[Christopher Mcdonell]

Hi Mike,

I’ve been reading this post and am more than confused. First of all, you said the “burn test projects come out fine”. What does that mean? You burned to DVD and the text looks crisp on your TV set? If your video export has crisp text (you can confirm this on your mac), then the issue is just how it’s being presented in FCP right?

If you click the RT tab in your timeline, what are you seeing? Is playback quality “High”? If not, bingo, that could be your issue.

My guess however is that your footage is interlaced and as others have pointed out, text looks crap when interlaced. My workaround for this was to transcode my final cut (minus the text) to ProRes 422 – Progressive, change the timeline to match, then add back the text. The end result will be progressive of course but the text looks perfect. This was my method:

1) Finish the cut and save the project with a different name
2) Deselect all the text layers.
3) Export a QT movie (I think it had to be self-contained), then drag that into Compressor.
4) Choose an Apple Pro Res 422 setting (you don’t need HQ with DV) and deinterlace by setting the Field Order to Progressive.
5) Then import that file of your movie into the same FCP timeline and turn off all the other video layers.
6) Change the timeline to match – Pro Res 422/Progressive
7) Turn the text/graphics layers back on.
8) Now when you render, you’ll be rendering your text/graphics as progressive Pro Res 422 to match your master fine cut.
9) Voila. Done.

One last question. Why are you using both FCP 6 and 7? What’s the benefit of having them both on the same system? Seems redundant.

Cheers

[Christopher Mcdonell]

Today, I’m my own guinea pig. I upgraded from 10.8.5 to 10.11.1 and have been cutting just fine with FCP 6.0.6 all day. So far so good. No issues to report. I’ll keep the readers of this post posted.

[Christopher Mcdonell]

Have you done any research on this? Read your manual? Searched this forum?

I have the Canon XHA1. To get FCP to recognize it, I need to connect via FW, then turn the camera on. While the playheads are engaged, load FCP. Works for me every time. If I turn the camera on after FCP is open, it won’t read the camera. If I wait till the playheads disengage, it won’t read the camera. I don’t know squat about the HV-30, but they’re both Canons so I’d give this a go.

Here’s another link that might help in regards to connecting the camera.

As for whether you shot in SD or HD, shouldn’t that be fairly obvious by the resulting format size?

[Christopher Mcdonell]

To clarify, I didn’t ask if I should update to El Capitan (which is what the advice was generally aimed at). I asked if anyone out there who had updated could tell us whether FCP 6 or 7 still worked. I do appreciate the advice and will put some of it into practice, but it’s not like I haven’t heard it before. With each new OS, we go through this same ole dance.

I’d actually like to try out FCPX. I’m intrigued by Ernie’s suggestion of using it in tandem with FCP 6-7 for audio, colour correction and graphics. But the demo only works on Yosemite or El Capitan. I’m currently on Mavericks. So now legacy users who are afraid to upgrade can’t even try the demo!

I think I’ll be cloning, upgrading and giving it all a try pretty soon. Ernie’s post, and this youtube video that I found, gives me some hope.

[Christopher Mcdonell]

I just bought a new keyboard and I’ve been experiencing the same issue with Command-Z and F10. Amazing timing. I was going to return it.

Edit: And… it didn’t work. Returning.

[Christopher Mcdonell]

Yeah video looks terrible on Dropbox and you have no control over the compression. You’re better to either make your own mp4’s (I use Compressor) and upload to an FTP and share the link, or upload to Vimeo and share that.

[Christopher Mcdonell]

Go to System Settings/ Playback Control/ and change Gamma Correction from Accurate to Approximate. Now everything will look washed out in the timeline as well, same as in QT and probably VLC.

The only way I’ve found to correct this using Apple’s software is to add Gamma Correction in Compressor. I remember reading that someone suggested 2.0 was the appropriate offset. I set mine at 1.15. It still isn’t perfect but I do find it to be an improvement, at least for simple web videos. For anything really important, I’d be spending the money to have it fully colour corrected, even upon export.

[Christopher Mcdonell]

I’d like to give a FCPX a try. But the free demo only works with Yosemite and up. Bit of a dilemma.

[Christopher Mcdonell]

It’s an anomaly. Turns out a few of the iPhone clips play fine without transcoding. Others, I’m still getting the “Error: Out of Memory” popup. Either way, I’ll be using the ProRes versions anyway. Saving a headache is far better than saving a little disk space!

[Christopher Mcdonell]

I was thinking of a car metaphor myself. My 1988 Mazda ran like a beauty, fast and quiet, and only this summer did I have to put it out to pasture. But with software, 3 years and it’s dead. Move on. Now what’s wrong with that picture?

I just know that eventually, someone who has actually upgraded their system to El Cap and tried editing with FCP 6 or 7, is going to write in. Maybe it’ll be me. For those of us to whom this matters, the foolish diehards, I guess we’ll just have to cipher through the noise until it happens. 😉