Don Greening
Forum Replies Created
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Try trashing your FCP preference files, restart FCP and then export your QT movies again. If you’re unsure how to do this here’s a link on how to do it the right way:
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/trashing_fcp_prefs.html
There’s also a freeware program available that does it for you called FCP Rescue. Just Google it and it’ll come up.
– Don
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[Kevin C.] “‘m shooting people, short scenes, what would you recommend for sharpness? minimum setting/mid level?
“Personally, I leave the sharpness at the default setting. Seems to work for me and I shoot mostly faces. Take it out and play with it. Experiment with the different settings and go with what looks good to you, and more imortantly, what looks good to your clients.
[Kevin C.] “sure, essentially, you are saying let the camera to it, don’t worry about it too much, and adjust to taste?
(checking the lcd). what do you use, manual, aperature or shutter priority?
“I don’t recall saying to let the camera do the exposre settings. I use the full manual setting for access to the exposure meter and zebra bars. Remember that the exposure meter will be displaying info about the total amount of light coming in. If you’re shooting people, for example, they may be underexposed even when the meter is telling you the picture is overexposed because of a lot of light coming in from a window, etc. So this is when you want to use zebra bars to get the right amount of exposure on the faces. For caucasian skin set the bars to 80% and increase exposure (lower F stop) until you start to see the bars being painted on facial highlights such as foreheads and cheekbones. For darker skin you need to set zebra bars higher, closer to 85-90%. The exposure meter will get you into the ballpark; the zebra bars will get you spot on. Looking at zebra bars all the time may be annoying at first because you’re not used to them, but they’re your absolute best friend.
[Kevin C.] “the db, then keep to minimum I take it 3.?
“If you don’t want to see picture noise you need to shoot straight up with no gain dialed in at all. Gain is for those situations where you don’t have control over your lighting. In low light situations adjust the iris first until it’s fully open, then shutter speed (don’t go below 60) then as a last resort you start cranking up the picture gain. In perfect world the lighting is controlled by you and then adjust the camera to take advantage of that. If you get it right people will look at your GL1 footage and ask if you shot the footage on film!
[Kevin C.] “and did the GL1 come with power adapter? I see a dc coupler but not adapter, unless I lost it.
“My GL2 came with a battery charger that doubles as a connection to house power. You should have a power cord that plugs into the wall and the other end plugs into the battery charger. the DC coupler should plug into the charger and then you’ll have power to the GL1.
Hope this has all made sense for you.
– Don
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I don’t use FCExpress so I don’t know what the “clip option” is. All I know is that log and capture isn’t an option with FCE and I use that all the time, even if I capture entire tapes to FCP in one shot. Log and capture is good if you have limited hard drive space and want to capture certain parts from the tape. Setting all the in and out points in FCP and just leaving the room for a while to get a coffee break is great for me. Everyone works differently, so whatever works for Tom Wolsky may not be the same as what works for you or me.
If you’ve plugged your camera into a different FW BUS on the back of the G5 than the one the FW drives are connected to, then you’re in for a surprise: it’s actually the same BUS. What you need to avoid capture problems is a separate firewire PCI card. You can get a good one from LaCie and it’s got 3 channels, meaning you can connect your 3 FW drives into it and they will be completely separated from your camera, which you keep connected to the G5’s regular FW 400 port. This is the way I’ve got mine set up and everything works great as far as capturing without problems. The LaCie FW PCI card is not expensive and will save you a world of grief.
– Don
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Cleaning the heads and tape transport should be done at regular intervals, even if you don’t have problems (read: preventive maintenance). I take mine into a local camera place once a year and let them do it. I don’t wait for tape dropouts to occur before I get cleaning done because it’s already too late and that important shot is now trashed. Keep that head cleaning tape in your camera bag and only use it in emergencies when and if a head clog crops up. Also follow the tape cleaning directions to the letter. Usually, a fast forward/rewind will accomplish the same thing as using a head cleaning cassette. I still don’t recommend using a head cleaner but keep it in your bag just in case.
The length of time between regular trips to the camera store to get the heads cleaned is directly proportional to the amount of time spent using the camera. When the heads are cleaned professionally they’ll also clean the entire transport system, lubricate everything and re-align the recording head(s) back to factory specs.
If you’re using the Maxells now without issue then you may as well continue. When you get head a service done you can decide then if you want to change brands or not.
– Don
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Self contained – meaning it will work on its own power but the light will attach to your camera’s shoe mount. I have a great recommendation but they’re not cheap. But they work fantastic(ly):
https://www.frezzi.com/micro-lights1.htm
I use the Frezzi Mini-Fill which is a larger piece than the one at this link. You can see the whole product line at the Frezzi website.
