[Craig Johnson]

Your assumptions are correct as to the layout of my project.

I’m excited that such a simple procedure would work. I’m at work now, but just as soon as I can get back to my home office, I’ll be trying this immediately.

Why do you suppose this would work? I’m playing the dynamics in my head and wonder what the difference would be in this procedure compared to the next. Although, if it works, who gives a rat’s hinder.

I really do appreciate your time and effort. I’ll post my results.

Thanks!

[Craig Johnson]

I’ll try that. Can you suggest a work flow for me. I have never done that process and don’t know a procedure for doing that.

[Craig Johnson]

Hi Rafael,

Thanks for your reply, I thought maybe no one could help further at this point. I have no idea about “time bases” but would love to understand. I did, with the help I received here, take 3 sequences out of my 8 sequence project and fool around enough to get some of the image sizes better, but I don’t know why whatever worked did work and can’t replicate it over other parts of the same sequence. I think the image quality has suffered too. Jagged lines and screen door effect. I’m still trying to figure these nuances out but when you upgrade FCP, there is little information that comes with it. I do notice that if I change codec on one clip, it seems to change it on all the clips in the sequence and then doesn’t save it even after rendering. I’m confused.

[Craig Johnson]

Hi,

I’m new too, to FCP and Apple anyway. I did stuff in Adobe for a few years prior to me jumping ship a year ago. My HP was pretty new and beefed up, but Adobe crashed it 100 times a night for doing something as small as a transition. Hence my move over to Apple.

I have the iMac 27 quad core. It sounds like it’s set up pretty much like you have it. The first thing that I did was get some external drives. I have a 2 TB external that runs pretty fast off the firewire and a couple of 1TB drives that I just store clips and audio on. I don’t do production work but my projects are pretty good sized. I’m doing a 2 1/2 hour one right now and the machine seems to run just fine. The raw data is a few hundred gigs. I use up to 4 different cameras 3 of them HD. No complaints. You can’t beat it for the money.

I haven’t spoken to any pro that uses one though. If I were to go that route, I would for sure beef up the ram to it’s generous potential. but even with the stock 4 gig, it scoots right along. As you already know, the monitor is the bomb.

Just my $.02

[Craig Johnson]

The fix walter laid out for me made tons of problems go away and on a sequence by sequence basis, when played back in the canvas, they look pretty good when using the “Fit All” selection. I do notice that the percents next to the “Fit All” button change during playback of the clip, meaning I would guess, they are different in size and the “Fit All” selection is making them all the same size. I am only guessing. Will these percents be how the final product looks(different), or will it look like the “Fit All” playback in the canvas?

When I chain the sequences together and render, there are some pretty strange changes in playback. I get some of my HD video that was shot in 1080 showing as a tiny thumbnail size video. I did a command 0 and it wasn’t showing 1080 anymore but numbers and codec that are all together different.

Some of my stills look great! They are showing with bars like you would expect and the size and resolution are very nice, but then the same camera with the same settings played back with everyone looking wide and fat in other sequences. Frustrating.

Is this going to be micro surgery to go in and manually change 2 hours worth of clips and stills? If so, how would I go about that?

I really don’t like being new at something…

[Craig Johnson]

Walter, your detailed response was so generous. I’m really stoked to try this and fix this long drawn out project. This first project with FCP has been quite the learning curve and so much is yet to be figured out. Your my new best friend. Need a kidney or anything?

Many many thanks.

[Craig Johnson]

Hi John, Thanks for helping! Camera 1 is a GoPro and the frame size is 1280×960 converted over to ProRes 422 using MPEG Streamclip. Camera 2 is a Sony HDR-FX1 shooting in 1080, the frame size is 1440x1080p30. camera 3 is a Canon Digital Rebel XT(stills) with frame size of 3456×2304. I only have a few shots with this here and there in my project and didn’t go through the slideshow process as most aren’t in any kind of slideshow like presentation. They seem ok though. Lastly is a JVC Everio Hard Drive camera that was supposed to be converted to MPEG-4 640×480 but now that you have clued me on where to see this stuff, I see that 9 of the clips are somehow DV-PAL 720×576 25fps, and a few other of the converted clips ended up as MPEG-4 but at 320×240 24fps. Also, one of the HDR-FX1 clips ended up being a 1440×1080 Apple Intermediate codec. I also have 2 back to back clips that are in a sequence shot with this camera and one clip plays back almost like a widescreen thumbnail while the other clip is too big to fit the canvas. Not sure how any of these derelict codecs appeared here. I tried to be careful during the conversion process. Also, one of the clips I shot with the GoPro was one I changed the resolution in the field. It only has 5 settings on the camera but the one I changed is the only 1080 setting, which ends up being a 1080i60 at 1440×1080. This is a mess. Is it fixable? Thanks.