[Bret Williams]

Apple was pretty much no help. They can’t get a new stock quad to us by tomorrow morning. However I could call MacMall until 11pm tonight, and could have one at our door by 9am tomorrow. Funny how they’re in a hurry when you’re buying, eh?

[Bret Williams]

Oh, we called apple care. Don’t get us started. When they read back the serial number as “z as in goat” we just about hung up. 🙂

Yeah, all they could say was unplug it and plug it back in. We’re gonna try the genius bar. Just thought we’d see if anyone had had the same issue. Maybe reset the SMC or something.

[Bret Williams]

Well, interestingly enough, the new MacPro is now nearly DOA. After updating all the OS, and whilst installing FCP, we inserted a disk and it shut off about the instant the CD went into the drive.

Anyone have anything like this? On the old G4s we’d probably reset the PMU or something, but don’t want to mess with anything on the new Intel.

The only thing going on is a very slight chirp noise coming from the power supply. Otherwise, it seems to be as dead as I’ve ever seen a mac.

Any ideas?

[Bret Williams]

No array. Just a 500gb external to swap between machines. Seems like the CalDigit or LaCie is a good way to go. Whaever they have at MicroCenter as the computer has arrived and we’ve got to start digitizing.

[Bret Williams]

Are you copying the files to the PC hard drive and then opening them within a video editing program? They’re not going to play off the DVD itself, and I wouldn’t expect them to playback in Quicktime perfectly either.

[Bret Williams]

That would make absolutely no difference. Master it to DVCam. Have a facility dub from DVCam to digibeta. That’s it. Keep it sdi or component.

[Bret Williams]

I used to have these problems with my old XL1 when the head was misaligned. The TC info was written on the edge of the tape, or any little problem with TC was visible to FCP but often not to me. I think sometimes the gear can actually fill in TC problems when you’re going frame by frame on the tape possibly because it’s passing over the heads more slowly or something. But loading in real time the data just doesn’t get across.

The thing with my XL1 was that as the heads were misaligned, I could load directly off the camera just fine, because those heads were aligned for my tape, but if I put the tape in my DSR-11 it had problems.

You may need to copy the tape to another machine. Make sure you don’t clone the TC but get new TC.

[Bret Williams]

I just finished a project. Once I figured out 5.1.2’s import system it was a breeze. We used DV format and loaded in about 100gigs. Took a couple hours for the import. Once it was in, we discovered that the default for import was lose the pulldown on the 24p footage, making it native 24p, not 29.97. Considering we had already organized our bins and such, AND edited one short sequence, it was nice that I was able to make all the clips in the bins “offline” (and deleting them) and then re-dig them and it all linked back up automatically. The sequence no longer needed to be rendered. So, make sure the check box for pulldown is the way you want it in the import prefs for p2. Don’t remove pulldown if you need it to be 29.97 and you’ll save yourself another import session.

The import dialog isn’t really an import dialog. It actually opens a whole log and capture type interface. It took me a few minutes to get the idea. On the upper left quadrant, you mount your “tapes” which are actualy the folders from the P2 cards. These folders should actually be on a separate hard drive, as others have mentioned. (Normally you shoot with a couple cards, swapping them out when they’re full to copy one to a drive while you shoot on the other.)
Once a folder of clips is mounted, you can double click on them and “log” them like a tape. Set mark in/out, make comments, enter descriptions, etc. Once logged they go into the lower left quadrant which is what is going to get imported (copied) to your regular media drive(s). Don’t copy them back to the same hard drive. Remember, you don’t have any tapes. The hard drive with your original P2 data IS your tape. If it has everything and dies, well, you’re up the creek then. Best to make a copy of that drive as well. P2 starts to look like it’s not all it’s cracked up to be? Read on.

Do not for any reason change the name of the P2 clips. If you must change the name in some way, leave the original P2 alphanumeric name and add something after it. Why? Because you don’t have any tapes. All the TC info in the world won’t help you relink a clip if you don’t have a tape. Instead, you have a hard drive of clips. How to find the right clip with the right tc to relink to? You’d have to open every clip up and look at the TC yourself. In P2 the alphanumeric name given to the clips IS your lifeline, not TC and tape numbers. So if you like Scene names and other data to be the name of your clip, P2 may not be for you. And yeah, it does affect your workflow when trying to find clips in bins. You’ll want to use other fields like comments and description to sort clips in bins and such.

So, my take on P2 was that for a big project like we did, was that little time was saved at all if any. In fact, by the time the week was out, continual searching in bins for poorly labeled clips slowed us down a bit, and hunting for spots IN the timeline was slower as well because the scene number wasn’t the clip name.

Strangely, editng and working with P2 was almost completely akin to working in a LINEAR suite. Since we just copied the files over to the drive we had very long takes. Shots were only marked as good or bad on paper log notes if at all. So it reminded me of working with a producer in a linear suite. With no clip names it was contunually… “let’s look at the take at 2:20:15:02” and we’d pull up the shot, watch it, decide it was good or bad, etc.

The whole process would’ve been better had I or the producer actually mounted the folders and logged all the clips and made descriptions and such in the appropriate fields. Only loading and logging the required media. But, the cool thing of P2 is just copying the media and beginning the edit. Logigng would’ve been no faster than logging on tapes for the most part.

So I’m torn on P2. It sounds neat, but you end up copying and backing up so much media that it is often quicker to just load good takes off a tape, and then have the clips labeled they way you like. Having all takes available without descriptive names and info is completely akin to editing linear with a paper log. I can take it or leave it. Short form stuff is probably more beneficial.

[Bret Williams]

FWIW feature hollywood films on DVD don’t even do this. They just drop the audio nearly out and leave it there. I’ve never seen one do the auto duck thing. But then, on features they usually talk 95% of the time on the comment track.

[Bret Williams]

Just change the setting in the bin after you import the clips. All FCP will do is apply a distort to the clip. You could also apply the distort to one clip in timeline, then copy and paste the attribute to all the clips once they’re in the timeline.

FCP only recognizes pixels as non-square when they fit a specific non-square setting. 720×486, 720×480, etc. Any odd non-standard size and it will interpret them as square.