Debe
Forum Replies Created
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Good point, Walter.
Part of it is because my mentor and a big reason I’m even still in the business after the recession owns that room downtown. If I ever have the budget to really finish in HD or even uncompressed SD, I’d like to share some of the bounty with him. If it wasn’t for him, I’d likely not have the clients I have.
Also, I work out of my home when I’m using my system. There is a limit to what I’d expect clients to “put up with” if we were finishing something really high end. My three cats come to mind. The atmosphere downtown is much more “professional”.
I’m low overhead, and I don’t make any excuses for that. I don’t want to compete with a full-blown suite/post house. Many of my clients come to me with budgets they couldn’t get done at the place downtown. Since I have lower overhead, I don’t have to charge as much. As long as they are comfortable with the fact that the resolution will never be better than DVCam, and my client services is limited, I’m happy to oblige. My nigh-on 14 years pro experience tells them I can give them a good-quality product for the money at my place. The only difference is the final format.
You make a very good point, though, Walter, and perhaps someday I’ll have to reconsider my position in the local market. But for now, my invoicing goes up and up and UP every year, and my projects keep me happy, creatively challenged, and I get enough free time to do things like go to NAB & MacWorld!
debe
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It’s not a dynamic thing. It has to be a manual process. You have to import all the new stuff separately. FCP doesn’t directly talk to the Finder like that.
You could go to the Apple website and make a feature request. There’s always FCP 6!
debe
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Good to be reminded about Channels 3&4.
I’m looking into this deck because I occasionally get Digital Betacam and BetaSP sources that I normally have to send out to be dubbed to DVCam. I currently only own 2 different DVCam decks. I’m not looking for the I/O capacity, I’m looking for the ability to access these formats.
But thanks for the reviews, Jan & Paul!
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Sorry, I realize I should have marked this “OT”.
I didn’t want to post it anywhere else, because I want to know how it works with FCP. I don’t have any use for information on how it works with Vegas on a PC, for example!
Thanks again!
debe
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FCP and Avid are very different animals. Avid requires you to make everything an Avid media file in order for Avid to use it. FCP does not. FCP can see and access a wide variety of formats. That being said, not all formats are optimized for FCP.
This flexibility makes the user more responsible for media management than with an Avid.
Once you get the hang of it, it won’t be that big of a deal to you anymore, and you’ll likely appreciate the little things this flexibility offers, like being able to use photoshop documents that are larger than raster natively. You can’t do THAT on an Avid!!
debe
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Oh, and the keyboard layout will also give you the shortcuts in keyboard form. If you have show tool tips enabled in your user preferences, and you hover your mouse pointer over a key, it will tell you what the tool icon is.
debe
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maurieketje-
Try OPT+J. That will give you a list of every possible command FCP has. Those that are already assigned will have their keyboard shortcut listed on the side. Those that aren’t already assigned you can assign yourself under Tools>Keyboard Layout>Customize. You can also reassign the factory default ones if you really want to.
Just back up the customized layout, because a good ol’ trash preferences will wipe out your customizations and you’ll have to rebuild them!
debe
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Dave–
Try a complete shutdown of everything.
Then power up in no particular order, except make sure you power up the CPU last.
Try again.
I’ve had similar issues happen on site, and only a restart has fixed it.
debe
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LCD’s are not ready for prime time when it comes to color reproduction. You really can’t color correct accurately on an LCD yet.
If he/she doesn’t care about accurate color reproduction, then an LCD is fine.
A better solution is a CRT for you on or near your desk, and an LCD for him/her that is set at least 8 feet away from the edit desk.
Director’s shouldn’t get to make decisions about gear, unless they’re writing the check. You need what’s best for you, not what he/she thinks would be nifty. An LCD is nifty, but not reliable for color reproduction.
debe
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Unless she wants to reshoot, the only other option I can see under the conditions you have outlined is to put the titles at the top of the screen on those extreme CUs. Hopefully there’s more room between title safe and the person’s eyes.
She shot it that way. There’s no more real estate on the screen. She made a mistake when shooting that you can’t fix given her constraints on you. If she would have been thinking about the entire project when she shot instead of trying to get a “cool shot”, she may have realized that the cool shot would wreak havok on her ability to subtitle without destroying the cool shot.
Therefore, the cool shot isn’t so cool.
If you can find a diplomatic way of telling her this, try. Otherwise, take what money she gave you and run after this is over. Unless she can learn from her mistakes, you don’t want to go through this again. Because you are asking for advice here in the manner that you are, it seems that she is incapable of seeing that this is because of her mistake in the field and expects you to just “fix it in post”. You don’t want a career of that!
Just my 2