[Bon Sawyer]

Thank you all for the input! Much appreciated.

Here are a couple of other relevant topics I’ve found, in case anyone else is interested:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/3870#3870
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/916067#916067

We’ve decided to purchase some FCS3 upgrades, as it seems they’ll be useful to us under any of the upgrade (or migration) scenarios we are likely to eventually take (for reasons other than codec compatibility).

Still, it’s good to know that FCPX, Motion etc provide options for utilising the codecs even without the older FCS versions installed.

[Bon Sawyer]

Hi Kim,

We receive a lot of XDCAM footage as .MP4 files. This software has been useful, enabling us to open the files in multiple programs (including FCP):

https://www.calibratedsoftware.com/MP4EXImport_Mac.asp

Not sure if it will be applicable to your situation, but it might be worth trying a demo if the Sony software doesn’t work (or is a pain to use).

[Bon Sawyer]

Marvin,

Thanks for your input. Good points that you’ve raised.

I’m trying to decide whether to upgrade our FCP6 licences to v7 while it’s still (relatively) easy to do so. v6 is fine for our current needs, but we won’t be using our current hardware/OS forever, and I worry that not having v7 licences will bite us if/when we eventually upgrade (particularly given Lion’s incompatibility with v6).

On the other hand, a hardware upgrade would also make switching to Premiere Pro an attractive option. If we end up doing that, perhaps there’s little reason for us to invest in v7 licences now, if the combination of FCPX + Premiere Pro will suffice for opening our old FCP6/ProRes projects (in Premiere).

What are people’s thoughts on this?

One more question: do FCPX and/or Premiere Pro work okay with the Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC)? We have a fair bit of transcoded footage in that format, too.

[Bon Sawyer]

Hi. Are you still looking for this? I have it, and could e-mail it to you.

[Bon Sawyer]

Is there another shortcut to select the clip (under the timeline cursor) prior to marking it, without having to use the mouse?

Cheers,

Bon

[Bon Sawyer]

Tim- I am referring to DV clips, yes. It seems like creating a new project, as you have described, is the only way to do it. A shame, as FCP’s ability to easily switch back and forth within one project was/is very convenient.

Steve- how is Step 3 possible? The option to change Project Settings from one format to another seems to be always greyed out.

Thanks for the responses.

-Bon

[Bon Sawyer]

David- we could still do that (burn the timecode into the image) by enabling the XL2’s OSD (which includes timecode) during playback. Presumably, this would only work over S-Video (not iLink), but that would probably suffice for what we’re doing. What format are you dubbing to?

Peter- Thanks for the info. I’ve also been downloading various instruction manuals, but hadn’t yet looked at the Toshiba brand. I did confirm that one Sony model available here (Australia) can do it, but it’s out of our price range. There may well be several models that have this feature, but there’s very little info about it to be found on Google.

Cheers,

-Bon

[Bon Sawyer]

Thanks for the info. Yeah, I’ve also observed the green line at the bottom. I tried a couple of average VHS tapes, on a fairly new (low-end) deck.

Our now 10-year-old Media100qx system never flinched during VHS capture, including fairly poor quality tapes captured from an old, low-end deck. This has been my one main criticism of the IO from the beginning. It appears that the NTSC folks were made happy by the last driver release- let’s hope the next one does the same for PAL!

-Bon

[Bon Sawyer]

We celebrate Father’s Day in September over here (Australia). 🙂

I assumed it was the same everywhere… where are you guys located? The U.S.?

-Bon

[Bon Sawyer]

Vince,

Thanks for the info. I think we’ll look into grabbing a couple of cards.

-Bon