Don Greening
Forum Replies Created
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This audio thing happens to me once in a while, too. Trashing the FCP preference files usually fixes it for me.
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/trashing_fcp_prefs.html
– Don
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Thank you Daniel and Craig for your responses.
[Daniel Low] “But you shouldn’t be using FCP to do delivery-style compression anyway.”
I’m not sure I understand why you would say this. There are many, many people that choose to export a final version of their project by using the command “Export Using Quicktime Conversion” within FCP. I’ve done this countless times with great results in order to keep compression stages to a minimum. Unless I’ve completely missed your point or something.
To Craig: I’ll continue to export for the web in H.264 and hope that web-based flash players will see the file as agnostic and play it without issue.
– Don
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Craig is extremely liberal with the amount of time he invests on this forum. He’s continuously impressing me. Thanks for your kind words, Bill.
– Don
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[David Ashley] “1. How much memory per hour of footage this will this take up?”
Approximately 15 Gbytes per hour. If you have 180 hours to shoot you’ll need approx. 2.7 – 3 Terrabytes of storage depending on what shooting mode you’re using.
[David Ashley] “2. How long this footage will take to transfer and digitize at the end of my shoot? “
The fastest way would be to use a Macbook Pro with an Express 34 slot. Insert the SxS Pro memory card into the slot and transfer to an external FW 800 hard drive. An hour of footage can be transferred in 5.5 – 6 minutes. BTW, you’re already shooting digital so you don’t have to “digitize” anything when transferring (my pet peeve).
Keep in mind that this 5 and a half to six minutes transfer time is from personal experience but is just to drag and drop the BPAV folder from a SxS Pro card to an attached hard drive. To do this transfer properly you should use Sony’s Clip Browser to do the transfer with CRC checking enabled. This will extend the time it takes to copy. This time estimate also does not take into consideration the time to import the clips from a copied BPAV folder and re-wrap the clips into something you can edit with in your particular NLE. This will also increase your transfer times.
Good luck on your project.
– Don
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[Mark Raudonis] “I was disappointed however, that nowhere in this entire document is any reference to the classic “Off-line to online” workflow.”
Unless I’ve completely missed your point about your statement, the author may have assumed that working “offline” may serve no useful purpose these days with less expensive available storage. When you consider that the only viable “offline” codec with less storage requirements than the EX 35 VBR setting would be DV25 most users wouldn’t be able to justify the time to down convert just to save maybe 35% on hard drive space. I would have to agree with that logic.
– Don
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Andrew,
The only way your students will “get it” is if you compare the BPAV folder to a video tape. Ask your kids if they would throw a video tape away after they’ve captured it to a hard drive via an NLE. When they say no then impress upon them that the BPAV folder is the the EX camera’s video tape.
– Don
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Go to your sequence window. Just underneath the tab that shows the name of your sequence look for the “RT” tab. Click on that and in the pop-up window set it to “Unlimited RT” from “Safe RT.” Then set the playback video quality and the playback frame rate both to “Dynamic.”
Also make sure that your sequence settings match your clip properties exactly. For example if your HDV clip properties are HDV 1080i with a pixel aspect ratio of 1440×1080 anamorphic then you must create your sequence with those same settings, otherwise you’ll be asking FCP to play back your clips using a different setting. This can be problematic with less powerful processors such as those in your G4 Powerbook. Also, turn off the warning that pops up if your system drops frames during playback by going to the user preferences within FCP. Uncheck the box next to “Report dropped frames during playback.”
See if you can now play back your video clips without having to render first.
– Don
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In order to have the best Blu-ray encode you’ll want to shoot the highest quality picture you can afford. In your case you have access to an EX with the 35 VBR HQ 1080 setting. I would use that.
– Don
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[Frank Manno] “a friend of mine who shoots on an EX-1 and is doing some investigating is telling me that full HD plays back at 35 megabits per second and a blue ray will only encode to 25 megabits per second. “
Your friend is assuming that because the EX can record at 35 Mbits per second you’ll lose something if Blu-ray is restricted to playing back @ 25 Mbits per second. Do I have this right? So what would your friend think if you were to tell him that some cameras record at a data rate of 50 Mbits per second. Would your friend assume that half of the resolution would be lost with a Blu-ray version of the footage? What about cameras like Panasonic that shoots DVCPRO HD with a data rate that exceeds 100 Mbits per second. Is 75% of that now vapor-ware once it’s encoded to Blu-ray? The short answer is no because your friend is attempting to compare two different technologies.
Standard definition formats such as MiniDV (25 Mbits per second) and DVCPRO 50 (50 Mbits per second) have been encoded to DVD for years using MPEG2 bit rates as low as 3.5 – 8 Mbits per second with no appreciable loss in picture quality as long as a good encoder is being used and the operator knows how to use it.
The same rules apply for Blu-ray encoding.
– Don
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Hi Michael,
I’ll be using Apple’s Compressor to encode for Blu-ray. Apple doesn’t have anything that can actually burn Blu-ray discs yet but Compressor can encode for Blu-ray. You can’t test drive a Blu-ray disc on an Apple computer yet, either. You need a set top Blu-ray player for that.
I have no idea how Media 100 works for exporting but if you can export your timeline as a self-contained movie then you can use Toast 9 or the new v.10 to encode your project to either of the two Blu-ray formats: MPEG2 or H.264.
– Don