[Brian Thomas]

Well the scenario I described was very much simplified as my concern was only ‘do I need optimised or not?’.

Most of the time I’m videoing local amateur productions using at least five Panasonic prosumer camcorders as well us recording from the soundboard on my Zoom H4N. I know from experience that multicam-ing that lot even on my brand-new MBP has to be done on the proxy files otherwise I get all those ‘dropped frames’ messages. Or is there another way?

Certainly I’ve found out that the machine can handle a single camcorder input without proxy-ing but I only do that for the rarer ‘family’ stuff.

PS. I’m using a MBP as I’m frequently required to give up my ‘editing studio’ so that guests can sleep in there!

FCPX and PPro 6. iMac 24 + MBP 17″. Near Geneva, Switzerland

[Brian Thomas]

I thought and hoped it would be something like that. So many thanks, John, for the explanation and removing that worry from my shoulders!

FCPX and PPro 6. iMac 24 + MBP 17″. Near Geneva, Switzerland

[Brian Thomas]

Just adding a bit of recent experience here: when capturing, I’ve just occasionally had the video get stuck while the audio carried on. Probably something to do with the old windows machine I’ve got for this and little else. Anyway, when this has happened I’ve rewound the cassette ten mins or so, restarted the capture and eventually I’ve got to the end. So, several AVI files (or whatever) to synchronise on a timeline… Multicam to the rescue! Might take an age but so what.

FCPX and PPro 6. iMac 24 + MBP 17″. Near Geneva, Switzerland

[Brian Thomas]

OUCH!

Many thanks 🙂

FCPX and PPro 6. iMac 24 + MBP 17″. Near Geneva, Switzerland

[Brian Thomas]

I can’t offer any solution but if that happened to me I’d trim the timeline down to about 55% and see if that exports OK. Then I’d try the other part of the original and see where that gets stuck. After that then I’d steadily zoom in on where the problem seems to be.

Just because it works in FCP7 doesn’t make it at all certain it would work elsewhere. I believe FCPX is a complete rewrite.

Sharing to DVD never worked satisfactorily for me. I gave up with that option and now I create a ‘Master’ (I need that anyway for my archive) and then use it in my DVD authoring software which in my case is Adobe Encore.

FCPX and PPro 6. iMac 24 + MBP 17″. Near Geneva, Switzerland

[Brian Thomas]

OK, thanks for that Jeff. I never realised that I wouldn’t be getting the best possible output although in my case, as my end product is DVDs, would it have made much of a difference?

I made a small test project (5′ 16″) just now and when Sharing a Master based on Original/Optimised and Better Quality it produced a file that was 4.69 GB. The same with Proxy clicked produced one which was only 1.53 GB.

Noah: I’m just an enthusiast but now I see you meant “…switch back to Original when you’re done editing, before Sharing” yes?

Finally, it looks as if in my case I still don’t need to create Optimised footage? I just want to be sure 🙂

FCPX and PPro 6. iMac 24 + MBP 17″. Near Geneva, Switzerland

[Brian Thomas]

OK, many thanks for that but the funny thing is that when I use Share (to create a ‘Master File’ from which I go on to author the DVD iso) and I leave the ‘Media’ still on ‘Proxy’ it creates as follows:

Dimensions: 1920 x 1080
Codecs: Apple ProRes 422, Linear PCM, Timecode
Color profile: HD (1-1-1)

Have I just been lucky with this workflow?

FCPX and PPro 6. iMac 24 + MBP 17″. Near Geneva, Switzerland

[Brian Thomas]

Thanks Brett, it’s great to know I’m in good company!

It occurred to me that if I get to grips with Motion sufficiently then I should be able to make an effect that, when dropped on a clip, would do the donkey work of zooming in over the duration of a clip by, say, 15%. It’s really only to liven up things for the clips that come from a static camcorder positioned over to one side of an auditorium. What do you think – could work?

FCPX and PPro 6. iMac 24 + MBP 17″. Near Geneva, Switzerland

[Brian Thomas]

I really appreciate your explaining all this and I know I’m going to find it very useful once my ‘clients’ move on from DVDs but as ultimately everything ends up SD I think I’m fairly safe doing it this way?

FCPX and PPro 6. iMac 24 + MBP 17″. Near Geneva, Switzerland

[Brian Thomas]

Ah! So Spatial Conform not being “None” gave me the impression nothing had really happened. OK, I understand this better, thanks!

My ‘workflow’ (cutting all the edited clips from the higher resolution project into the 720 project) looks OK? Most people would do it this way if they wanted to do this sort of thing?

So it looks like I’ll be able to do my keyframed panning and zooming in the same way as I did with Premiere – that’s great!

Again, many thanks Brett!

FCPX and PPro 6. iMac 24 + MBP 17″. Near Geneva, Switzerland