[Don Greening]

I thought ‘Attack of the Clones’ was just a movie…..

[Don Greening]

The Sony DSR PD170 doesn’t have a 24p mode, so you better double check what the actual frame rate your footage is before you even start capturing in FCP or you’re going to have editing issues.

Compressor 2 apparently has the option to convert NTSC to PAL, or you can buy Graeme Nattress’s standards conversion plugin for FCP here:

https://www.nattress.com/standardsConversion.htm

– Don

[Don Greening]

Yes, lots of people have issues with 10.3.9 on the G5. The most stable version of Panther seems to be 10.3.8 for the G5s and 10.3.4 for the G4s. If you want to use FCP5 you might consider moving up to Tiger. Until reliability issues are resolved with the FCP5/Panther or Tiger combo I would have a firewire drive with FCP4/Panther 10.3.8 installed and 10.4 Tiger/FCP5 on your main startup drive. A lot of the trouble concerning new software is because recommended install procedures are not being followed by the user. Go to the Apple web site and read about upgrading and make sure you’re doing it the right way.

If you do a search in this forum you’ll also find lots of threads on this topic.

– Don

[Don Greening]

Try trashing your FCP preferences first. It certainly won’t hurt anything and may very well put things back to normal, espcially since you say you haven’t changed anything. You can also use the free program “Final Cut Pro Rescue” to do the job for you. Google it and you’ll find it.

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/trashing_fcp_prefs.html

– Don

[Don Greening]

No, this is not the first time Bruce has been the topic of conversation here @the FCP forum. It’s also generally perceived to be bad luck for anyone foolish enough to post any info about Bruce or his Yakdom.

– name witheld (and looking skyward)

[Don Greening]

Video IS photography. The difference is that you’re exposing 30 frames a second, whereas the still photographer is, well……..shooting less frames. Really, the same rules apply. So if your photographer friend is suggesting overexposing for a darker face then you should take her experience and recommendation to heart. Use your camera’s zebra bars and take some test footage if possible. You’ll soon find out what the correct settings are.

– Don

[Don Greening]

For me it brings up the response window with the quote all ready to go.

– Don

[Don Greening]

Hi Craig,

First of all I should say that I’m no expert by any means, especially compared to the rest of the folks in here. People like Graeme Nattress and forum moderators like Walter Biscardi are the ones whos’ opinions you should be waiting for. I just know what’s worked for me in the past and from what I’ve read.

Having said that, to keep your workflow time down to a minimum here’s what I’d do in your case. You want to shoot in 24p and output to DVDSP to create a 24 fps DVD. Following Graeme Nattress’ workflow from his article you’ve used the XL2 to capture 24p (not advanced) so you’ve got that part right. The reason for the red render bar in your timeline is because FCP has to add back the pulldown to display your footage correctly on a 30fps (29.97) NTSC monitor. Some faster computers can do this on the fly but some won’t because it takes a lot of processing power.

If you read my previous post to Jeff you need to create a custom capture preset because there isn’t one that has both 24p capture and anamorphic. The other thing is that you’re using the 10 bit uncompressed codec for rendering which is really going to slow everything down. If you have a lot of graphics as part of your timeline then you will see a certain amount of quality improvement in those by using 10 bit but from what I’ve been able to read there will be no difference in the video quality. So….using the same timeline codec as the one you captured with seems to be the way to go to keep your editing time managable.

In order not to see any letterboxing in your footage you need to create the custom capture preset AND a timline set to anamorphic as well. In the viewer or canvas windows you shouldn’t see any letterboxing at all because those windows will automatically configure themselves to 16:9 aspect ratio. The same thing should happen when you see it on your 16:9 external editing monitor.

Read Graeme’s article about this topic. Just delete where it says DVX100 and insert XL2. The workpaths are identical. There’a also a section on creating a 24p DVD using DVDSP. A veritable gold mine of info.

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/24p_in_FCP_nattress.html

Or you can wait until tomorrow when Walter and Graeme will be back and cruising this very forum.

– Don

[Don Greening]

Hi Richard,

Your setup is similar to my own. I’ve found that the most stable version of OSX for us G4 users is 10.3.4. I have a seperate firewire PCI card (LaCie) for my external FW drives, and this is to keep my camera/deck on it’s own FW bus. Sometimes communication problems surface with having your capture source and firewire drives on the same FW bus.

I also know that iMovie and FCP capture video differently, although I’m not sure of the differences at the moment, so this may be why the iMovie capture works for you and FCP doesn’t.

Anyway, albeit slow compared to the G5’s, my current system is rock solid and never crashes. Sometimes FCP will start running more slowly during heavy use or act a little wierd, then I run ‘Final CUt Pro Rescue’ to trash the FCP pref files and it always gets right back to normal afterwards.

Hope this helps.

– Don

[Don Greening]

[Chris Poisson] “Hey Don,

I’m missing something, it ain’t working in Safari.”

Morning Chris,

Seems to work fine in Netscape. I was considering trying out Firefox, ’cause I read somewhere that it has the same Mozilla engine as Netscape and Microsoft’s Internet Exploder (Explorer) but it’s just as fast at loading pages as Safari is. And it’s free. Haven’t gotten around to it yet, though.

– Don