Chris Lehmann
Forum Replies Created
-
I don’t know of any time limit in FCP timelines, and I’ve done some long ones. I just finished working on a 5-hour 720p DVCPROHD recording from a conference. There were some issues with log and transfer crashing FCP when trying to finish writing the captured file, but setting in and out points on the source, then importing it in smaller 1.5 hour clips worked fine. I then just put them together again in a timeline.
-
Yes, very easy to learn and use. It comes with a set of presets for different tasks, and when you make changes it updates the descriptions with a non-technical “what this task will do”. It gives big huge yellow striped warning boxes if you are about to do anything that might cause data loss. Choosing which files to back up is as simple as checking the box next to folders, and it informs you at all times what it’s doing.
Technically, this is really just an extremely well made GUI for the very powerful Unix rsync and cron tools built into OSX. This just makes them very usable for people who don’t want to learn all the command lines.
-
If you work with a lot of large files, backing up to multiple external drives etc. Carbon Copy Cloner will save your butt, and your sanity, on a regular basis. Incremental backup (only copying new or changed data) alone will save you hours and hours and hours of copying, and the option to verify the copies is great peace of mind. Now add that you can schedule all these backups to wake your computer in the middle of the night to do the copy, then shut itself off again… it’s a must have. Unfortunately as of a few weeks ago it’s no longer free, but try the demo and you’ll fall in love.
-
I recently upgraded my late 2009 Mac Pro with the stock Nvidia card to an ATI HD 5870. The increase in Motion is extreme! I can now move objects around smoothly, and render times are about 1/8th of what they were. If you spend any time in Motion at all, a graphics card upgrade will do you huge favors.
-
You may be able to get rid of it in Final Cut by right-clicking on the “Alpha” column in the bin and selecting “None/Ignore”.
-
That makes sense to me. I do keep the original P2 files on hard drives for a while after completing a project, after that just my QuickTime wrapped copies are saved with the project folder. My reasoning is that if I go back to re-edit a video from a while back, I’ll start with the same FCP project and am unlikely to log and transfer the files again anyway.
The QuickTime files are the same DVCPROHD data that’s in the P2 folder so the only possible loss is some meta-data, and I’m not even 100% sure that any of it is discarded. The only other thing I’d watch out for is if you have a bad or damaged file, it may be easier to recover out of the P2 data than the QuickTime copy. This is why I always check my clips for playback before I delete the working copy of the original P2 folders.
With what you are suggesting the worst that could happen is:
1. You have a damaged or lost QuickTime file and need to re-wrap it from the P2 data.
2. You lose the P2 data but you can still use the QuickTime clips.
Make sure to back up your FCP projects on two drives as well though!
-
[Wolf Austad] “Use multiple readers.”
This works great for 17″ MBPs. This setup will ingest three 32GB cards at once in around 20 minutes and the biggest expense by far was the PCD2.
HVX-200A > FW400 to FW800 cable > Firewire Port on MBP
PCD2 > USB cable > MBP
Fast External Hard Drive > FW800 cable > FW800 Express34 Card > MBP -
Sounds like a long shot but might work. You can load drivers into WinXP running under Parallels and you can give the VM direct access to USB devices (somewhere in Parallels preferences). Unfortunately the only way to know for sure is to test it or find someone else who has.
Personally I’d just get the PCD2 (unless you need to ingest two cards at once) which does work flawlessly under newer OSX versions.
-
I just trash the MXF files once I have everything imported into FCP7 and verified. I much prefer having sensibly named, self contained QuickTime files over a directory of cryptically named P2 directories. You aren’t transcoding anything so it doesn’t take very long, and there isn’t any loss of quality. The only negative I can think of is that if you are using a P2CMS database or any special meta-data, that might be lost. I sort/catalog all my clips in FCP so this isn’t an issue in my workflow.
-
It’s pretty easy to pull a good key in DVMatte Pro, even with a less than perfect screen, especially compared to the included tools in FCP7/Motion 4.
I like the way the plugin can preserve and match grain in the footage and it is very capable of keying individual hairs, even without a lot of tweaking. There are also other plugins included with it like DVWrap which can really help “sell” the effect.
That being said, there are some annoying as hell bugs in DVMatte that the company refuses to respond to. There are workarounds but it is disappointing that the company doesn’t respond to inquiries on a product they are still selling.
What camera are you using? Anything not 4:2:2 or better will benefit from the de-blocking technology in DVMatte.