Boyd Mccollum
Forum Replies Created
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[S.E. Ball] “Any techniques you guys use to jump from dif sections of the
timeline?”Nesting? Seriously. There is no hard and fast rule that nesting is only for graphics/fx.
In the Apple Manual (FCP>Help>Final Cut Pro User Manual>II-418) there are listed 3 reasons to use nests (probably more):
1. You can edit a movie using multiple sequences; for example, you can create a sequence for each scene and place it on the master squence…
2. You can use nested sequences to reduce the amount of rendering when working with effects.
3. Control the rendering order of effects used in your project.
As you can see, nesting is a legitimate workflow. There are some con’s, check them out – and there are ways around them (ie, when you’re locked and need an EDL, you could open each nest, copy the sequence inside to a final master sequence. This would also work if you are exporting an OMF file for audio mixing).
The point is, nesting is not to be feared, and is a valuable tool. The doc I’m working on is incredibly graphics intensive – in a very simple way, it’s entirely subtitled using FCP’s outline text. If I laid the whole thing on one sequence, I’d be in rendering hell, even using unlimited RT (I have a Quad, but with the stock graphics card). As I worked toward my fine cut, I had each chapter on its own sequence. At the end, I nested each sequence and put it on a new timeline. From there, I could export easily to DVD, or watch the film uninterrupted, and when I needed to tweak a section, I’d just open up that nest and voila, the sequence was right there. Make whatever edits were needed, then I’d go back to my master timeline again.
Others may have other ideas, but this workflow worked for me and my specific project. It would be interesting to hear what other long form editors who edit using multiple sequences do. But if nesting works for your particular project, then that’s the way to go.
I can’t remember off hand (at 3 am) whether my chapter markers automatically updated when I lengthened or shortened a nested sequence, but there were only 9 chapters so it wasn’t that big a deal. Here’s a quick way to move your markers:
– Place the playhead where you want it (you can easily navigate to the beginning of a nest, or clip) and press Shift + `. This snaps the marker forward (it doesn’t work backwards) to the playhead.
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There are a number of ways to do it. Once the clip is in your timeline, double click the audio track (or tracks if it’s in stereo) to open it in the Viewer. The audio tab(s) should be active and says either Stereo (a1,a2), Mono, or Mono (a1) Mono (a2). Adjust the audio levels as desired.
Before you do this, you should set you the audio levels of your system and whatever external speakers you are using to monitor audio. If these levels are too low or too high, you won’t be able to accurately set the levels of your clips. After you have you monitor levels set, don’t change them.
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Sherwood,
a couple of thoughts that may help:
[S.E. Ball] “When nesting, when you open the nest and edit, then save and close,
later on playing back of the nest clips off ends of dialog phrases,
yet when you open the nest and play the elements in the timeline,
no clipping of dialog.”just finished up a doc where I nested the different chapters and ran into a similar problem – and a search of the cow helped me from having a melt down! It appears FCP (at least 5.0.4) needs you to force render the nest for the changes you make inside the nest to update. What I do, after I close the nest, is manually bring the opacity of the nest to 0 then move it back to 100%. You should see redlines come up on the render status bar. Select the nest and Cmd+R to render the nest. The edits you made are now updated.
As for some of your other problems, have you tried trashing your pref files? You can do a search and find where you can download FCP Rescue to help with that.
Also, you might have a corrupt render file somewhere. You could trash all your render files and rerender everything to see if this helps. (Don’t forget your audio render files as well). While you’re at it, you might want to trash all your cache files (thumbnail and waveform).
It’s also possible that you have a corrupt project file. Have you been doing “save as” on your project file as you’ve been going along? If so, try and open an earlier version and see if you have the same issues, or open up one of your Autosave files (though that may not help depending how long this has been going on.)
A couple of other things to look at – how big is your project file, what format are you exporting from, do you have mixed formats on your timeline, how much disk space you have, etc. Did the problem start once you upgraded? And did you upgrade from 4.5HD to 5.1 or 5.0 to 5.1? Eventually the problem will probably turn out to be something relatively minor, i.e, some corrupt file or incompatibility, etc. – FCP itself is pretty solid.
As an aside, I’m not sure what your workflow is, but from rough cut on, I usually create dvds along the way (more so as I near the end) – I like to get a feel for how my film is going to play on a large screen tv (as the audience will probably see it) and it helps me polish the film. It also lets me know if I’m running into crazy issues like you’ve been having. I hope you get it worked out.
Boyd
“Go slow to go fast” -
You could take a look at dvMatte Blast from DVGARAGE. It works with Motion. There’s a fully functional demo you can try, plus a couple of video’s on how it works. Follow the “Samples” link on the page.
https://www.dvgarage.com/prod/prod.php?prod=dvmatteb
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Before you spend $30 on the pro version, you might want to just try Flip4Mac’s free Windows Media
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[Kevin Monahan] “it might be wise to gain skills that other editors do NOT have”
Kevin, what skills would you recommend? (I would imagine actually being able to tell a story would be one 🙂
Thanks,
Boyd
“Go slow to go fast” -
You can substitute an ordinary TV, but it needs to be calibrated correctly. Do a google search on the web and you’ll find many sites that talk about doing this. Here’s a couple I got from the search “calibrating+ntsc+monitor+TV+blue” (just from the first couple of links, no endorsement intended). You will need a blue filter to place over your TV to do all the calibrating required:
https://www.videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm
https://myweb.accessus.net/~090/how2adj.html
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Check out your camera (and it’s user guide – you can probably google search to find it online if you don’t have it handy) to make sure the settings are correct for connecting to your computer.
You may also want to leave the camera hooked up to your computer, and do a restart. FCP or your computer may not be recognizing the camera.
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The resources mentioned above are excellent, but don’t discount the books. The Apple Pro series books are not just about reading, but with the media provided and the lessons, step you through the applications in a very thorough and hands on way.
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Cars and Monsters Inc both had great end credits.
I’m not sure how I feel about it, but PBS could follow the recent trend that seems to be happening with lots of docs I’m seeing on Discovery Channel and the like – run the credits at the bottom while finishing the closing segment. Talk about maximazing air time! Getting an extra minute or so to tell your story – I’m not sure if that ‘s a good thing or if it leads to looser storytelling – or it’s being done to keep folks from switching channels. Probably the latter.