing.
2. Choose your Browser window and press Command+A to select all. This will prepare all media in your project to be transcoded through the media manager.
3. Media manage the project with the settings for your assistant using the Recompress option (don’t include render files, by the way). This will convert all media (any graphics… anything) to the setting you choose in “Recompress media using:” as well as alter all sequences settings to correspond to this format.
4. Check “Include Master clips outside of selection” to make sure everything in the project gets converted.
5. Uncheck “Delete unused media from duplicated items.”
6. Base media file names on “existing file names”
7. Check “Duplicate selected items and place into a new porject.”
8. Check “Include nonactive mulitclip angles” if you’re using or planning on using multiclips.
9. Set a Media Destination. This is where your new project for your assistant will be saved, along with a media folder with all your transcoded media.

When this process is done, the Browser window of the newly created project should look exactly the same as the old one, except there may be one extra folder called Master Clips. This folder contains master clip reference of any media that was placed in the timeline that did not have a master clip affiliate in the browser before the media management process, as well as text and other video generators. You can delete this folder, and all the video generator references will clutter up your Browser after you do this process a few times (uaually what I do is just delete all the video generator references, and leave offline clips just to have the master clip reference). Now you can reconnect all the media in the project to the transcoded DV media, and your assistant is good to go. If you knew all this already, then my apologies for making you read all this.

The most important step is on the way back from your assistant to you. Open your assistant’s altered project (either on his/her machine or yours) and DO NOT reconnect any media if it is offline. Select All in the Browser window again, and open the media manager. This time, use the “Creat Offline” setting. The “Recompress sequences” setting now becomes “Set Sequences to:” because we’re just updating the sequence settings, not recompressing media. Set this to the format of your original footage. The follow steps 4-8 above, click OK. Again, no media destination because no media is being converted/created. Once you click OK, you will be asked where to save the project. Save it, and it will open in FCP when finished. Now you can reconnect this project to your DVCPRO HD footage.

This allows for both you and your assistant to have native and full frame playback on both ends with two different types of media. By recompressing it in this way, all media is preserved (it is only converted, but all timecodes, in/outs, etc are all the same), and thus all edits are preserved as the projects pass back and forth from DV to DVCPRO HD. You must go through the second Media Management process for your projects any time you are sending your project to your assistant, or anytime he/she is sending one to you. One more thing – try not to both be working on the project at the same time. If you’re working, your assistant shouldn’t be, and vice versa. Attempting to merge the two projects will result in many clips loosing their affiliation to their original master clips, which will cause many many many files to be placed in the misc. Master Clips folder that is crated by the media manager. You can do it if you have to, but your project/Browser may become extremely disorganized.

Hope that helps,

Ben

[Ben Insler]

[Wayne Carey] “Here’s a question for everyone that owns a G5 and a Mac Pro. Why is it that when a project is edited on a G5, the native video plays in real time and shows a green line at the top of my sequence, but on the Mac Pro, the timeline tells me that the video needs to be rendered but will play in realtime and gives me an orange line?”

Are you using the same version of FCP on both systems, and what are the specs of each system? This sounds like it has something to do with differences in each system’s profile (for example, does your G5 have 8 Gigs of RAM and your Mac Pro only have 2 or 3?). The orange line means that you have UnlimitedRT on, and that FCP will try to play it back to the best of its ability (if UnlimitedRT was off, this line would be red and you’d see “UNRENDERED” in your canvas when you were playing these sections of the timeline). However, it’s important to note that your footate is not playing back natively on your G5 either. The green line indicates that FCP can play the indicated section of the timeline with preview quality, but this is in no way native/Full quality playback, and should still be rendered. If you go to ‘Sequence::Render Selection’ you can see all the colors and what they represent.

Also note (just in case I read the post wrong), if there’s an orange line over your whole timeline, and you’re expecting your footage to play back natively, your sequence settings may be incorrect.

[Wayne Carey] “To export a program to disc, I have to render the entire timeline on a Mac Pro, but not on a G5.”

I assume you mean exporting a movie from FCP? Can you explain this a little more? Are you getting an error, or a prompt to render? FCP should never render before an export. If it needs to render, it does it as part of the export process, when it hits that section of your timeline.

-Ben

[Ben Insler]

Why is using the camera as a deck out of the question? You shouldn’t rule that out, if the camera has an SD output that downconverts HDV-SD on the fly. You’re not hurting the camera at all by using it as a firewire video device – it’ll just sit there on your desktop, receive a firewire signal, and send its downconverted video signal to your monitor.

It sounds to me like the big issue is actually that you’re on a MacBook Pro, so you can’t put in any 3rd party capture/output cards. Thus, you have to go out to some FireWire HD/HDV deck, the same way you would if you were trying to preview an SD or DV project from your MacBook Pro on an external SD monitor. Then, you’ll need to run a downconvert (be it built in to the attached deck/camera or with separate hardware connected in line between your video device and monitor) to crop or scale your image to play back on an SD monitor. FCP cannot do this downconvert on the fly as it plays, as the downconvert is too computationally intensive to play in real time (thus, the required rendering of an SD sequence). I have a MacBook Pro too, and have been battling with this problem too. I wish BlackMagic or Kona would come out with an SDI or Component output card for the MacBook Pro expansion slot… but since we’re talking a laptop here, that may forever exist in the realm of wishful thinking, and I don’t know that they’d be able to get a donconverter in there anyway.

All the best,

Ben

[Ben Insler]

Guess what, I’ve never touched an AVID, but I’m sure it works great. So does Final Cut. Some people like Premiere (not sure why, but they do – maybe I am to Premiere what AVID editors are to FCP). Nonetheless, they all have positives and negatives, but I’m sure you even have to troubleshoot on AVID. BUT, this is a help forum, so let’s try that for a change, eh?

Did you try trashing your prefrences? Sounds like FCP is running into a corrupt media connection. Did you try re-importing the media. Does the funky stuff still happen?

Best,

Ben

[Ben Insler]

Sounds like your video output settings (view::video playback) is set to DV, not HDV. As a result, FVP is trying to run a real-time downconvert from HDV to SD, which it can’t do, so it’s freezing on your frame.

-Ben