[Ben Insler]

Shane, I’m jealous if you have 6 already. I can’t wait.

But Peace Frog, I think your problem (as Shane touched on) is that you have two formats, 960 and 1280, and current FCP timelines only natively play one format. From the fact that your multiclips are working, it sounds like your timeline is set up for 960×720 (which is more of a HDV resoution which uses much more interpolation and anamorphic stretch than DVCPRO HD to get to a 16×9 aspect ratio). This will not play 1280×720 DVCPRO HD natively, but worse, this will cause your delivery to output in 960×720. If you’re deliering in HD, you don’t want to be dropping the DVCPRO HD footage resolution, and this is efectvely what you will be doing by using DVCPRO HD in a 960 timeline, as the 1280 footage will be scaled and distorted (although it will still “appear” the same) to fit in the 960 space. You should convert all your footage to 1280×720 DVCPRO HD and set your timeline for this – then your multiclips will not need to be rendered, and all your footage will be playing back natively at the BEST possible quality upon delivery.

Don’t sweat too much. If you don’t know about it already, you can use batch export to convert these clips – you do not have to do them one by one. Just do a test with one and make sure they stretch and display correctly as you up-convert from 960 to 1280. Your computer will have to work for a while to convert everything, but you can just click start and then go see Grindhouse twice, and when you come back you’ll be good to go… OK, it might take a while longer, but still. You may even be able to reconnect your old logs in your browser to your newly converted footage (no guarantees, tho). But I think you’ll still have to remake your multiclips.

If you absolutely need to keep working with mixed formats, make sure Unlimited RT is on and set to dynamic frame rate and quality. Your DVCRO HD footage should play back OK with these settngs in a 960 timeline (athough playback may stall on your external monitor).

Anyway,, hope that helps.

Ben

[Ben Insler]

[Rennie] “I just wonder when Apple will throw Shake into the mix! (they already cut the price of it by 800%!)”

I believe Apple is discontinuing Shake and building a new compositing powerhouse to take its place. Let’s hope the new package stays at $500.

[Ben Insler]

put a tan color matte on a video track below the footage that you’re adding the widescreen matte to. The matte cuts away footage outside the letterbox area, thus leaving a transparent area – it does not make it black, it just looks black because northing’s behind your footage.

-Ben

[Ben Insler]

for what you’re getting (even if you were only getting FCP for $1299), it’s a great deal. Think about it as though Final Cut costs $1299 and you’re getting the other stuff free. You’ll probably end up using it more than you expect once you have it.

-Ben

[Ben Insler]

P.

I’ve had this same problem time and time again, and of course it’s always during output so it’s always at the time crunch, and I’ve never had the time to dive in to FCP and figure out what exactly is going on.

I think it has something to do with nesting sequences, because I find that I never have this problem when nests in my sequence are not present, and I suspect that the deeper your nests go, the more trouble you’ll have. Nonetheless, this shouldn’t be a problem, because if a sequence is rendered, FCP should just be referencing the render files (not the media in the timeline), and thus shouldn’t need to render. Furthermore, it’s ridiculous the way FCP is designed to do this pre-output render, because it renders to a temp file which it DOES NOT maintain connections to after output… so if you have to output twice, you’ll have to do this pre-output render twice… but enough of me ranting about this never-fixed issue.

I’ve frequently used the same workaround you came up with – it’s really the only way around it unless someone knows how to get around the render issue in general. However, if your whole sequence is rendered, try outputting a QuickTime reference movie (by unchecking the “Make Self Contained” box in the export window. If you’re not familiar with this, it’s basically a very simple timeline, wrapped up in a QuickTime movie, that actually plays back other media on your HDD (just like a FCP timeline). The pros – it’s MUCH faster to export, because it’s only writing media reference for playback, not rewriting an hour of media itself. And for all intensive purposes, your system and all apps see it as a QT movie. The cons – if you move or delete the media (your render files in this case), your QT reference movie won’t be able to play. You cannot burn the reference movie to disc or upload it to an FTP – it needs all the media it’s referencing. That said, as long as you pay attention to all that, such a movie will work fine for your workaround.

Good Luck,

Ben

[Ben Insler]

If you’re exporting using the exact same settings, you’re probably recompressing the HDV using HDV compression (i.e. a photocopy of a photocopy). Export for titling using quicktime conversion with the animation codec. See if that fixes your problems?

Keep in mind that you’re probably not shooting with a square pixels, so when you do this your image will appear squeezed. You should let your title designer know what resolution your HDV camera shoots at so he/she can correct for this distortion when designing your titles.

Hope that helps,

Ben

[Ben Insler]

what resolution/settings are you exporting with?

[Ben Insler]

Our assistant editor just had the EXACT same issue yesterday, but he only had 5 clips to reconnect, so he came up with the exact same workaround you did. No solution yet. Could this be a bug? He said it was clip dependent, and that when reconnecting one at a time some clip names would show in the reconnect window and some wouldn’t.

If you find an answer, please post it here. I’d love to know how to fix it.

Best,

Ben

[Ben Insler]

What are the problems with FCP and Canon? I’ve never experienced any.

-Ben

[Ben Insler]

Arnie,

Thanks for the response, and I totally agree about the whole square pixel approach you mentioned. Problem is we have low-res (DV Anamorphic) and high-res versions of the graphics, so when we media manage and reconnect from Final Cut Pro, non-native format graphics will become stretched and we’re trying to expedite the workflow… but I do agree with you.

The DVCPRO footage is upresed from 720 to 1080, but that doesn’t matter because the footage it not in the graphics. The graphics are just composited on top in Final Cut Pro, and we’re editing using DVCPRO HD 1080i60.

Scaling/Distort is all off or set normally on the graphic clips.

I’ve zoomed in to the fringes of my frame in motion, and there is definitely a 1-pixel rim running around the entirety of each graphic that is transparent, or significantly more so than it should be. Checking the source graphics, this is not the case with the clips in FCP.

Thanks again,

Ben