Don Greening
Forum Replies Created
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[Danrnw] “Stacking and syncing video tracks
is now something you only need to do for effects creation.
No ?”Correct. Sort of. In our business we do training seminars, etc. and I need multiple wireless audio tracks to be in the timeline for the final mix, including ambient sound from the on-camera mics for boosting purposes during Q & A sessions. So…..with that in mind I bring the footage from all the cameras (3) into the timlline on tracks V1 V2 V3, sync them, make a muliticlip, put that on V4 then mute the multiclip audio. I’m left with all my audio and one muliticlip which I edit in RT. Works for me.
– Don
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[Matthew Ingram] “do the 3ccds and the pseudo-progressive scan really make a difference when it comes to keying?”
The XL2 has true progressive scan CCDs, not ‘pseudo’ progressive scan. You must be thinking of the XL1 and XL1S series. And yes, using a 3 chip camera over a single chip would make a substantial difference to your keying. It’s actually more of a challenge to do an HDV key because of the reduced 4:2:0 colour space and MPEG2 compression, although the result can be as good as or better than the DV25 NTSC variety if you know what you’re doing.
– Don
“Please take a moment to fill out your profile, including your computer system and relevant software. Help us help you.”
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[Danrnw] “Yeah, you don’t put cameras on 4 different tracks anymore.
That’s SOO version 4.5 :)”……unless you want to have the audio tracks from all your camera angles audible at the same time.
– Don
“Please take a moment to fill out your profile, including your computer system and relevant software. Help us help you.”
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[santellavision] “Is there a way to make the 30″ the main and the 23″ the 2nd?”
Sure. In the Dock go to: System Preferences>Displays. In the window go to ‘Arrangement’ and drag the white menu bar from your 23″ over to the 30″.
– Don
“Please take a moment to fill out your profile, including your computer system and relevant software. Help us help you.”
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Try trashing the Compressor preference file then attempt another FCP export. Here’s the path to the file:
Macintosh HD>Users>”yourname”> Library>Preferences>com.apple.compressor.Compressor.plist
– Don
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[paulmc] “If I use the 16:9 setting on Compressor to make the DVD, it looks stretched and wrong.”
If you want to ultimately end up with a full screen movie then you work in a 4:3 sequence within FCP just like you’ve been doing. I don’t understand why you’re applying a letterbox mask to your stills, though. Would that not make your stills even shorter than they need to be for a 4:3 picture? I would think that you’d need to crop the sides of your stills to make them fit rather than the tops and bottoms. Unless you really mean that you’re applying a pillarbox mask to hide the sides of the stills, and not a letterbox mask.
If your XL2 footage is 16:9 you’ll be cropping the sides when you drop them into the 4:3 sequence, which is okay as long as there’s nothing in the cropped areas you need to keep.
Export your timeline as a 4:3 QT movie and go through the entire Compressor and DVD authoring process with the 4:3 fullscreen preset. Your finished DVD should play fine on your widescreen TV as long as you’ve selected the 4:3 viewing aspect ration on your TV’s remote.
More info here:
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/faking_it.html
– Don
“Please take a moment to fill out your profile, including your computer system and relevant software. Help us help you.”
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[clueless] “Is this procedure abrasive hence the warning?”
Absolutely. Keep a head cleaning tape in your bag and use it only if you get a head clog during a shoot. Otherwise don’t use it at all. Take your camera to an authorized repair facility and have the heads and tape transport professionally cleaned. How often you do that depends on your usage.
– Don
“Please take a moment to fill out your profile, including your computer system and relevant software. Help us help you.”
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[Keely72] “and a Network Startup with a question mark. Should I select that?”
No. A Network startup disc is not an external hard drive. If your external drive has OSX on it and is bootable then it should show up in the startup window along side your Macintosh HD and the network startup icon. So there should be 3 things in that window. If your external drive isn’t showing up there then there’s either something wrong with the drive connection or the OS you installed on that drive isn’t installed properly. I’m assuming your 150 Gig external drive is a firewire drive and it’s alreaady been formatted in Mac OS Extended. Having a bootable external drive is a common practice, so there’s something not quite right with your system at the moment.
– Don
“Please take a moment to fill out your profile, including your computer system and relevant software. Help us help you.”
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[chokecherry] “I’m willing to redo it all, but How do I do the conversion?”
Compressor 2 will do the conversion for you or you can buy something like the Nattress Standards Conversion filter for FCP that’s available here:
https://www.nattress.com/Products/standardsconversion/standardsconversion.htm
You didn’t say where you’re located, but I’d recommend your final output be the same as your country’s video standard. If your footage is interlaced then you’ll be safer keeping it the same throughout your workflow. There are better de-interlace plugins available than the one that comes with FCP but then again it’s more money.
Yes, it is better quality-wise to crop your 16:9 footage to the 4:3 aspect ratio than to go the other way. Make sure you’re not cropping anything important at the sides of the frame when doing this.
– Don
“Please take a moment to fill out your profile, including your computer system and relevant software. Help us help you.”
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Check to make sure that the drive you’re trying to copy to isn’t formatted for a Windows machine. If it is you’ll still be able to copy files over to it, as long as the individual file sizes aren’t larger than 4 GBytes. If the drive was formatted by an earler Windows machine the maximum file size drops to 2 Gbytes.
If you need to cut up the files you can use FCP’s Media Manager to do this, or just export the files from FCP in smaller sizes. The average is roughly 1 Gbyte for every 5 min. of DV25 footage. Higher rez clips will see a jump in file size.
Hope this helps.
– Don
“Please take a moment to fill out your profile, including your computer system and relevant software. Help us help you.”