[David Bogie]

Is this recent?
Did it work a few days ago?
Canons are notorious around here for Firewire issues so are you certain it’s on the mfr’s list of approved input sources?
Is there an auto-power saving protocol running on the camera that might be causing it to drop the connection?

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

I have opened a dozen FCP4+ projects into FCP5, all perfect performers.
I did, however, make a duplicate copy of the project BEFORE doing so.

I also copied every pre-FCP5/DVDSP4/Motion2/LT+ project file I could locate and moved them to a DVD.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

Welcome to the family. What’s an Avid?

Your system isn’t working for several reasons, most of them appear to be user-based form your descriptions. Why did you make such a huge transition without testing it to see if you really wanted to risk everything? It’s difficult to debug and reconfigure a system that has already been delivered, far easier to blame Apple.

You’ve got lots to learn and this is a pretty good place to start, we’ll offer what assistance we can. Your ten years of Avid experience aren’t going to help, they inhibit your ability to appreciate your new tools by obscuring your objectivity with unattainable expectations.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

[Les Kaye] “1-Can a transition have a custom rate as in Avid – i.e. 3 frames on the outgoing & 7 frames on the incoming? If not, any suggestions?

What’s an Avid?

Place each clip on a separate track and apply different fades. That’s the only way. You’re not going to like how FPC treats transitions at all but you get used to it.

2-Am I correct that muting a video layer removes a render involving that layer? Are there workarounds for this – apart from rendering when completed? Since I’m working in HD all the time, I sometimes need to mute a layer for performance factors.

I have been screaming about this for years. It’s insane from the user’s POV and it’s stupid programming. But, no, the only workaround is to nest the layers. It’s in the manual under “preserving renders.”

3-Although Motion has the LiveType fonts library, and a LiveType project can be imported into Motion, can the TEXT of a LiveType project be EDITED in Motion (I have a feeling not).

Dunno, when you find out let the rest of us know. I think you can set LT items to open LT as the external editor.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

If they are independent.
The family relationship of clips is a bizarre affectation of FCP. I’ve never used Avid so I cannot tell you if there is an analogue that might help you understand the relationships. See kenstone.net for an article on the family of clips introduced in FCP4.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

Use your own judgment, why would you follow anyone’s advice around here? We all have different systems, different competencies and widely differing project management theories.

My upgrade to Tiger and the new suite was a long process but I’m enjoying tons of new tools, especially in DVDSP4. Tiger is a fabulous environment.

Use your head, run your backups, study the warnings in the various groups and move when you’re ready. If you can afford the upgrades, waiting beyond what is reasonable to finish your current projects and backup your system is silly. But that’s just my opinion and I wouldn’t listen to me if I was you.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

[Mike] “If you upgrade your os to 10.3.9, it will force you to upgrade your Quicktime to 7 or you can not play a Quicktime file. If you have Quicktime Pro 6, you will essentially lose your Pro application by upgrading to 10.3.9.
Apple currently has no fix. My FCP lab’s workflow is deadd in the water.
“

I’m not sure what your precise issue is but there is nothing to be afraid of if you read the fine print and keep your cool.

The panic over 10.3.9 and QT7 is many weeks old and the weird situations were not universal.

We successfully ran the 10.3.9 upgrade on two FCP4.5 systems and never had a peep out of QT6.5+. We did not upgrade to QT7 till we went to Tiger and we didn’t go to Tiger till we had the FCP5 upgrades in-house so we could install the Pro thingy.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

James, welcome tot he family! There are hundreds of disaffected or economically determined former M100 users here. Take you time, forget the simple elegance of M100 and learn to love the complexity and illogical workflow FCP will force you to use. You will get over the hump pretty fast, only takes a few weeks for you to unlearn your old keyboard shorties.

You’re going to hate FCP and then you’re going to love FCP and wish you had made this decision three years ago.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

TIF isn’t a motion format so FCP is calculating every frame.
You’ve built yourself a bit of a monster. You can pre-compose or nest some of your tracks, render them, and import them as movies. This will eliminate almost all of your preparing video waits. But not all. You can get those in long projects no matter what format and codec you’re using. I try to keep my projects under 20 minutes or break up the longer ones into 10-15 minute reels.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

[CharlieX] “We’ve always had problems with graphics in DV. Even in FCP 4.5. Same solution – set fields to ‘None.’ But then, of course, any speed ramps in your timeline look horrible. I was hoping FCP5 solved this – but I guess not.Double check that FCP didn’t automatically set your graphics to 98.76% size. I’ve had it do that many times before (no apparent reason) which was causing some soft looking video.”

The auto-scale was usually a user issue, wrong pixel aspect ratio.

This “HUGE bug” is a new issue. AFAICT, it still only affects some users on some systems. The traffic on the subject is hot and cold on most of the other FCP forums. Over on apple.com, the buzz on buzzing and improperly rendering graphics and stills has diminished. This suggests the affected folks have found solutions or tolerable workarounds.

All I can tell you is that my imported photographs from Photoshop look fine. I have not gotten deeply into motion editing and
still images from video so I cannot confirm the problem on my G4-Tiger-FCP5 system.

I hope we all get it figured out soon.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”