[Dave Mac]

Thanks to Shane, David, and Arnie for the terrific info.

The main purpose of my post was to find a good enclosure for a friend, who has a MacBook with a large music library that he wants to take with him when he travels (~500 GB of Apple Lossless music files). So, for him, FireWire is the only real option. He balked at the prices for all of this (he’s a newbie to computers). However, I was able to have him buy two Maxtor/Seagate drives (in OneTouch 4 Plus enclosures). They have 5-year warranties. I had him put “taller” feet on the enclosures, so that the vent on the bottom is more open to air flow. At least he has a primary drive and one he’ll keep in storage as a backup. He realized that it’s taking him a lot of time to digitize his entire music collection of over 1800 albums/CDs.

Back to the Firewire enclosure issue itself. I did stumble across a good fan-based enclosure from MacGurus. The drive “tray” has a fan, as does the enclosure itself. Looks like a good compromise for someone who needs FireWire setup that’s robust.

MacGurus also sells a similar enclosure with a eSATA port. This would be a good choice to use with a MacBook Pro and a eSATA Cardbus card.

There are numerous choices once you consider multiple drive enclosures. Thanks again everyone.

-Dave

[Dave Mac]

Ryan,

Thanks for mentioning CatDV Pro. I have it and like it for asset management. However, it isn’t very good for doing verbatim transcripts. Annotations for clips are pretty well-supported, but for rapid-fire, timecode-based transcribing, it is not very productive/usable.

I wonder if Final Cut Server handles annotations, subtitles, etc. Anyone know about this?

-Dave

[Dave Mac]

Shane and Arnie…

Thanks for the info.

I had looked at the Rosewill enclosures, and others from OWC, G-Tech, WiebeTech, etc.

Other than the Maxx Digital combo unit that Shane recommended, I haven’t found an enclosure with Firewire that has a fan (for a single-drive unit). There are a few USB only models with fans, but they seem to be cheap (and don’t have Firewire).

Unfortunately, the Maxx Digital unit comes as a complete enclosure-drive unit. I wanted to source my drives separately. I sent a message to Maxx Digital asking if they would sell the enclosure separately (I haven’t heard back from them yet).

I may have to get a dual-drive enclosure, many of which come with fans…

So, the search continues. Thanks again for your help.

-Dave

[Dave Mac]

I would agree with others that FCP isn’t the best spot to do this kind of thing. However, FCP could be improved somewhat in terms of its ability to handle styled text better in its non-Boris text generators, which would greatly ease the import of transcript and subtitle text annotations (time-code based _styled_ text, directly importable into a text generator in FCP, or perhaps using Motion templates).

But, I digress…

The guy who makes Annotation Edit also makes Annotation Transcribe, which should do what you need. I do feel that the apps lack some UI polish (usability and intuitiveness), are poorly documented, and aren’t as easy to use as they should be. The import/export functionality of AE is terrific, but its use is somewhat counter-intuitive (needs a GUI re-design). There is no real help or decent tuorials for these apps.

Sublime seems to be a much easier tool to use, but it isn’t specifically designed for transcription work. Except for its limited output format choices, it is more pleasurable and efficient to use than AE. Sublime used in conjunction with Spherico’s TitleExchange tools is a very good combo.

However, I find that I like InqScribe the best, when considering price and functionality for time-code based transcripts. It’s a cross-platform app, if that’s a consideration. InqScribe also supports foot pedals, though I have been happy with keyboard shortcuts.

I also found that MovCaptioner was just too limited for this type of work. In fairness to the developer (a nice guy), this application is designed for creating quick and dirty subtitles, not for pro level transcription work. The looping feature of MovCaptioner is one of its best features.

Hope this info helps… Anything that can help with the verbatim transcription process for docs is a boon (oh, the joys of verbatim transcription of dialog… it has to be the most tedious part of filmmaking). 😉

-Dave

[Dave Mac]

paulos,

Since QT 7.1 came out, there has been a feature in the “pro” version of QuickTime Player (you should have the pro version if you have FCP). More clearly, QuickTime Pro should be enabled if you have FCP installed.

