Don Greening
Forum Replies Created
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[Jaap Verdenius] “In FCP 6 you can create a new sequence and have FCP adjust its settings on the first time you drop a clip into it – it will show a message box.”
……or you can set the audio playback preferences to lower quality. Doing this will allow a mismatched sample rate to play back in your current sequence. You can change this setting by going to the Final Cut Pro menu and clicking on “User Preferences”. Set the audio playback quality to “Lower (faster)”.
When it’s time to render your project prior to export FCP will automatically upconvert the audio to 48k. Hit “Cmd -R” to render all. FCP will render the audio after it’s done the video.
As with most things to do with Final Cut Pro, there are several ways to achieve the same goal. It all depends on how you like to work.
– Don
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Any BPAV folder must be contained within another folder before the Transfer Tool will see it. You can name the folder that contains the BPAV folder anything you want but the actual BPAV folder name cannot be altered or the Transfer Tool won’t see it. Start the Transfer Tool and navigate to your BPAV folder by clicking on the “Add” button at the bottom left of the Transfer window. When you get to the container folder that you’ve named click on it but don’t open it. The Transfer Tool will “see” the BPAV folder inside and start to display your clips.
– Don
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While you’re waiting for an answer you’re invited to read a previous discussion thread on this very article:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/142/860882
– Don
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[Craig Seeman] “Basically angle remains constant relative to frame rate. With fraction you need to remember to change it manually to the new fraction. “
This is a really important consideration. Thanks for pointing that out, Craig.
– Don
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[Dewayne Rudd] ” or can you suggest a third party software program that might be able to locate the clips?”
Sure. If you have a copy of DiskWarrior it will find the existing directory on your G-RAID and build a new one from that plus anything else it may find. It may be that the clips are still there but not represented in the existing directory due to a corruption or whatever. I’ve never seen an instance of FCP or Sony Transfer Tool over-writing a clip name, essentially because each recorded clip has a unique filename. I’m not saying that it’s impossible that clips can’t get over-written, but I’ve been transferring EX clips for a year now and have never had this happen. If a hard drive’s directory loses information about a file, then it may indeed allow a clip with the same filename to be written to the drive and in the process destroy a file that the directory doesn’t know is already there.
At this point you don’t have anything to lose by running DiskWarrior and it may find what you’re looking for. Just don’t call your client first before you try DiskWarrior.
[Dewayne Rudd] ” And, the time was out of sequence…CD was shot after AB but is reversed after the log and transfer.”
This actually happens to me a lot, at least when I use the Transfer Tool. Sometimes, a few of the clips don’t display in a logical numerical way in the Transfer Tool window, but they’re always there somewhere. I’ve only got FCP v.6.0.2 so I’ve never used the new EX log and transfer option available within FCP so I can’t advise you there.
[Dewayne Rudd] “Maybe I’m blessed to have whatever footage I managed to bring home.”
I suppose, but with a proven workflow and an almost religious (read: obsessive-compulsive) way of organizing imported clips you should be able to keep everything . And start keeping your BPAV folders unaltered on another backup drive. Then, if FCP screws up or directories get corrupted you have your original “video tapes” to fall back on. With the Sony Transfer Tool you can navigate to your archived BPAV folders and transfer to .mov format just like you were accessing an SxS Pro card.
– Don
Addition: I just remembered that the EX camera’s file naming convention will at some point “roll its odometer” over and will start from square one again. So yes, you could observe the camera creating a duplicate filename in the future. I think it’s when you get to 10,000 clips or something. I forget the number. The fix is to create your own custom naming convention in-camera to avoid this potential disaster. Doug Jensen from Vortex Media talks about this on the EX DVD training series.
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I guess everyone’s been quite busy over the last couple of days, Stephen. Sorry about that. I think Sony’s reasoning behind providing a shutter angle option in addition to the usual shutter speed in the EX cameras is to accommodate those folks from the film world who feel more comfortable doing shutter adjustments with angles and degrees rather than the time value of shutter speed that video folks are used to.
