Don Greening
Forum Replies Created
-
Andrei,
Although no one has mentioned it yet, why not meet in the middle of the formats and use DVCPRO HD 720? You could up convert the DVCPRO 50 stuff and it wouldn’t take as big a quality hit as it would with up converting to 1080. The XDCAM footage would easily down convert to 720 and still look great. By the time the final show hits the home viewer’s TV it’s just about all 720 anyway.
I recently had to up convert some SD progressive 16:9 footage to match with my 1080p XDCAM stuff. I dropped everything into a DVCPRO HD 720p timeline and I was pleasantly surprised at how well the SD footage looked. What did I use for the up convert? Apple’s Compressor.
– Don
-
[Tony Wash] “Okay guys, so I’m wondering if I need to upgrade my Final Cut Pro 6 to at least 6.0.2? It looks like the plug ins require at least that version to work, am I correct? “
That’s correct. Remember back in October when you first asked about the EX workflow? In that thread I gave you a list of minimum requirements to make it all happen on a Mac with Final Cut Pro. You can read it here:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/142/861082
[Tony Wash] “The camera is not in full auto mode and the shutter switch has been toggled to on. I’m at a loss…”
Okay. There must be a software glitch happening in the camera then. Go to the “Others” menu and choose “Reset All.” If that doesn’t work then pull the memory battery, put it back in and reboot the camera.
– Don
-
I just did a little test for you and turned my auto iris switch to on, pointed the camera to a table lamp then switched from -3 gain to 0 gain. My EX changed the exposure from F4.8 to F5.6 in about a half second. Automatically. The zebra bars present after the gain change were pretty much the same as before the change, telling me that the EX auto-iris function compensated adequately.
– Don
-
I’ve not had the opportunity to use Sony’s new log and transfer plugin for FCP but if it works the same way as the stand alone Sony Transfer Tool then every copied BPAV folder on your hard drive must be contained within another folder than you can name whatever you want. Once you’ve reached that folder by navigation within FCP it should see the BPAV folder inside your named folder and import the native .mp4 files, changing them to the MOV format in the process. At least that’s the way the Sony Transfer Tool does it and that also can work within FCP just like the log and transfer plugin does.
[Tony Wash] “Also, when I toggle the “shutter” switch on front of the camera it says “Cannot proceed” on the display… What’s up with all this?”
Try going in to the menu and finding what’s called the “Direct Menu”. There are 3 settings for this: All, Part or Off. Change it to “Part” and see if that allows you to now set the shutter switch to “On.”
– Don
-
[Michael Slowe] “Do these Blu-Ray players play standard DVD’s as well?”
Any BD player I’ve ever seen or read about are backward compatible and will play DVDs.
[Michael Slowe] “I heard that not only do they play them but they ‘upscale’ at the same time,”
I don’t know if any BD players also act as an upconverting DVD player. Going through the spec sheets on a few different ones may provide an answer. It sounds like a logical feature, though. Or it should be.
– Don
-
[Angela Zumbrum] “I am using Final Cut Pro 2.0”
Angela,
Any version of Final Cut Pro before v.5.1.4 is Power PC only and will not run on an Intel Mac, which is what your new Mac Pro is. Time to upgrade to Final Cut Studio 2.
– Don
-
[Tony Wash] ” I still can’t import my footage nor does FCP recognize my Ex-1 as an external device when I hook it up with the I-Link… Why is this?”
Because the iLink connection is not used to transfer files from the EX1, only USB. iLink is used to connect to an HDV camera or deck. Once you’ve connected camera to computer via USB your SxS Pro card(s) will show up on the desktop like an attached device.
[Tony Wash] “Also, if I am typically shooting 1080p24 what “Easy Setup” option should I be using? “
Choose: “XDCAM EX 1080p 24 VBR” from the Easy Setups menu.
[Tony Wash] “Also, I’ve been trying to manually adjust the shutter speed on the Ex-1 and it will not switch off “auto”.”
If the shutter switch is set to “off” then you’ll see “SHT OFF” in the viewfinder down at the bottom. On mine (and I just checked) my shutter switch is set to “on” and my viewfinder is displaying the shutter speed it’s currently set to, which is “1/60” at the moment. I don’t know what you’re doing wrong but the only time the shutter speed should display “SHT:Auto” is when you’ve got the magic button activated, meaning you’ve got the FULL AUTO button on the left side of the camera turned on and the green light is lit. If that’s the case, no amount of fiddling with the shutter speed in the menu will change anything.
You can also change the shutter speed in the Direct Menu by navigating to the shutter speed in the viewfinder/LCD display with the camera’s joystick. This way you don’t have to drill down in the menus.
– Don
-
[David Roth Weiss] “Don, are you drinking and editing at the same time again? “
That sure made my wife and I laugh.
I’ll try rendering some of the SD timeline and see if that gets rid of the pixelation issue. Thanks for responding.
– Don
-
You can actually use iTunes to convert your 44.1 audio to 48 if you want. Or just bring your 44.1 audio directly into FCP and it will play back without rendering if you set your audio playback quality to “lower” in the User Preferences tab. When you’re ready to output FCP will upconvert the audio to 48k when you render everything. To render video and audio all at once just select everything in the timeline (Cmd-A) and then hit Cmd-R to render all video and audio.
– Don
-
[Chris Babbitt] “Are you actually doing it successfully?”
I’m not jumping in until the new year. Just been doing my research, is all. I’ve decided I can’t wait for Apple any longer.
Here’s a step by step workflow in 2 parts, Chris:
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/taming_the_wild_blu.html
– Don