– Don
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[launch] “To your response how would one camera be able to receive all four lines of audio?
“If you’re referring to the mixer suggested, there are 4 mic inputs into the mixer and 2 outputs going to the camera from the mixer. If you’re referring to cameras that have 4 audio input channels, there are many. The Canon XL series of MiniDV camcorders is one example where you can record 4 audio channels at the same time with individual on-camera gain controls.
But as the other replies have pointed out, if you go the mixer route you’ll need to have a dedicated operator to ride the gain controls during the recording, as you will have enough on your plate just operating one of your cameras. If you decide not to use an inline mixer you can split the audio equally between your PD170 and the DSR250, thereby keeping all channels separate for editing individually in post. Both ways described have their advantages and disadvantages.
– Don
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When you open your QT movie go to the movie properties menu and then to the quality setting. Choose: video/high quality. Quicktime always defaults to a lower quality setting. Don’t ask me why. By the way, even though the QT movie is being viewed at a lower quality setting within Quicktime it will always be imported into your iDVD program at the high quality setting.
Find the location of your QT movie file and just drag and drop into iDVD.
– Don
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You probably will need to go self-contained on a light. Anything more that’s still compatible with the GL2 hotshoe and you run the risk of killing the camera battery right in the middle of something. Depends too, on how much of the wedding you want to light up. Are you talking ceremony or reception?
– Don
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[Kevin C.] “How important is setting date and time? Personally, I don’t really need it for myself, does it affect anything else? i.e. timecode…”
Not important. But personally, I would set the camera to the correct date and time. Who wants to look at the wrong setting every time you turn on the camera, plus if you use another one to do a two camera shoot it might be easier to sync up the different shots in post, or at least get you close, timewise.
[Kevin C.] “How do you all set your shutter/f stop. With still photography I use a handheld meter. Not sure how to go about it here.
“The GL1 (if it’s like the GL2) has a built in light meter. They’re called zebra bars. Get used to shooting with zebra bars activated and you won’t be overexposing anything. And don’t forget that if you use full manual setting you also get an exposure meter appearing in the top left of the viewfinder. Keep the square in the middle of the line, or slightly to the left of centre. If you’re unsure of how to access the above just look in your owner’s manual.
[Kevin C.] “What is db? manual says it is 5 gain values from 3-12. what is this? thanks.
“If you’re referring to picture gain, db is decibels……….like in audio. Increasing picture gain is like turing up the volume on a radio, only it’s to record a brighter picture in low light situations. Use spareingly. Any setting past +6 or 12 and you’ll start to see picture noise in the underexposed areas of your frame. Ugly. Better to use extra lighting instead.
[Kevin C.] “MOvie mode: I have read in past this give a more film-like look, but the manual just says it creates still frames better and mentions nothing about a film look. It even says to avoid if playback if don’t need to look at individual frames.”
Frame mode is Canon’s earlier version of progressive scanning as opposed to normal interlaced video. Frame mode is better if you want to grab pictures from video footage, but the picture resolution is less than shooting 60i (interlaced video). I heard somewhere that Canon’s frame mode res. is around 360 lines and normal 60i is 480. Something like that. If you don’t need to pull clean stills from the video stay with interlaced shooting with this camera.
[Kevin C.] “Sharpness level. Do you adjust this? Why would you want anything less than max sharp.
“Adjust sharpness to your personal preference. Depends on the subject matter, among other things. This is a big topic. Generally, if you want to get a nice soft look to your video you would turn down the sharpness a bit so it doesn’t look so edgy, e.g. closeups of faces or artwork, etc. Depends totally on what you’re shooting. Reducing sharpness will also help to get rid of the “jaggies” – ragged edges between differences in contrast areas. Like the edge of a white object with a dark background.
– Don
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If you post more of your system details it would be easier to diagnose your capture problems. I’m assuming that your using a firewire drive as a scratch disk? Is your camera on the same firewire BUS as your FW drive? If so, and there are other drives daisychained together on the same BUS that’s probably at least half of your capture problems right there. I also know that my GL2 is very possessive and does not like to share a FW BUS with anything else.
You should try to use your FCP3 for capture. It’s probably a more versitile program than FCP Express anyway, Consider the fact that FCPEx. will not allow you to log and capture like FCP3 will. That one difference is a huge time saver. If you insist on using FCPEx. for editing you could log and capture with FCP3 and then import the files into FCPEx.
– Don