Don Greening
Forum Replies Created
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[Ralph Keyser] “Wow, automatic back focus setting? How does that work? “
It works well. You need to get a proper test chart first though. Then you need to mount the chart on a wall and your camera on a tripod. Then you need good lighting.
Then turn on your camera, press and hold the Menu and the SEL/SET buttons at the same time and then press the CANCEL button. In the viewfinder the Maintenance menu will appear. Scroll down to “FB Adjust” and hit enter. The letters “FB” stand for “Flange Back” which is the official terminology for adjusting back focus. Make sure your camera is in full auto focus mode. Zoom in to the test chart so that it fills the screen and then hit “Execute” in the menu. The rest is all automatic and takes about 15 seconds.
– Don
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Tom,
Sometimes I get the same result when I combine EX 720p footage into an EX 1080p timeline. It’s because one is anamorphic and one isn’t. FCP 6 is usually pretty good at figuring out the aspect ratio of all these different picture sizes when combined in one timeline. But sometimes it gets it wrong. If it turns out that your 1440×1080 HDV footage gets distorted you can fix one of the clips and then paste the changes on to all the other clips that are also messed up.
Double-click one of the clips in the timeline to load it into the viewer. Click on the Motion tab in the viewer then use the sliders for the Scale and Aspect Ratio parameters until the anamorphic picture looks right. Any changes you make to the clip in the viewer will be reflected in the canvas window because it’s the same clip. Once you’ve made your changes highlight the same clip in the timeline if it’s not already highlighted and then hit “Cmd-C” to copy the clip’s attributes to the clipboard. Deselect the clip where you’ve made your changes then highlight all the other clips that are messed up. Now hit “Option-V” to paste the attributes of the first clip on to all the other ones. That should take care of the the messed up aspect ratio of all the other clips.
This is a way to fix the messed up clips but it still doesn’t address the problem of why the clips got messed up in the first place. I’m working on that. One thing I have observed is that my aspect ratio screw-ups only occurred when using 720p overcranked clips in a 1080p timeline. The regular speed 720p clips were fine after export. But I have discovered that if I export “Using Quicktime Conversion” that the result retained the proper aspect ratio of the 720p clips together with the 1080p clips.
The research continues.
– Don
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Or risk knocking or otherwise jostling the camera while it’s recording. Any noise from touching the camera will also be transmitted directly into the on camera mic (if active) and recorded. All in all, it’s just not advisable to do anything that would compromise the recording quality. It’s difficult enough trying to swap cards during a long shoot without adding to your stress levels by trying to format cards too.
– Don
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[craig alan] “I will order the expresscard but want to know if something is wrong with the system. “
There’s nothing wrong with your system. Canon camcorders are famous for trying to control the FW port and for not allowing other devices to share that port. You can capture to your startup drive and then transfer your footage to the external hard drive, then delete the footage from your internal drive afterwards. But yeah, get that Express 34 adapter sooner rather than later. It’ll make your editing life with that Canon camera a whole lot easier.
– Don
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You can highlight any video/audio segment in the timeline and use the unlink command to separate them. Once that’s done you can highlight either the video or the audio track and delete it. The Link/Unlink command is in the Modify menu and is a toggle. Or you can use the shortcut “Cmd- L”.
– Don
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[jeremy Loftus-Hills] “The HD clips play normally on the new timeline, but the SD clips seem to resize themselves and I have to replace them using the original clips.”
Let’s see if I’ve got this right. It would seem that you’re initially editing in a Pro Res HD timeline and dragging the SD clips into it. Then you’re creating another timeline for standard def. This is an unnecessary step, not to mention that you’re up converting SD footage for an HD timeline then down converting it for SD again. Try going the other way. Create a PAL SD Pro Res timeline and drag your SD and EX HD footage into it. Do your edit and export a PAL SD movie using current settings. Bring that into Compressor and encode to MPEG2 for your DVD.
– Don
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[Richard Rodriguez] “Question: can a 16 or 8 gig cards be formatted while rolling on the other card? “
Yes you can. I just tried it to make sure. I was recording on the SxS Pro card in slot 1 and successfully formatted the card in slot 2. Knowing this you could probably use the “delete all clips” function on the other card as an alternative to the formatting command.
– Don
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[Bob O’Brien] “And is audio embedded in the HD-SDI signal? “
Yes it is, along with the time code.
– Don
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[Thomas Kist] “I couldn’t find them, any tips on where to look for them? “
Just type in the word “focus” into the search field at the top of the forum page. You’ll get lots of results. Here’s one where the EX3 focus issue complaints started back in September of last year:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/142/860675#862236
– Don
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[Bruce Schultz] “This feature, nonetheless is nicely hidden and undocumented as far as I can see. “
Hi Bruce,
If you go to page 84 of the PDF version of the EX1 operation manual you can read all about copying a clip from one card to another. The same info is available on page 85 of the hard copy manual that came in your EX1 box.
– Don