[David Johnson]

I do most of my effects work in After Effects before finishing in FCP so I’m not sure if there are FCP versions of these, but DigiEffects has one called Video Malfunction and Foundry Tinderbox has one called Bad TV … they’re both good.

[David Johnson]

In the comp window, you should just need to click off the mask once to deselect it, then simply click the vertex you want to select … I’m still on CS3 so I hope Adobe hasn’t made such a simple thing more complicated in CS4.

[David Johnson]

Are you working with footage of any kind of codec AE doesn’t like?

Courtesy of forum leader Mr. Dave LaRonde …

Dave’s Stock Answer #1:

If the footage you imported into AE is any kind of the following — footage in an HDV acquisition codec, MPEG1, MPEG2, AVCHD, mp4, m2t, H.261 or H.264 — you need to convert it to a different codec.

These kinds of footage use temporal, or interframe compression. They have keyframes at regular intervals, containing complete frame information. However, the frames in between do NOT have complete information. Interframe codecs toss out duplicated information.

In order to maintain peak rendering efficiency, AE needs complete information for each and every frame. But because these kinds of footage contain only partial information, AE freaks out, resulting in a wide variety of problems.

[David Johnson]

Select the mask vertex you want to be the starting point and select “make first vertex” from the dropdown menus at the top of the program window … I don’t recall off-hand which one its in, but it should be pretty easy to find.

[David Johnson]

Perhaps others might now, but I’m not familiar with “media holders” so it’s unclear what you need help with. Here’s the help for masks though:
https://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WSE8EFDE1F-4A15-4aee-B50A-56C1AB1AE05C.html

[David Johnson]

If its ok for the animation to be slightly faster, the simplest thing will be to nest the comp or rendered file into another comp by dragging either onto the “make new comp” button in the project window, apply time remapping to the layer, drag the keyframe that time remapping automatically makes at the layer’s out point to 5:18, change the comp length to 5:18 and render.

[David Johnson]

Is your timeline set at a different frame rate from what the footage was shot at?

[David Johnson]

Yes, it’s in the file menu and is called something like “collect project”.

[David Johnson]

Just chain a VHS deck through the inputs of your DV deck so you can take the signals coming into the DV deck out into FCP via firewire.

[David Johnson]

Well I gave it my best college try, but sorry I’m at a total loss now too … the facts that the tapes were shot on different cams and that you experience the same issues when trying to digitize from different decks and on different NLEs make it very much sound like a tape issue, but a batch of 25 brand new defective tapes is pretty rare … in fact, I’d be surprised if all 25 of those tapes even came from the same manufacturing batch.

Any chance the tapes were heat or moisture damaged? Just taking shots in the dark now, but I must say I’m very curious to hear what the issue turns out to be so please post when you figure it out.