[Benjamin Reichman]

Beautiful. I still prefer reading on an E Ink display (a Kindle, Sony Reader, etc.), but those devices can’t handle color, much less full-motion video.

Funny to think that only about four years ago, I was working for a major publisher and our flashy eBook demo was a Spanish textbook in which you could click on a handful of Spanish words to hear them pronounced. Cool, but nowhere near as ambitious and fluid as this!

[Benjamin Reichman]

Shane, thanks. What would you recommend for the subtitles? If I gave them media-managed projects with 2-second handles along with the .stl subtitle files, that should be enough, right? There are about 60 3-5 minute pieces, so we’ll just mail them a hard drive with all the material.

[Benjamin Reichman]

Tim, Josh,

Here’s a belated thanks for your fascinating comments. I had no idea!

I think it’s interesting that Ubillos created “First Cut” specifically to plow through many hours of footage, when a lot of people are voicing concerns about whether the filmstrip views will scale up to large quantities of media. It seems quite reassuring to hear that they were actually designed to do that.

I feel the way I did just after the initial demo: hopeful, even excited. Change is good, usually, and if it isn’t, I have a perfectly good copy of FCP 7 to see me through for quite a while if need be.

[Benjamin Reichman]

For those concerned that Apple is just repurposing iMovie ’11 as the new Final Cut, don’t you think it’s possible–likely, even–that the new interface was originally designed for Final Cut, and only rolled out to iMovie first as a test?

Bear with me: If I were designing a radically new user interface, I’d want to test it out on a small, consumer app to verify that it worked and resolve kinks in the basic functions before rolling it out to a large professional app.

But even if I’m wrong, and this wasn’t all planned, who cares? I think we get far too hung up on what “pro” means, when the real question is, “is it reliable, powerful, efficient, and compatible with my workflow and other tools?” If the answer is yes, it doesn’t matter if it has a cheesy-looking magic wand icon or a Share menu. 😉

[Benjamin Reichman]

[Craig Seeman] “Now the concerns/questions.
I really need to see the source/viewer window video at the same size as the Canvas. I don’t get how I can accurately mark an in and out otherwise. Can someone explain how this is done? I have to believe this must have been shown…”

Can anyone comment on this? How does iMovie handle that, and is it the same in FCP X? I’m generally pleased (enthusiastic, even) about most of what I’ve heard, but this seems like a bizarre sticking point. I don’t need a traditional Viewer/Canvas model, but I need two large views of my outgoing frame in the timeline and the ingoing frame that I’m considering using.

[Benjamin Reichman]

Here’s a much belated thanks. Our schedule changed and I never got back to this issue until this afternoon. The Compressor settings worked very well; far less moire/aliasing (it’s a detailed shot of fire escape steps with grills, etc.).

[Benjamin Reichman]

Oh, sorry! It’s the iPhone 4. I didn’t know the other iPhone models had SD cameras.

Here’s what FCP reports:

Dimensions: 1280 × 720
Framerate: 29.97
H.264, 1.3MB/sec

The main footage (99% of the project) is HDV 1080i60, 3.2MB/sec, shot with the Sony EX1R (and some of it with the EX3, but with the same settings).

[Benjamin Reichman]

Per, this is a known bug in Final Cut Pro 7 that is fixed in FCP 7.0.3: https://support.apple.com/kb/TS2521

Obviously, if you’re in the middle of a project, now is not the time to update FCP! But whenever you have some downtime and can handle the (small) amount of risk, try updating to FCP 7.0.3 and the bug should go away.

Ben

[Benjamin Reichman]

Mark, can you provide more detail about how you’re doing this in Final Cut Pro? What digital camera are you using, and what version of Final Cut Pro do you have? When you placed the video into your Timeline, did Final Cut Pro warn you that your sequence settings didn’t match your video settings? Also, are you seeing a red line along the top of the Timeline?

A red line means rendering is required, and you will probably see this, because you’re using formats that Final Cut Pro doesn’t handle smoothly. For example, you’ll get the best results by converting your .mp3 files into AIFF (48Khz, 16-bit) files. “MP4 video files from a digital camera” probably means you have H.264 files. When you right-click on a clip in Final Cut Pro and choose “Item Properties–>Format,” does it say H.264?

Anyway, if you can provide as much information as possible, I’m sure I–or some of the vastly more experienced people here–can help you out.

[Benjamin Reichman]

Good tips. I doubt they would be comfortable creating a new user account (with all the potential for permissions problems, forgotten passwords, etc.) But I’ll see what they think is best.