I am currently running OS X 10.4.11 with FCP 6.0.2 and QT 7.3 on a PPC dual G5.

If you open your QT movie file in QT Player, then select “Show Movie Properties” from the Window menu (or Command-J), you’ll see the tracks listed in the top portion with a set of tabs for controlling various settings below.

You need to select the “movie wrapper” track (usually the one with a Format of “-NA-” and a Name with the filename of the QT movie). Once you select this track, you’ll see a set of tabs in the bottom portion of the window, the last of which is Presentation. Click on this tab. Under the General settings, the last one will be “Conform aperture to.”

This is what controls how your movie is viewed. (As others have mentioned, you can mess with the scale settings of the Video Track, but it isn’t necessary.)

For a 16:9 video, if this setting is unchecked, you should see everything squeezed horizontally into a 4:3 frame. Likewise if you check it and select Classic or Encoded Pixels, you will get the same 4:3 look. With it checked and either Clean or Production selected, you’ll get a properly formatted video image (16:9). The Clean option crops a portion of the image (don’t know exactly how much), whereas the Production option shows the full image in the correct aspect ratio. When I check the setting it usually defaults to Clean (and then I change it to Production.

—–

As an aside, though related to viewing video in QT Player rather than in FCP, there is a preference setting in the General tab of the QT Player preferences (in the QuickTime Player menu, not in the Movie Properties window) to “Enable Final Cut Studio color compatibility” that, when enabled, is supposed to make the video gamma such that the video shown in QT Player will look like it does in FCP, etc.

Unless things have changed, FCP used to expect that the system display settings have a gamma of 1.8. So, if you’ve profiled the displays via the System Preferences, you supposedly can check this option so that your video looks like it does in FCP (provided you are not using a display profile with a gamma of 1.8, in which case there shouldn’t be much of a change).

In other words, FCP doesn’t use ColorSync (system display settings/profiles), but apps like Aperture, iMovie, iPhoto, and QT Player do. This is why I have hardware calibrated my displays with a gamma of 1.8 (so that FCP video looks as good as possible, considering video in FCP Viewer or Canvas windows are never going to look as good/accurate as on an external preview/broadcast monitor).

Hope this helps…

Best regards,

Dave

[Dave Mac]

A couple of helpful items:

– In Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), the included “Font Book.app” from Apple won’t print out a “font specimen” book, which seems to be what you want. In Leopard (10.5), Font Book will (supposedly) be able to print out font specimen books/sheets.

– Probably the best solution for printing out all sorts of different font samples/specimens is an application called “FontBook” (no space), which has been around longer than Apple’s Font Book. Look at macupdate.com or versiontracker.com for a link. It’s worth the smalll shareware fee.

-Dave

[Dave Mac]

Well, the following should help someone hopefully…

After much testing and checking (and re-installation of CS2), I discovered that the

“Use video alpha”

checkbox in the “Transparency & Gamut” Preference “tab” was checked.

On my system (dual 2.5 GHz G5 with nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL video card and a Blackmagic Decklink video I/O card), that setting stops transparency from working properly.

I don’t know if the Decklink card is a factor, or not.

[Dave Mac]

[davemcc] “So, to help minimize the disparity between QT Player and the Viewer in FCP, you would need to do a calibration of your computer displays using a gamma of 1.8 (and a color temperature of 6500K) to get the best results in FCP, preferably using a HW monitor calibration device (“hockey puck”).”

This statement is a bit misleading. Because FCP doesn’t use ColorSync profiles (system level color management) and QT Player does (as does Safari), you’ll never get the same QT movie to look the same in both QT Player and FCP.

However, doing a good calibration of your computer monitors should help make the video look closer (in FCP’s Viewer) to that shown on an external broadcast monitor. I was able to get a really close match when using a HW (and SW) calibration procedure.

[Dave Mac]

[Dale Launer] “I don’t think it is ProRes. In fact I KNOW it isn’t. I did the same thing with an uncompressed HD file – sure enough the gamma is different between the FCP and the QT.

So that’s the culprit. ProRes is innocent!

