[Craig Alan]

Ok if i highlight a clip in a project or the event library and then change the mac’s black magic system preference default video standard to match that clip, and then quit and reopen fcp x then the FCP X preference av output will match. Is this the dance I need to do? No way to manually set it in FCP X to match what I am outputting? It’s not a big deal since FCP X loads pretty quick but it still feels like a bug.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV30/40, Sony Z7U, VX2000, PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

It wasn’t but after rebooting it now is set at a flavor of HD that was the first clip that was highlighted in the event library. When I open a project in a different frame rate and resolution it does not allow me to switch. In FCP 7 I had a choice of what codec I wanted to display. Here it seems stuck on one auto setting at a time. Is there any way to fix this?

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV30/40, Sony Z7U, VX2000, PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

open the manual

https://support-au.canon.com.au/contents/AU/EN/0300693101.html

then save as pdf.

open the pdf.

do a search for output

or see page 139.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV30/40, Sony Z7U, VX2000, PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

[Chris Harlan] “Yes, that’s nice. But why do you think that’s “Apple’s way.” If anything, X offers much less choice than it has in the past. And both Premiere and Media Composer offer many different approaches to any particular operation. As far as trimming variations go, MC is probably the current winner. Premiere Next might take that; we’ll have to see.”

I get you. You’re in trim mode. I tend to work on a section of the time line rather than a function. I’m not very fluent.

Very true about Apple and X. I was really thinking of FCP legacy. And I think this was the Apple way and others borrowed from it. And you are correct – Apple is moving more towards less choices in their design and interface.

The Apple certification exam for FCP 6/7 for example (which has little to do with the professional world) often asks the three ways you can apply a blah blah blah.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV30/40, Sony Z7U, VX2000, PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

It would be cool to be able to go back in the other direction. Trim to no frames, play around play head, add back a second of frames, play around play head. But yeah command z will undo the trim. But delete will delete the entire clip and I thought the logic here was extending the trim function from zero to end of clip’s media.

Personally I like Apple’s decision to have three ways of doing many operations. It helps prevent fatigue and carpal tunnel syndrome.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV30/40, Sony Z7U, VX2000, PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Can you add back frames after you’ve trimmed to zero?

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV30/40, Sony Z7U, VX2000, PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

You’ll have a lot better luck here being way more specific. The GL1 was/is a decent run and gun standard def camera, but it does not shoot 16×9 native. So if you want to use 16:9 aspect ratio, I would start with a better modern cam. It uses a 1/8 stereo unbalanced jack so keep that in mind when thinking about mikes.

Documentaries most likely have very different needs than a short artistic film. You need to define what type of shots you are looking to get and a budget. Do you have a crew? Do you want this to look professional or are you just having fun? What is your planned type of distribution and who is your target audience?

Do a search here for lav and for shotgun and you’ll have plenty of answers at specific price points for specific needs. Remember that a shotgun needs a boom pole and a boom pole operator or at least a stand and shotgun holder and boom arm. Wireless Lavs start at $600 a kit which will record only one person at a time.

Do you have a tripod? You can go hand-held but it will be hard to get good results for an enitre film without a tripod.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV30/40, Sony Z7U, VX2000, PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

I think large file sizes are something we all have to get used to. The black magic intensity would not only let you capture all your tapes but could be used to record directly from the HV cam in a much higher codec than HDV and without using any tapes.

Any cam with a tape transport will start to get get dirty and misaligned heads. It’s the weak link of those cams along with Canon’s problems with firewire. HDV is not the best editing codec anyway. It is true you will not improve the quality of the HDV footage (unless you skip the HDV compression) but it will be in a codec that will allow you to add high quality graphics. You can always further compress the files to save space and hard drives are getting cheaper all the time. Even at 50G an hour a 3TB drive would hold 60 hours worth and once in digital form you could trash stuff you have no interest in keeping. The tapes would still serve as an archive as well. I say transfer the footage you need to edit and take it one project at a time. If you had the 100s of hours of footage on hard drives what will you do moving forward – back these up to new hard drives? Hard drives are not that reliable in the long run. Most likely some flavor of solid state or archiving storage will become cheap enough for the rest of us, but I’m not sure having hundreds of hours of projects on today’s affordable drives is a long term answer.

I’ve begun making the transition from HDV tapes to a P2 workflow and I’m really up in the air about planning long term archiving. My evolving plan is to try to organize storage very carefully. Keeping what is worth keeping and when an affordable solution presents itself making the move.

One more advantage to HDMI out would be no more problems capturing due to time code breaks.

Having just read your question and my reply again, I’m pretty sure I didn’t help at all; but at least you know you are not alone on this whole what do I do with all this media.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV30/40, Sony Z7U, VX2000, PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

I would rent a digital recorder like AJA KI Pro. Play the tape and capture the footage on the recorder. Now you have one clip in apple pro res 422 and you are good to go.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV30/40, Sony Z7U, VX2000, PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Thank you thank you. 99% of the time I split a clip using the blade tool its extra steps to activate the blade tool, split the clip, then reactivate the select tool. One click b seems like a better way to work. Even if I were to split a bunch of clips it would be cool to use the keyboard instead of a mouse click. Mouse clicking could and has accidentally moved the skimmer and I have to command z and try again. The only possible downside is accidentally hitting b, which would split a clip unintended. Hard to do that with the pointer becoming a blade.

Jeremy, what does shift -b blades all mean?

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV30/40, Sony Z7U, VX2000, PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.