[Christopher New]

You are the MAN, Dirk! (God bless the long tail of the Internet!) The PTI title was just what I needed; gonna get me some King Luma plugins soon as a “thank you.”

Christopher New
Dallas Center, IA

[Christopher New]

You’ll want to highlight the connected clip, then use the period and comma keys to move right or left (i.e., the < > keys, w/o the shift held down).

Christopher New
Dallas Center, IA

[Christopher New]

I get the same problem sometimes when the audio from the different sources is wildly different qualities. The “pro” thing to do in the future is do a sync clap, which is the low-tech version of a slate that you see behind the scenes in movies, except all you do is clap your hands in front of the camera. Then, in post, you have a safety for the automatic sync, where you line up the peak of the audio track with the moment the hands impact each other. For the time being, just put both your video & audio in the same timeline, and position them as best you can by ear (use the ‘nudge’ keys—the period & comma on your keyboard—very helpful). Once you have it lined up, highlight everything, and create a Compound Clip (⌥G). Then disable the webcam’s audio track & you have a synced clip to use.

In these cases, where the audio sync fails, I use Pluraleyes. It’s $300 (last time I checked), but saves the day over and over.

Christopher New
Dallas Center, IA

[Christopher New]

I suggest NEVER dragging the files directly off the card. Always (if you can) import directly from the camera or card. This allows FCPX to rewrap the files as .mov in the process, whereafter you can move the files around in whatever way you wish. (I even recommend using FCPX for import to an external library if you’re using Premiere or Avid, as then you’ll have standalone files, as opposed to the half-(_|_)’d way Prelude does it.

If your client hands you a drive with the files copied off the SD/CF card, then you just have to live with the pain (or ask for the original card…or get someone at their facility to do the DIT before they hand over the drive…or find a program that does the transcoding faster–I’m thinking of MPEG Streamclip, but that’s defunct now).

Christopher New
Dallas Center, IA

[Christopher New]

I’ve been using the Apple Devices presets, and selecting either 0 or -100 as the gain setting, but I was just playing around with things, and found that the gain kinda acts like a logarithmic fader on the clip? So for instance:

I set the fade out duration to 1.0, and the gain to, say -6. The clip begins to fade out, but is still audible several seconds after the out point, finally fading out after several seconds…

So, what I’m discovering (again, thanks, Apple!!! for documenting this so well), is that the audio fade out is a function of the time x gain, so that about -40db gives you a pretty clean ramp over a 1-second duration.

I don’t understand why it should work this way, especially when on the video fade you just set the number of seconds for the fade in/out. Feels like setting cruise control in a car by specifying the tension on a throttle cable, instead of just entering the speed. You feel me?!?!

Thanks for the assist!

Christopher New
Dallas Center, IA

[Christopher New]

As far as I can tell, the duration relates to the effect’s length in seconds (though it’s not clearly documented anywhere if that’s true), because when I set it to 3.0 for example, it kills the audio for 3 seconds; still no fade in or out. Again, gain only has the effect of setting the “shelf” for the audio, not a start or end point for a fade.

If I’m doing something wrong in the settings, (A) I don’t know what it could be, because I’ve tried everything, and (B) seems like bad UI implementation.

Christopher New
Dallas Center, IA

[Christopher New]

[Neil Goodman] “in my experience you do way more mousing and clicking in FCPX than any other NLE. “

You should try the keyboard shortcuts, Neil. My FCPX keyboard cover has easily upped my productivity by 25% alone (partly by showing me shortcuts that I may not have known were there). I know Avid & Premiere editors will say the same thing, but if you’re just “mousing around,” then you’re leaving a lot on the table. (Oh, and get a trackpad instead of a mouse, too, for scrolling.)

Christopher New
Dallas Center, IA

[Christopher New]

You also haven’t mentioned anything about frame rate. E.g., if you’re shooting in 23.98 or 30p, & your 720p timeline is 59.97, then FCPX has to do some frame doubling. This could “stretch” the data between more frames, especially interframe codecs like ProRes. But I haven’t seen the kind of noticeable blurring you’re alluding to; I just ran a test of 1080p23.98 Canon XF 50 Mbps footage in both a 720p23.98 & 720p59.97 timeline, and didn’t see any difference. Perhaps this is a FCPX 10.0.9 issue (but I hope not).

You said you were comparing the 720 outputs to your original footage: this will always look blurrier, even with the best downres. Make sure you’re comparing apples to apples (no pun intended) – 720 to 720. I agree with Noah; try a 1080 timeline, but then also try to export a 720 .m4v from the timeline to see if your results are better. Another thing to think about is if the blurriness you’re getting is the stabilization of shaky footage? Are you comparing clips when both have stabilization turned on?

Christopher New
Event1 Video
Ankeny, IA
event1video.com

[Christopher New]

You’re looking for “Frame Blend” under the Clip>Video Options menu.

Christopher New
Event1 Video
Ankeny, IA
event1video.com

FCS2 on PowerMac G5 & MacBook Pro 2.4GHz C2D

[Christopher New]

Curious,

As a recent purchaser of this camera I can answer a few of your questions but am still learning things about it myself. I find that it takes very good pictures with good color. I haven’t put any of the footage through the ringer yet in regards to color correction, but the native response is excellent. I find it has enough features for my uses as both hobbiest and event videographer (it’s used as part of a multi-cam setup), including audio meter, focus assist and mic input. As far as cons, the manual focus isn’t too bad- there’s a servo scroll wheel on the left side that acts as a ring-like aduster, and it gives the control of a manual ring but without any resistance (OK for setting up a shot but not good for run/gun). I don’t find white balance to be an issue as I don’t fly from location to location with it, and if I ever do I’ll invoke the presets and tweak the colors in post – again, not my main camera. As for the chip, the CMOS design gives the camera better batery life and is very close to equivalent-sized CCD cameras, but has more trouble in dark environments, and comes off a little grainy if less than full indoor light or a cloudy day.

The one issue I’m still trying to work out is how to utilize the 24p footage. I assume that the HDV files recorded are in the native 1080i format, and that the footage has pulldown applied to it; I’ll see if my assumption is correct when I get a chance to import some stuff into Final Cut. Other than that question, I’m extremely happy with the camera in the two weeks I’ve had it – I’ll probably use a second along with something like the H1 in that muti-cam setup I spoke of if I go to HD prod. in the near future. However, if you’re looking for low-light performance and don’t care about 24p, I would probably consider one of the Sonys for that extra lux or two.

Hope this helps, and if anyone can fill me in on the 24p workflow, let me know…

Chris New
Event1 Video