But something is askew. I’m going to try and see what my other rigs looks like – I have a dualie 2.5 G5 – I’ll give it a go tomorrow. “

Dale,

You are most likely correct that the issue isn’t related to anything within FCP 6. I am joining this thread a little late (it came back as one of my search results — I was trying to see if FCP 6 had changed in its use of the OS X system level color management).

If things haven’t changed since FCP 5, which appears to be the case, FCP 6 still doesn’t utilize system level (ColorSync) color management. This means that a monitor profile created for the Displays system preference isn’t really used by FCP.

Note that everything I am presenting has to do with the interaction of Mac OS X, FCP, and system level color management. It doesn’t apply to external broadcast monitors or to the video (signal) itself… 😉

FCP expects your monitor gamma to be set at 1.8. It internally adjusts the video images to display video at the proper gamma (see quote from Shake 4 manual at the bottom).

However, system level color management is used by other applications, such as QuickTime player. This would explain the gamma difference between viewing a QT movie in FCP (especially the Viewer, not necessarily the Canvas, as it displays lower quality) and QT Player. The difference in appearance will depend on your monitor gamma setting and how well calibrated your monitor(s) is(are), if at all.

I discovered this when using a HW monitor calibration device earlier this year. I decided to use a gamma of 2.2 in calibrating my monitor (to better match PCs, TVs, print work, etc.). After reading a bit about how FCP deals with system level color management, I discovered that FCP expects a monitor gamma of 1.8. I believe that the default “Cinema HD Display” profile uses a gamma of 1.8.

In my calibrating/profiling, I had discovered that my properly calibrated Cinema Displays (2 23″ ones of the newer variety) didn’t match my external broadcast monitor (which they never do exactly, but things were really different). I re-calibrated/profiled my Cinema Displays, setting the desired gamma to 1.8, and the results match surprisingly well with my external broadcast monitor.

So, to help minimize the disparity between QT Player and the Viewer in FCP, you would need to do a calibration of your computer displays using a gamma of 1.8 (and a color temperature of 6500K) to get the best results in FCP, preferably using a HW monitor calibration device (“hockey puck”).

Additionally, there is the “gamma quality” setting in FCP’s playback control preferences that affects the display of video within FCP. This feature apparently depends on the display card in your Mac. This is another variable that may be difficult to understand or control (display drivers, display card model, etc.).

Yeah, it’s a complicated mess… and we haven’t even touched on anything to do with gamma in the video signal (which isn’t really relevant here).

In summary, I guess the best practice would be to rely only on a well-calibrated external broadcast monitor (with proper setup, as applicable, and via proper HW connection). On your computer display(s), the only “close” enough way to see the actual look of video would be FCP’s Viewer, not QT Player. Neither should be used for a final/critical picture assessment, only a well-calibrated and properly calibrated external broadcast monitor.

I tried to avoid going into too much technical detail, in order not to mis-state things. For more information, I refer you to my primary references: Larry Jordan’s Web site (and newsletter — https://www.larryjordan.biz/) and Alexis Van Hurkman’s “Encyclopedia of Color Correction.”

Best regards,

Dave

From page 900 of the Shake 4 User Manual (available as a PDF from Apple):

Note: While it is possible to recalibrate Apple displays via the Display Calibrator
Assistant in Displays preferences, users should leave the gamma of their monitors to
the 1.8 Standard Gamma setting when working in Final Cut Pro. ColorSync settings are
not used by either Shake or Final Cut Pro for automatic color calibration or
compensation of any kind.

Gamma in QuickTime Movies
When importing a QuickTime movie created with Shake into Final Cut Pro, users may
notice a difference in the displayed gamma of the image. This is because Final Cut Pro
automatically lowers the gamma of sequences playing in the Canvas on your
computer

[Dave Mac]

[Ric Christoferson] “So my take on the install of FCS 2 is that the old soundtrack media is duplicated in a different location when the “Yes” button is checked…

and I will have to remove duplicate files by hand.”

I am not absolutely sure about this. On my system, this seems to have been the case. I would double-check it yourself.

[Ric Christoferson] “What about motion…

does FCS 2 remove old template and other files from older motion ???”

I’m not sure where the Motion content is stored.

-Dave