[Chris Yeo]

thanks a lot for the explanation. Now I know at least the camera needs anamorphic import all the time from now on. 😀

[Chris Yeo]

Thanks for the encouragement Rafael. Yes, I figured the only way to really learn is just to “do it” and see what happens. The overlay wasn’t essential as it was for a few clips, but it would have been nice. It just frustrates me since I try to do my best for it.

When you say that I need to tell FCP that they have to be displayed as 16 X 9, is it during the capture phase as 48 mhz anamorphic or just clicking the tick on the browser?

[Chris Yeo]

Yes, I’ve used composite mode overlay before. Highlighting the 2 clips then right clicking to composite mode and then overlay. All my settings are in pal.

Strange thing is, some composite modes like add and subtract work but stuff like overlay and softlight doesn’t work.

[Chris Yeo]

I tried the suggestion out and while its helped me get the full screen anamorphic look, composite mode and overlay still gives me a black screen which is still pretty confusing.

However when I change the resolution to 960 X 720, the overlay works. It just doesn’t seem to be working at the standard DV resolution, irrespective of whether it’s been ticked anamorphic or not.

[Chris Yeo]

Thanks for the answer, it helped me a lot. Another quick question.

I tried doing a fast render to a QT movie file to see how it would look and it had all 4 black borders around it in a 4:3 aspect. – Is there any way to remove the black bars on the left and right of the picture and resize it to something like 16:9? Quicktime shows it as 4:3 nonetheless even though I’ve specified a dv pal 48 khz anamorphic setting?

A problem could be when I captured the footage – I set it as DV-pal 48 khz instead of DV-pal 48 khz anamorphic. If so, I assume this means I have to recapture everything again?

Thanks for the help.

[Chris Yeo]

Thanks for the info. I did some more tests and it seems that the composite mode overlay only works when I click the anamorphic box to enable it on sequence settings.

I tried making new sequences with new settings but they didn’t work. I ended up with the black screen of doom again.

Capture settings were using firewire and DV Pal 48 khz, not DV Pal 48 khz anamorphic. It’s not too bad to start reediting since I only really laid down 2 mins worth of material before doing the test. I’m happy I did that otherwise it would have been much worse.

Is there any way to overcome this problem? I’m still kind of new at this and probably made a mistake somewhere, but I don’t know where unfortunately.

Thanks for all the help so far.

[Chris Yeo]

No, I definitely shot 16:9 letterbox. I used the HVX-200.
The problem I’m facing is this –

I’m trying to get the bleach bypass look using final cut pro composite mode overlay.

I’ve made 3 sequences. Somehow only 1 sequence allows me to do this (the composite mode overlay). The other 2 do not which I find very strange. All I get when I try to do the overlay is a black screen.

The settings are exactly the same for all 3 sequences, with the exception that for the first sequence, the one that allows me to do the composite mode overlay has the anamorphic mode ticked.

However, when I make a duplicate sequence of the one sequence that works in the hope of getting another working sequence, the composite mode overlay fails. This has me toally confused. I’ve checked out the help guide that came with FCP and searched through google but could find no answers and am pretty clueless about it.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Chris Yeo]

Hi, log and transfer worked. Maybe it’s an improvement in FCP 6 over FCP 5 – which I learnt on. Cheers for the help nonetheless.

[Chris Yeo]

I’m using a macbook pro laptop and according to the list, it says I don’t need a driver for it.

However, it says I should get a driver via SD card so the camera can recognize the 16gig P2 card I am using. The funny thing is that I just dropped the card in, formatted it, and did some test shots. I can see these test shots just fine using the viewer in the camera which leaves me wondering whether I should go ahead and update the software version using the sd card or not.

[Chris Yeo]

The thing is that I don’t have a deck. All I have is a camcorder. I need to send a copy of a film in mini dv format to a film festival, and I am at a loss on how to do it without a deck – therefore i’m asking if a camcorder can double on this function as well.