[Chad Brewer]

Vanessa,
Not all DVCPRO decks can playback tapes shot at DVCPRO50. Many can only playback tapes shot at DVCPRO25. These decks will read the TC and control track of the tape, but will not be able to play the video off the tape. This could be a reason for the problems you’re having.
What is the model of deck that you have rented?

Chad Brewer
Senior Tape Operator/Engineer
TeleVersions

[Chad Brewer]

I know the veterans of FCP will respond to this, but out of my own experience and curiosity is it as simple as unchecking “use logged clip settings” in batch capture?

Chad Brewer
Senior Tape Operator/Engineer
TeleVersions

[Chad Brewer]

I’ve had the same issue with 444RGB captured as 444 via Kona 3. Perhaps it was my render setting in FCP, but I had to color correct the black lift in 422 and I know you want to keep the 444, as did I.
I’m a novice to color correction, hopefully someone will let us know what we’re doing wrong with 444RGB footage with this lift in the black levels and how we can deal with it correctly. I’ve seen during playback that the levels are fine while the playhead is stopped, but lifted during playback. Perhaps I’m doing something wrong as far as settings go.

Chad Brewer
Senior Tape Operator/Engineer
TeleVersions

[Chad Brewer]

Hi Gabe.
Our broadcast video facility is 3 blocks from your office and we provide services to just about every post-house, big and small, in Chicago and the Mid-west. You guys should swing by and check us out.
Anyway, when we haven’t been building external RAIDS for our MacPro’s, we’ve had great performance with internal RAIDS in a different configuration. Try not involving the boot drive in a RAID. RAID 0 the other 3 drives in the MacPro for 6TB. We use 2TB Hitachi drives for this and have read/write speeds of 400mb/sec until the RAIDS don’t have enough overhead. At that time or even before if something needs to be backed up, we’ll just transfer whatever we need to save via an eSATA dock to other drives overnight or when there is downtime.
We’ve pushed countless hours of 10-bit HD and even dual-link 4:4:4 with this configuration. You just need to backup and sometimes rebuild the RAID, but it can be fast if you have good drives.
If you truly need longer term redundancy instead of fast speeds now and occasional backup/re-RAID, you’ll have to spend more money for the high end external arrays.

Chad Brewer
Senior Tape Operator/Engineer
TeleVersions

[Chad Brewer]

There may be a better way, but I set an in/out in the timeline for the specified clip, select in/out, then drag that in to the bin and rename it. I do this for every select from the timeline and then you see them with the new in/outs different from the master clip. Once I have the multiple new clips in the bin, I batch send them to Compressor like you’re used to doing.

Chad Brewer
Senior Tape Operator/Engineer
TeleVersions

[Chad Brewer]

Apple ProRes as a codec is not stable in FCP running on a G5 as you have found.
It’s a codec that is fully optimized for use on the MacPro.
If you’re in the pickle that you say you are, re-export the files you were given via Quicktime to a codec that is suited for your G5, e.g. uncompressed 8/10 bit.

Chad Brewer
Senior Tape Operator/Engineer
TeleVersions

[Chad Brewer]

Some of us have to digitize very quickly as well (oh wait, this is the video industry, everything we all work on was due yesterday). If you have time to type a name to log your clip, I would say you have time to click the mouse 14 times really fast to uncheck those channels.
I’ve actually come to like this FCP bug because it keeps me honest and aware of what I’m digitizing, diligently remembering if I’m capturing stereo, 2 channel mono, 4 channel splits, 5.1, etc.
We all know there’s nothing like sweating over the video to later realize we missed the M&E on 3&4 or captured 2 hours of silence over 14 channels of audio 🙂

Chad Brewer
Senior Tape Operator/Engineer
TeleVersions

[Chad Brewer]

Or….
As Mark was saying as far as characters and story go and Bob was saying as far as having the ability to get a quick, easy glimpse into the idea, take what you have of this initial pilot and cut a great trailer for the series – capturing the essences of what the series could be by what the target audience would be most interested in. That is, cut an intriguing, short (2-5 minute) trailer that gives your audience a taste, but not too much, of what the characters and the series may hold for their future curiosity. Try to precisely leave them hungry for more without giving away too much so they’ll come back like hungry dogs or curious cats.
Think of feature film trailers. Most of them suck and give you enough information about the film as a whole for you to conclude that this is another “run of the mill” film that you don’t care to see. But we’ve all seen a few well done trailers for films or TV series that make us say wow, I want to see that film when it comes out or wow, that could be a great TV series. What nights will it be on TV?

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/21/859875

Chad Brewer
Senior Tape Operator/Engineer
TeleVersions

[Chad Brewer]

First, what battery charger are you attempting to charge them with? It may be incompatible with the ProPac 13’s. What type of camera are you trying to charge these for? Because there may be cheaper “outboard” batteries that will attach to your camera with an adapter…
I inherited OLD! ProPac 14’s that would never hold enough charge to run 27 watt/hours more than a few minutes. Anton Bauer told me they don’t refurbish batteries and that they NEVER have. I’m not disagreeing with you Mark because other people as well had told me that Anton Bauer would do this. This is just what they told me this year when I approached them.
So Zac, your first problem may be that you have a charger that is not compatible with your Pro Pac 13’s.
My boss and I actually hacksawed open my battery enclosures and he rewired them with new cells from ZBattery.com and they work like new now. For cheap!
Neither Fred Jodry nor Anton Bauer recommended doing this, but it has kept my camera running for far cheaper than the price of new Anton Bauer packs. Anton Bauer called me just the other day to let me know that the final change from some of these NiCad products to whatever the other material is will happen later this summer, but the newer technology batteries will still run the same old cameras.

Chad Brewer
Senior Tape Operator/Engineer
TeleVersions

[Chad Brewer]

What’s weird is that non-Hitachi drives like Seagate work fine in this external RAID and now Hitachi drives don’t. There must be some answer to this because we RAID Hitachi drives all the time and they perform like champs. Why can’t they work with Sonnet cards?

Chad Brewer
Senior Tape Operator/Engineer
TeleVersions