[Ben Scott]

point 1

final cut renders in floating point if you change the sequence render settings to high quality

also remember to set motion scaling to best

point 2

maybe use subclips in separate bins for each editor, this may ease the pain. Also definitely use the create master clip function. DONT ever change the original clip names on your hard drive. make sure both of you are working with the same final cut pro version and quicktime and dont update mid edit

point 3

smoothcam can be improved with tricky footage by rendering out the smoothcam clip to new exported file, reimporting and then re-analysing a second time. also if you want more control read the additional documentation manual for motion which discusses trackers and this will give you very detailed information on better tracking techniques. also make sure you are only anaylsing the part of the clip you have edited, so could be good to export out and reimport clips before doing smoothcam.

[Ben Scott]

do what brain says

“Try duplicating the video layer and lay it on the track on top of itself. Apply a Gaussian blur to the top track and drop the opacity. Try a couple of different blend modes.”

only add in a chroma keyer on that top channel and key out the tonal range or skin chroma with quite a bit of softening

I would say the blend mode to use is soft light or screen with a lower opacity

these commercial plugins are doing exactly the same thing

[Ben Scott]

conduit sounds like a fantastic plugin that give you real time keys plus they have a lot of great video tutorials on how to use it

it is giving you nodal compositing in motion

if you want free i have tried the primatte keyer in motion, take down the noise spill supressor and other paramter and then refine matte desity a tiny bit

then use a levels command and set to alpha and get contrasty alpha channel

then try a blur on the alpha channel if needed

then use a colour corrector to despill

if you have crap footage and it is dv then you need to be pretty brutal to the edge

if it is just bad contrast then try multiple keyers and use the mask tool in motion (its easy to keyframe with the record button)

also make sure you have progressive footage if you need to use compressor to get you there

[Ben Scott]

heres hoping I get projects in final cut 6 from now on (it does seem a little)

and if not then I could access the other peoples computers with FCP 5, unless it is a laptop I think this is unlikely and I am not going to torture myself to get a separate install of FCP 5 just for this job

and yes I will use XML in future and my other top tip is to create a Quicktime reference movie with reference timecode generators so that any speed changes that need to be recreated can be done a lot more quickly. you just place the qt on a track on top, turn it off and open into viewer to see if frames match up.

[Ben Scott]

didnt try the xml

dont have fcp5 and why should i

I am updating a project from fcp 5 to 6 by opening it, this is a joke and has never happened in earlier versions for just opening files

addmitedly the guy i took file from had a bit of a mess but htis aint normal on earlier versions from say 3 to 4 or 4 to 5

[Ben Scott]

didnt try it as I cleverly do what apple says and only have the version 6 installed on my machine

also I have heard horror stories of multiclips and sublcips losing synch between opening version 5 and 6 projects so this is not a magic fix from apple for the media manager

it still doesnt work well

[Ben Scott]

got to say I cant agree more with this post

I have just spent around 6 or 7 hours trying to coax a project that was opened from fcp 5.14 to 6.02 into something that resembled the original. this is just opening the project into a new version not even media management

someone else had exactly the same problem with this project a few months ago

had loads of speed change problems

admittedly the guy who edited had a very strange way of doing variable speed changes and his project file was over 200mb (i just copied the sequence into a new project and then asking to make master clips from tools menu)

I have to say I love final cut whenever I have used other systems they seem slow and clunky in comparison and have a really bad logic behind their interfaces, however I think it is amazing that what is considered a professional product can be this bad at media managing speed changes. the people at apple are really out of order not fixing this by version 6 of the software and it is something I have to embarrassingly explain to people when I try to finish their edits for them.

lets hope apple is listening, is working hard on their final cut server and moves some of its magic over to a final cut pro 6 update in the new year to deal with this.

[Ben Scott]

heres a how to on match frame
https://cowcast.creativecow.net/final_cut_pro/episodes/podcast11_match_frame_auto_select.m4v
(mine goes in more detail about how to match from which track and how to bring back in with synch as far as I remember)

just do the match source footage not a match frame although you could get some problems with things like merged clips this way

once you have clip in viewer just change the speed of the clip using modify menu before overwriting back in

alternative is make subclips and then modify the speed of them as much as you like (as long as they dont get used elsewhere in the timeline)

[Ben Scott]

as long as movie is not longer than size of disk it will not recompress if set to dvd video and you drag in m2v and ac3 files

if using mpg1 it will recompress, dvd studio is the only answer, it will make dvd with mpg1 files

try mpg first and then it asks what the sound is, can help having same name

remember to make no menu from options

[Ben Scott]

if you have toast 6 or above then just drag the mpg file in and it will ask if the ac3 is the sound

turn off menu

burn

easy

you should really be able to author in dvd studio it is very easy to do what you want, import 2 files, drag to timeline, set the disk startup to the track1, remove menu, burn

all this stuff about reauthoring is total rubbish unless you need to reedit the footage

use streamclip if you need to reedit

bitvice isnt suitable for what you need, you already have the compressed files