Don Greening
Forum Replies Created
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[CaptainMench] “you just click and drag the eyedropper around the color space you want to isolate and FCP will pick up all those color shades.”
That’s very good to know and is a huge tip. Thanks for posting that, Cap’n.
– Don
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Connect your laptop to camera via firewire, then connect the camera to the TV via S-video or RCA video, go to audio/video settings in FCP and select DV NTSC firewwire out. Now you’ll see and hear your timline on your TV.
– Don
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[L Dee Johnson] “What is the best quality audio format for CD? AIF?”
An .aif file is what you want for a CD. Down convert your .aif file from 48Khz to 44.1 Khz before you burn your audio to your CD. 44.1Khz .aif is the CD standard. You can do this little job using iTunes.
[L Dee Johnson] “It happens to be a section that I took into Soundtrack Pro for modifying”
Try exporting your Final Cut Pro audio tracks as a stereo self contained QT file. Import that into Soundtrack and make your mods. Do a “Save As” in Soundtrack with a different name. Call it “My Project_mod” or something, just to differentiate it from the original unaltered file. Import your new file into FCP, sync it with your original tracks then mute all the original tracks, leaving only the modified stereo track. Then you can export the audio along with your video, or whatever else you need to do with it.
If you have a problem trying to find your missing voice audio you can always drag your source tape from the browser into a new track in the timeline.
Hope this solves things for you.
– 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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There’s a free highlight/shadow plugin at http://www.lyric.com that might do the job for you. Down at the bottom of this page:
https://www.lyric.com/fcp-plugins/index.htm
Use sparingly for best results.
– 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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Unless you have a lot of comps and graphics in your timeline then exporting your project with any codec other than the one you captured with will not change the quality. For example, if you captured your PD150 footage using the DV NTSC codec then that’s what you use to export for DVD.
If you have a fair amount of graphics mixed in with your footage then you will see a quality difference (for just the graphics) by using something like uncompressed 8 bit or photo JPEG. Then, of course, you’ll have to render all the DV footage in your timeline to the new codec before export.
– 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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[DerekKent] “does the GL2 simply not have memory for its settings? or do i have something set improperly?”
Hi Derek,
Mine does the same thing, so it must be an inherent weakness of the breed. If you’re thinking it might be time for a new memory battery, if your custom preset settings are retained but your shooting mode/aperture settings are not then I would suspect that there’s really not much you can do about it. Previous white balance setting is not retained either, which is a bit of a pet peeve of mine with this camera. However, I have found that if you take the lens cap off before you fire up the GL2 the aperture settings will be much closer to the proper exposure. So at least that’s something.
– Don
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[Jon Jay] “Does this help to isolate the problem?”
Yes it does.
Try these steps:
Export from FCP as self contained with compression markers. These markers are automatically generated within FCP for every transition and fade. These markers aren’t visible in the FCP timeline but they’re there. These markers tell Compressor or DVDSP to pay special attention to the transitions/fades and results in much better mpeg2 quality in those areas. Just a side note: If you export with compression markers the resulting QT .mov file will have a visible text track at the top of the frame. Don’t worry about it because it won’t be visible in the final mpeg2 product. You can always make it invisible anyway in QT Player by unchecking the text track box in the “show movie properties” window.
Drag your self contained .mov file into Compressor and encode using one pass CBR setting with a constant bit rate of 6.5. w/ motion estimation at best quality. The 2 pass VBR setting in Compressor 2 is buggy and a lot of people are having problems with it. Apple knows about the bug. I’m pretty sure that DVDSP 4 will use the same encoding engine that Compressor 2 does, and using Compressor 2 instead of DVDSP 4 will give you better control over the encoding process. You can always try an encode with both programs to check for any differences in quality.
If you’re not used to exporting the audio from FCP seperately for encoding as an .ac3 file then you should look into doing so for various reasons, not the least of which is having more DVD space for video content because of the smaller audio file size. The other big plus is that some consumer DVD players will sometimes choke on the large file sizes of .aif or PCM audio.
Try the above suggestions one at a time on a test piece of video to see what happens to your problem transistions.
– 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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[Glenn] “Anyway, if I am on FCP 4.5, where should I be with Quicktime? I had heard that 7 was problematic. . .”
QT version 6.5.2 for use with FCP 4.5
– 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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Hi Jon,
Does the QT movie you exported from FCP have the same transition issues, or is it only after encoding to mpeg2 that they happen?
Did you export the movie from FCP with DVD Studio Pro markers or Compression markers? You can’t use both but I’m just wondering if you used either of these two choices.
What were the encode settings you used? 1 pass CBR or 2 pass VBR?
What is your version of DVDSP? If using Compressor, what is the program version?
Did you use Compressor for your encode or did you just import the movie into DVDSP and let that do the encoding?
Did you export your movie from FCP using the “Export using Qucktime Conversion” command?
As you can see, there are many things that can contribute to DVD issues.
– Don
“Please take a moment to fill out your profile, including your computer system and relevant software. Help us help you.”