[Ben Insler]

Martian,

There are a number of field interpolation methods (depending on what system you’re using), but remember that de-interlacing is not simply shifting a field over by a few pixels. One field was actually recorded 1/2 a frame later than the other, so the pixels/lines of one of the fields actually has to be recreated from each frame (or set of fields). Some methods are better than others, but unfortunately you will never end up with an image quality equivalent to the same image shot on a progressive setting.

Best,

Ben

[Ben Insler]

Clips paste into your auto selected tracks, which you can turn on and off by unchecking the little intersecting rectangles found just to the right of the lock icon for each track (on is dark gray, off is light gray). Video and audio will both paste into the lowest numbered auto-selected video tracks. If all auto selects are on or off for video/audio, your clip will paste into the track you copied it from.

Best,

Ben

[Ben Insler]

…to answer your existence question, though, those rigs do exist. They have a tracker in hockey pucks so that the goal cameras can follow along without missing a frame. Large theater performances sometimes use the same technology with a tracker worn by an actor to perfectly control their follow spots. I think the important thing to notice though is that in these applications precision is key. I don’t know if anyone could flawlessly follow a hockey puck that instantly starts moving at 80 miles an hour across a rink even once, much less every time it’s shot. In theater, this type of rig can ensure precise lighting queues 2 times a day, 4 days a week, for years. I’m not sure that you need this type of precision, especially given the cost, as Jerry noted, unless your application is much more extreme than your example.

Best,

Ben

[Ben Insler]

Hi,

We’ve encountered a lot of that where I work. We don’t use XSAN, but we work with a number of removable FireWire 800 drives and frequently use our network to access drives attached to other computers. Not sure why this problem happens, but we’ve come to the conclusion here that is has to do with changing the configuration of drives attached to your system. Frequently with us for example, if I’m on system A and someone uses system B to connect to A, shutting down system B without ejecting A’s drives from B first will cause this problem. We’ve also experienced problems while adding and removing FireWire drives with FCP open – drives that FCP is not referencing. If you save the file to the desktop and copy it to your desired location (like you’ve been doing), nothing appears to be lost. It’s just kind of a pain. Sounds like a bug to me – something with the way FCP updates its profile of your system as you’re working.

Anyway, no answers, but you’re not alone.

Best,

Ben

[Ben Insler]

The other thing you could do is nest the sequences for the opnener and closer in your show sequences, but I’d still recommend outputting a final version to ensure consistency and peace of mind.

-Ben

[Ben Insler]

Greg,

Are the open and close already in a final delivery format (be it Tape, Self Contained QT movie, etc), or are they still edited sequences in FCP. If they’re finalized and exported, I’d say keep them stored on your HDD in a separate project and just pull them in from that project when you need them (this way you don’t have to go hunting around on your HDD every time – you just drag from this container project into the current one you’re working on).

If they’re still edited sequences without a final output, I’d say output them to a Self Contained QT movie and then make a container project referencing the Self Contained final output movies. This way you’re always using the final output movie in your new edits. If the opener and closer are going to be exactly the same in every show, there’s no need to be pulling a sequence of edits back and forth every time. It’s tedious, more stressful, and allows for a much greater chance for error by not grabbing all the clips or changing something accidentally. With the Self Contained QT, once it’s finalized, it’s uneditable. Plus, it’s easier for FCP to deal with one single clip than 70 edited together… if you feel the need for extra convincing. If you need additional elements like transitions going to and from the opener/closer or credits, build those into the container project as well so that you have them on hand.

Hope that helps,

Ben

[Ben Insler]

Enge,

You might be thinking of a few different operations lumped into one. Here’s what I can think of.

Using a REPLACE edit overwrites and entire clip in the timeline with footage from the viewer. This is a playhead-playhead edit, and the clip to be overwritten in the timeline is determined by the playhead position and track sourc-destination patches. Basically (all in one step), this edit looks down the playhead to the current destination tracks and deletes the clip it finds. It then looks at the viewer and places the frame of video that is in the viewer (at the playhead position, not the in point) into the now empty destination track in the timeline at the timeline playhead position. It then trims out the In and Out points of that single frame so that the hole left by the deleted clip is filled.

Using MARK TO MARKERS (control+A) places an IN point at the closest marker to the left of the playhead, and an OUT point at the closest marker to the right of the playheaad. So place the playhead between markers, press control+A, set an IN point in your viewer, and do an overwrite edit, which will be IN-IN (not playhead to playhead). FCP will automatically fill the marked region in the timeline with the new clip. Remember you can do this my marking and OUT point in the viewer too and backtiming the edit.

I’d say, regardless of whether you’ve placed a lot of beat markers or made a lot of edits on beat that you now want to replace footage between, the second option is best. The first is better if you know that you want part of a clip in the timeline, but don’t care how it edits in or out. But if want a specific in or out point, you can’t get that with the replace edit faster than you can with three point editing.

That’s all I can think of. If there is a hot key that performs and IN-IN replace edit and you figure out what it is, I’d love to know.

Best,

Ben

[Ben Insler]

Just a note: if you have to render video (regardless of whether or not FCP, or any NLE for that matter, can play back the footage with an RT preview) and you choose not to, you always run the risk of losing quality and dropping frames. This is the whole reason the clips need to be rendered. FCP will automatically render things that need to be rendered to ETT at full quality (unless you change this under the RT settings).

In Final Cut Pro there are render notification bars at the top of the timeline just above the timecode ruler. The top line is for video, the bottom is for audio. If thee bars are any color other than gray (native playback), purple (referencing full quality render files), or diim green (full RT playback), then rendering is necessary to ensure full quality, full frame rate playback. Bright Green indicates preview quality, but this is in no way full quality even though you see video playing back in your canvas.

If you want to ETT with an unrendered sequence and be notified of dropped frames, go to your FCP user prefrences and make sure that ‘Report dropped frames during playback’ and ‘Abort ETT/PTV on dropped frames are checked.’ The first option will let you know while you’re editing/playing back a sequence if drop frames occur (so you’ll know you need to render that section). The second does exactly what it says – stops those operations if dropped frames occur while those operations are in session. If you don’t want to be notified, turn those options off. Turning off the second will allow ETT/PTV to continue with dropped frames, possibly causing stutter and sync issues that will not necessarily resolve themselves once playback returns to a less processor intensive section of your sequence. Keep in mind though that even if you don’t get dropped frames, you may still only be recording preview quality footage, recorded at the full frame rate – you will not get a warning for this.

Best,

Ben

[Ben Insler]

Good thinking Nick. That’s faster.

[Ben Insler]

Did you try trashing prefrences? That’s usually the first step to consider when things aren’t working in FCP. Remove these four files:

Home\Library\Preferences\Final Cut Pro User Data\Final Cut Pro 5.0 Prefs
Home\Library\Preferences\Final Cut Pro User Data\Final Cut Pro Obj Cache
Home\Library\Preferences\Final Cut Pro User Data\Final Cut Pro Prof Cache
Home\Library\Preferences\com.apple.FinalCutPro.plist

FCP will recreate new versions of these files if they are not present. But remember, you loose your user prefrences, your favorits, and may even lose your custom device control settings. All settings appear as though this is the first time you ever started up FCP. BUT that’s a good thing because, presumably, FCP worked the first time you ran it… so hopefully your preference files just got a little corrupt… maybe as a result of removing this device early or something…

If you’re worried, copy these files to a folder on the desktop rather than the trash. If the creation of new preference files doesn’t solve your problem, overwrite the new files with the old ones, and you’ll be right where you left off like nothing ever happened.

Good Luck,

Ben