An experienced film person is going to think: “Okay, in order to reduce motion blur when shooting 30p I need an angle of 144 degrees minimum.” They won’t think about the time value equivalent of 1/60th sec.
That’s just my opinion, anyway.
– Don
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[Dewayne Rudd] “Perhaps the question I should ask is, what is the correct workflow to download clips in the field so cards can be re-used on a ten day documentary shoot?”
The answer to this question is easy: you physically drag the BPAV folder from each full card to a uniquely named folder on your G-RAID. Then, using Sony’s Clip Browser software, you can view all your transferred clips without ever having to open Final Cut Pro or Sony’s Transfer Tool. Think of a BPAV folder as the new video tape. Bring enough hard drives to your shoot to store all the BPAV folders from all your cards over the length of your shoot. By copying these folders you’ve just future-proofed yourself in case you get someone with a Windows machine to do some editing with your clips. Once you’ve viewed the copied clips from an SxS Pro card to make sure they’re all there you can use your Macbook Pro to empty the card just by dragging that BPAV folder to the trash and emptying the trash.
It’s after you get back to the studio you can use either Sony’s Transfer Tool, or the Log and Transfer option in the latest version of FCP to actually transfer the clips and turn them into the MOV format that FCP uses to edit with. Viewing your clips with Sony’s stand-alone Clip Browser app is also a lot faster than having to transcode the files with FCP/Sony Transfer Tool before you can view your clips and then delete the BPAV folder from the card for the next recording go-around.
Oh, and welcome to Creative COW, Dewayne.
– Don
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[Shawndra Bateson] “The company that I got the camera from said that I should try a sbac US 10 Card reader, is this really necessary?”
Welcome to Creative COW, Shawndra
The Macbook Pro with the Express 34 slot is all you need. So, no you don’t need the reader.
The minimum software to make it all work with Sony’s Clip Browser:
Mac OS v.10.4.11 or better
Quicktime v.7.3.1 or better
Clip Browser v.1.00 or better
Sony’s FAM Driver (so your computer recognizes an inserted SxS Pro memory card as a device)Check your software and make sure it meets the above requirements. The fact that an inserted card is already recognized by your Mackbook Pro means you have the FAM driver installed and it’s working. I’m using Clip Browser v.1.00 but the basic functions of my version should be the same as Clip Browser 2. As soon as I insert a card into the Express 34 slot the card icon appears on the desktop. Then I start Clip Browser and everything is pretty much automatic: the software sees the card on the desktop and after just a few seconds all the clips start appearing in the main upper window. To the left is a smaller window with the Macbook Pro’s hard drive icon and the SxS card icon right below. If you don’t see those icons then navigate to your desktop within Clip Browser by using the “up arrow” tool directly above. Just mouse-over the tool icons and they’ll reveal what each one does.
Post back if you’re still having trouble.
– Don
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[Bob Jackson] “I did not monitor the audio thru headphone. Probably my big mistake……”
Yep. Unless you’ve got a sound guy doing the audio with a separate system, always monitor your audio with headphones. Glad you were happy with your moving pictures. Even now the EX quality still surprises me, too.
– Don
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[Peter Humble] “3. Once I’ve imported these files into FCP is it OK to grab the media from the scratch disc & copy to an external drive for back-up? Is that the correct method? “
Yes, this is what I do but keep in mind that the only way to work with these files in the future is to have the XDCAM EX codec for Quicktime residing on the machine you want to view the files with. The actual EX codec is part of FCP and not Quicktime Pro Player, or Sony’s Transfer Tool Software, etc. Only FCP.
In order to keep your native EX files as generic as possible in the future you should choose to copy the entire BPAV folder from the SxS Pro cards to a hard drive and don’t alter the folder contents in any way. That way both Mac and Windows-based editors will be able to convert the native EX .mp4 files to their own editing codecs sometime down the road. But if you think you’ll be the only one ever editing with your clips then don’t worry about it. Just select all your converted EX .mov files and copy them to another hard drive for archiving. There are several ways to store your backup clips and using dedicated hard drives is one of the more popular ways.
– Don