[Dan Riley]

That’s the ticket Jeremy. Upgraded to 5.1 this morning and it works much better.

Still have an issue with HD timelines though. When I drag the sequence to the
assemble window, FCP sits for about 60 seconds with a beach ball before it
puts up a dialog box to allow me to edit to tape. When doing an SD timeline
this doesn’t happen. But I can live with it waiting to do the job. That’s much better
than crashing and having to get back up and running.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

Thanks Jeremy.

Have a good 4th.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

I’ve been waiting for time between projects to upgrade from QT 7.4.5, OS 10.5.2 and
FCP 6.0.3. All done this morning and you are correct sir, Livetype now works
in timelines without rendering the livetype files before importing.
To me this saves a step of rendering twice. Also I can “open in editor”, the livetype title
directly from the timeline which also saves time.

Now I see this afternoon there is another new OS, 10.5.4, but I think I’ll wait a little bit
before upgrading to that version.

Thanks,
Dan

[Dan Riley]

While we’re on the Livetype subject, have you noticed since FCP 6.0.2,
if you have a title with a background (like type setting on a color bar or something)
you must render the title before importing to FCP? Previously all you had to do
was import the livetype file. If you don’t render, the livetype background doesn’t
key correctly, like the alpha isn’t being seen by FCP.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

Well I guess I pissed everyone off. Didn’t mean too. Sorry, I apologize.

In my experience you don’t need to make a separate sequence when
outputting to DigiBeta from a DVCPROHD 23.98 sequence when
using a Kona3 Card. That was what I should have said, without the
commentary I guess.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

um. excuse me, but you certainly don’t need to create a new timeline for
output to SD. Do you use a KONA 3 card? You simply have the secondary
output be centercut SD out SDI to your digibeta which is exactly what we do.
I cut the DVCPRO HD 720p 23.98 sequence, using an HD monitor while editing,
with the monitor set to show me safe title for SD or I just watch the show on the
Sony monitor right next to the HD monitor.

All you need to do with livetype is make sure the stuff ends up in safe title.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

My Bad. You are talking about Nattress Standards converter.
I don’t have or use that. I have Film Effects and Bag of Tricks.
They don’t do 30p to 24p. The Nattress site says the
Standards Converter plug-in does that conversion.

But if you don’t have Standards converter you can load all the problem
clips into Compressor and batch all of them overnite. Now you have all
new clips to import and you could use them at all times in your
sequences, thus not having the match back problems you mention.
It’s nice to have a choice.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

Nattress won’t work in this situation.
Nattress will make 29.97 into 23.98, but not 23.98 into 29.97.
At least that what I saw when I tried it today for this post.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

Mark,
I just did a test. Here’s something that works.

To test this do this export one of your clips with a pan in it:
From FCP, file-export-quicktime movie-current settings- do not make
self contained.

Take this file and drop it into compressor.
Go to settings, Apple-other workflows-advanced format conversions-
standard definition. Drag the setting you want ( I used 8 bit uncompressed
for my test)
Now go to the inspector, frame controls.
Frame controls ON
Deinterlace BEST
Rate conversion BEST
100% of source.
Don’t Save As, just go back up to the control area where your clip is and
touch the rectangle that says your format of choice. Hit submit.
Hopefully you have Compressor set up to use all 8 of our cores
if so it won’t take long, otherwise it will take a bit to process.

Drop the resulting file into your SD, 29.97 timeline of the same format you asked
Compressor to make. You should see a very smooth pan.
I just did a test using DVCPRO HD 720p 23.98 footage and it worked great.

And I know exactly what you mean when you talk about what it looked like
when you dropped the original 23.98 clip onto an SD 29.97 timeline.
It would look like crap. What I’m telling you to do above should look
very good.
Let me know.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

If I were you I wouldn’t be having FCP do any bars/tone/countdown.
Put that on your sequence, starting at 59;00;02.
(I start all sequences at 58:45:00 for room for all that before the show at
01:00:00:00).
You assemble at 59:00:02 on the tape and all FCP is doing is
laying down your sequence. Have you tried that?
Maybe it won’t make a difference but it’s worth trying.

Dan