[Don Greening]

You might end up having to re-install Final Cut Studio in order to get your effects back. If you do, then use this utility to un-install first:

https://www.digitalrebellion.com/fcs_remover.htm

But if you have more time to investigate why some of your effects have disappeared I would suspect that it’s a maintenance problem with your laptop. Over time and without periodic maintenance some files may become “orphaned” and big programs will lose the ability to find things like plugins, etc.

Try using Disk Utility first and repair your startup drive’s permissions. Then use DiskWarrior to rebuild the directory on your startup drive. DiskWarrior is a great program that has righted a lot of wrongs with regard to reconnecting everything a program like FCP needs to function properly.

https://www.alsoft.com/

But if you’re in a hurry and don’t have access to DiskWarrior until Monday (when you rush out to buy it!!) then by all means re-install Final Cut Studio.

– Don

[Don Greening]

I don’t know if there’s that much of a difference quality-wise between the two methods. I got into the habit of just doing my fade ins and outs with keyframes and haven’t changed much. There are keyboard shortcuts for inserting keyframes without having to select the pen tool and doing it with the mouse, so I’ve stuck with doing it this way. With FCP there are always 4 or 5 ways of doing the same thing.

– Don

[Don Greening]

[Arnljot Bringedal] “NOw you have my attention: How can the sound device record the EX1 timecode?”

The original poster didn’t specify a particular camera like the EX1 but seemed to be referring to XDCAM in general.

– Don

[Don Greening]

[Mick Haensler] “Make sure you have the latest version of the software too. I just did my first EX project and was having issues until I got the latest which I think is 2.7 but don’t quote me. “

……unless the original poster is still using Tiger, then the most recent version of the Sony Transfer Tool will not work (so I’ve heard) and he’ll have to upgrade everything else, too.

I’m still on OS 10.4.11, Quicktime v.7.3.1, FCP v.6.0.2 and the original version of the Sony Transfer Tool. Everything works as it should. If it ain’t broke……:)

– Don

[Don Greening]

[Brian Cass] “Since I am not on an Intel system, I cannot use the browser software. But what else am I not doing here?”

You don’t really need the clip browser software to transfer files into FCP but you do need to install Sony’s transfer tool software. You can use it as a stand alone app or within FCP. The Sony Transfer Tool will convert the native EX MP4 files into MOV files, which is the the format FCP uses. The Sony Transfer Tool app is on the installation CD that ships with your EX1 or is available as a free download from Sony’s web site.

Launch the Sony Transfer Tool and navigate to the BPAV folder on your hard drive by clicking on the “Add” button at the bottom of the window. The BPAV folder MUST be inside another folder that you have named. Clicking directly on the BPAV folder will not work, so just open the folder that contains the BPAV folder. Then the transfer tool will “see” the BPAV folder. You’ll know right away because all your clips will appear in the Sony Transfer window. In Sony Transfer Tool preferences choose a destination folder. Highlight one or select all of your clips and hit “transfer” at the bottom right side of the window.

That should do it.

– Don

[Don Greening]

[Brad Jenkins] “does final cut put those compression markers regardless if I’m manually fading up and fading to black as well as the auto transitions in the effects tabs. “

Yes. It’s similar to an auto-scene detection feature. Sort of. FCP knows the picture has changed and will insert a compression marker.

[Brad Jenkins] “#2 how can I put the compression markers in myself for other problem areas?”

In the timeline position the playhead where you want to insert a compression marker. Hit “Command-Option-M”. In the dialogue box that pops up choose to add a compression marker. You can give the marker a unique name at the very top where it says marker 1.

– Don

[Don Greening]

[Brad Jenkins] “My question is, can changing any of the settings to something else help with the quality, expecially the dissolves and other transitions.”

Final Cut Pro will insert compression markers at every fade and transition. They are invisible but won’t get exported with your movie unless you choose to export with “DVD Studio Pro” markers. This choice will come up in the dialogue box when you export a Quicktime movie. You can also manually insert compression markers at the beginning and end of a problem area. This tells Compressor to pay special attention to those areas when encoding to MPEG2 for DVD.

[Brad Jenkins] ” would using the uncompressed settings for export, sequence, or capture help, even though the video is not uncompressed. Can I do that?”

Yes you can, but It wouldn’t make the quality of your DV NTSC video look any better. Editing or exporting with a higher resolution codec would only make a difference to any graphics in your timeline but the DV quality would be unaltered.

[Brad Jenkins] “And should i be checking the “Make movie self contained Box” on export? “

This choice is up to you. Exporting a reference movie results in a much smaller movie file size because the movie is “referencing” your original footage to create it. Your captured footage must remain on your media drives in order for this to work. Making a self-contained movie is pretty much self-explanatory: you don’t need to keep your original footage afterwards because a completely new file is created. Which way you choose to go is determined by whether or not you want to keep you original footage on your media drives after your QT movie is exported from FCP. You may be be limited by hard drive space in which case you would export a self-contained movie so you can get rid of the original footage afterwards. There’s no appreciable difference in quality between the two exporting options, although there’s a time difference. Takes longer to export self-contained.

– Don

[Don Greening]

Hi Ana,

You can try the following approach for the moment because you’re stuck with only one FW BUS. Connect your external hard drive to the Macbook Pro then connect your camera to the the hard drive. In a lot of cases the camera and the hard drive will fight for control of the firewire port but you won’t know until you try. I also have a Macbook Pro and have successfully edited DV stuff using this configuration. Some cameras are OK in this situation and some are not. Even though your Macbook has a FW 400 and an 800 port they still share the same FW BUS (highway) and having the camera and hard drive using the same path is not the recommended way to hook everything up.

What you need to edit smoothly is another FW BUS. You can buy a FW 800 card that slips into your laptop’s Express 34 slot:

https://www.sonnettech.com/product/fw800expresscard34.html

Then you can get a FW 400 to 800 adapter that allows you to connect your FW 400 external hard drive to the Express 34 adapter:

https://www.sonnettech.com/product/fw_adapter.html

Now connect your camera to the existing FW 400 port that your laptop came with (on the right side) and you’re good to go.

– Don

[Don Greening]

[Steve Wargo] “The clip was EX codec and pulled from the card, not the SDI port. “

That IS pretty amazing. Juan Martinez from Sony has always maintained that people trying to key with the 4:2:0 colour space from the EX1 won’t be disappointed.

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/142/856535

– Don

[Don Greening]

[Scott Sniffen] “What is the cloning step doing”

cloning is making an exact duplicate of your startup drive that is bootable, meaning that if after you’ve updated all your software on your REAL startup drive and things don’t work out you can always start up using the cloned drive and keep working like nothing ever happened.

[Scott Sniffen] “what do I do with the clone after updating the software? “

You don’t do anything except store the drive on a shelf in case you need to start up your Mac with it. The minimum requirements for an external startup hard drive is firewire 400. A USB drive won’t work.

Here are two popular cloning applications:

– Carbon Copy Cloner
– Super Duper

Both have freeware versions that will do what you want, which is to clone your startup drive.

– Don