[Don Greening]

highlight the desired text with your mouse and hit the “Q” key.

[Don Greening]

Ok, I just started up FCP 4.5 to make sure I’ve given you the right setting info because I was working in OS9 before and was giving you info from memory. Apparently my memory was somewhat lacking.

Here’s the workpath I use in FCP 4.5 for the same thing you’re doing in FCP 5:

Since you’re working with 24pA footage your capture preset should be DV NTSC Advanced (2:3:3:2) Pulldown Removal Anamorphic. Trouble is, there’s no standard preset that contains both 24pA AND Anamorphic. So…….you go to the FCP menu and choose Audio/Video settings. In the setup window click on capture presets and highlight DV NTSC Advanced (2:3:3:2) Pulldown Removal from the list. Then you click on “edit” at the bottom to add the anamorphic addition to your preset from the Capture Preset Editor window that comes up. Just check the Anamorphic box right beside where it says DV NTSC 3:2. Save this as your custom preset. Then in the Log and Capture window go to capture settings just to double-check that it’s going to use your newly created capture setting and start your capture.

Once you’ve done that go to the sequence menu and click on “settings”. In the window that appears this is where you check the Anamorphic box for the timeline. Rmember that this is for FCP 4.5 and not FCP 5. I’ve done it this way and so far everything has worked out great and I also have an XL2. The settings in FCP 5 must be very similar to the set up in FCP 4.5. I made a couple of mistakes in my previous posts to you that sent you off on the wrong quest and for that I appologize. I should have had FCP running when I was initially responding to you. Good luck and I hope I’ve been able to help you finally.

– Don

[Don Greening]

Ok, I just started up FCP 4.5 to make sure I’ve given you the right setting info because I was working in OS9 before and was giving you info from memory. Apparently my memory was somewhat lacking.

Here’s the workpath I use in FCP 4.5 for the same thing you’re doing in FCP 5:

Since you’re working with 24pA footage your capture preset should be DV NTSC Advanced (2:3:3:2) Pulldown Removal Anamorphic. Trouble is, there’s no standard preset that contains both 24pA AND Anamorphic. So…….you go to the FCP menu and choose Audio/Video settings. In the setup window click on capture presets and highlight DV NTSC Advanced (2:3:3:2) Pulldown Removal from the list. Then you click on “edit” at the bottom to add the anamorphic addition to your preset from the Capture Preset Editor window that comes up. Just check the Anamorphic box right beside where it says DV NTSC 3:2. Save this as your custom preset. Then in the Log and Capture window go to capture settings just to double-check that it’s going to use your newly created capture setting and start your capture.

Once you’ve done that go to the sequence menu and click on “settings”. In the window that appears this is where you check the Anamorphic box for the timeline. Rmember that this is for FCP 4.5 and not FCP 5. I’ve done it this way and so far everything has worked out great and I also have an XL2. The settings in FCP 5 must be very similar to the set up in FCP 4.5. I made a couple of mistakes in my previous posts to you that sent you off on the wrong quest and for that I appologize. I should have had FCP running when I was initially responding to you. Good luck and I hope I’ve been able to help you finally.

– Don

[Don Greening]

Well trash your FCP 5 prefs first so we both know you’re starting out with a fresh set. Here’s how to do it properly:

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

The article is for FCP 4 but I’ll bet they’re in the same location for FCP 5. Once that’s done try it again. Use the DV NTSC Anamorphic capture codec. You can access the setting from the log and capture window in the capture settings tab. And make sure you’ve clicked the Anamorphic check box. In FCP 4.5 it’s in the first tab.

Then do a test capture again and report back when you have a chance. My DN NTSC Anamorphic was a typo. It’s DV NTSC Anammorphic. Sorry about that.

– Don

[Don Greening]

I posted a response in the Canon forum.

– Don

[Don Greening]

Hi Jeff,

Don’t worry, you’re XL2 16:9 footage is correctly being captured to the 720×480 aspect ratio. When you capture 16:9 to FCP you must check the anamorphic checkbox in the log and capture window. You must also choose to use the DN NTSC Anamorphic codec in the preferences window, instead of just DV NTSC.

Remember that even though you’re capturing a 16:9 image it’s still going to be in a 720×480 window but it’s squeezed into an anamorphic image. Once you’ve successfully captured your footage, choose a new sequence timeline in FCP but make sure it’s a 16:9 timeline. It has nothing to do with the XL2 and everything to do with FCP5.

Since you say you’ve captured 16:9 footage successfully before but with FCP 4.5 you probably already know all this stuff. I’m just trying to make sure you didn’t miss anything. If you’re using a DV camera as a deck to capture with, does the camera screen say that the footage is in 16:9? I know that with my FCP 4.5 I was having trouble capturing widescreen footage a few weeks ago. It would always end up as fullscreen no matter what I did. Finally I trashed the FCP preference files and everything was fine afterwards.

Hope this helps.

– Don

[Don Greening]

Hi Dave,

Yup, you’ll probably get a few comments. For me FCP has been rock solid and never crashes and has nerver had any startup problems, and I use it a lot for my business.

As far as your particular problem: all I know is that whenever FCP starts up it always tries to establish communications with the various peripherals assigned to it by the user preferences, whether it be external drives or capture cards, etc. When it can’t establish it will seize up, which leads me to believe that this is something for you to troubleshoot. You might try unplugging and reconnecting things to make sure everything is solid.

Good luck.

– Don

[Don Greening]

Okay I’m out of ideas and am not familiar enough with the paculiarities if your AJA capture card and related peripherals, including the X Serve RAID. I will bow out now and you’ll have to wait for someone else more experienced with your particular setup. Wild guess: Software driver for the AJA card needs an update/re-install? That’s about it.

– Don

[Don Greening]

Okay. Have you done the “repair permissions” thing? Do you have a copy of DiskWarrior and have you run it to make sure all your directories are in good shape?

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

Have you made sure that FCP is communicating properly with your firewire camera/deck?

– Don

[Don Greening]

Dave,

Try trashing the FCP pref files. It could also be a corrupt project file but trash the pref files first and report back at your convenience. It’s easy to do and won’t hurt a thing.

Here’s how to do it right:

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

– Don