[Chris Poisson]

Ease in/out is THE worst shortcoming in FCP. Totally touch and go. I agree with Shane, use AE.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

My take on this, sending to Compressor from FCP WAS the best way in terms of quality, as it skipped a step of recompression, which is why it takes longer. I say WAS because this was true in earlier versions, and covered in the 4th section of this excellent article.

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/compressor_warmouth.html

I have always sent a movie to Compressor like many above, because of the time factor, and tweaking the setting is not that hard, and I get great results.

I will throw out though, As much as I like Compressor, EpisodePro has come a long way, and it’s 5Mb setting is just amazing for SD DVDs, quality is astounding.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

Mick,

That’s not OT, although probably more of it in the HDV forum. I use native HDV captured via FireWire, usually put it in another format timeline, such as D1, DV or ProRes 1080. I shoot mostly 30p, so I don’t have to worry about fields. I have had nothing but great results with this method, and reasonable render times.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

Ooopps,

My bad, I’m using FCP 6, but, I do have an old G4 with 4.5 in it, and I just did a test using my Panasonic DVX100 with a DV easy setup, set to non controlable device and it will capture all day long. Works perfect.

[Chris Poisson]

With my Canon A1 this works fine, via firewire with a 1080i 60 easy setup. I left the control set to Sony Firewire using capture now.

Sheesh, I can probably do this with my MacBook Pro, didn’t even think of that till now, so that would save about a grand on a Firestore unit, woohoo!

It also works through my Kona LH with the component cable but I then have to have audio connected somehow, or just capture video. BTW doing it this way with the Firewire connected controls the camera for tape capture.

There’s also a capture software called DV Monitor which works great with DV for this, they have an HD version but at present it only works with the Panasonic HVX200 in DVCproHD. I have urged them to make an HDV version, let’s just hope…

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

Hey Todd,

Thanks for the quick answer, a lot to mull over.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

This will not likely happen with a project created in 6.0.1, have you tested that? Older projects upgraded can act weird, I think it has to do with the new timeline/frame rate architecture.

I would just do the work in 30p, no headaches period, similar or better look.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

Brett,

Whoo! Talk about render time! 4000 pixels?

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

I think the easiest way to do this is with track mattes. Put your video over your mattes and set the video to track matte alpha. Scale, rotate, whatever the video to fit the matte. You can make your mattes in Photoshop or with a garbage matte. Or you can make solids of different colors and use the crop tool on them. You can pile up as many of these stacks as you want. Very clean and efficient.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

Danielle,

Sit down, get a cup of decaf, and relax. Now, open up the camera’s menu and see what it’s set to play. Start with NTSC DV at SP speed. Play back the tape and see what it looks like on the camera’s lcd, or better yet, feed it to a TV monitor. Is it letterboxed? Squished but regular? Regular NTSC DV? Once you are sure what’s on your tape, then you can use all the swell advice above to do this right. Start over, it’s worth it.

Have a wonderful day.