[Duncan Craig]

Guys please, it seems like a fair question. Sorry if I’m coming across wrong though.
Being able to capture reliable DV in one app whilst editing in another isn’t asking the world.
It’s not something I have a need for, but the question was asked.

Coming down on the OP suggesting their approach is unorthodox and shouldn’t be attempted because of processor power is daft.
Saying that they have to buy another machine and another copy of FCP or Quicktime based Capture App can’t be the only answer. Think Different. Quicktime.app is sat there doing bugger all whilst FCP is open. I use QT to convert audio file formats on long recordings whist working on FCP. It doesn’t mean I am a cheapskate who should be using a separate Mac for each App I own.

I used to get the same kind of response from Quantel when I tested Editbox
‘Q. Where’s the undo button?
A. You don’t need an undo button!, That’ll be

[Duncan Craig]

I’ve just tried this.
After capturing in QT, QT crashed and it gave an error message.

Anyway the resultant .mov on the desktop plays choppy in QT.
It won’t import into FCP, if you drag it to FCP you get the message:

‘Unsupported frame rate error
Final Cut Pro does not support this framerate or the way it is represented’

However I converted the .mov using QT to a dv stream and it dropped into FCP OK.
Still choppy and the audio needed rendering but it’s a start.

[Duncan Craig]

Interesting Workflow.
I don’t see why this shouldn’t work.

Saying that DV needs all your processor power is naive.

I run Compressor in the background rendering mpeg2 files, the activity monitor shows compressor using 150%-180% of the processors (Dual2Ghz G5) and FCP runs just fine thankyou. I do run a proper setup though, with a dedicated HugeDualMax RAID on SCSI (approx 400MB/s). Still even my old G5 can do this.(It’s still a brilliant machine!!!)

So asking QT to capture a low bandwidth DV stream whilst FCP runs should be fine.

I guess it would have something to do with QT, I would suggest capturing in QT without FCP open. Then launch FCP and try to import. Or just drag the QT clip from the finder onto the FCP ico in the dock.

Maybe the problem is with timecode in the clip. What extension does it give you? .mov? try to convert a test clip to a dv stream. Or just get rid of the .mov and see what happens in FCP.
I’ll have a play with this myself now.

Duncan

[Duncan Craig]

”I tried that, but the freeze looked a lot different then the .mov, fuzzier (tried the whole -1, 0, 1 thing nothing helped).”

That’s rarely true once you render the file.

Hit the render button, and stop it after a few seconds, then jog through the newly rendered area of still on the timeline and it will look perfect.

[Duncan Craig]

If possible change the PSDs to TGAs, photoshop files often render strangely for me too!!

[Duncan Craig]

I adopted FCP quite early on. I bought the first DualG5 (ordered on the day of release) and got, so I believe the one of the first AJA Io’s in the UK. I also bought a HugeDualMax1.2TB a few days before they went to resellers.
So that’s more than a few years ago.

The RAID was formatted on the day I got it. It’s never been touched since! Huge are great!
It’s on an ATTO card as you can see in my profile. When I bought the system it was no end of trouble, there weren’t half as many people using a full blown setup. This forum was what kept me sane. I couldn’t get uncompressed running at all until a quicktime update came out.. I think it was 6.5. Then the system ran really well.
However after a few more updates, large projects started to hang with the spinning ball.
In particular a 7 camera, 3.5 hour digibeta concert. The work around was to cut the timeline into separate opjects, which worked OK.

I moved the suite around the office a coule of times, and most importantly put the new Tiger OS on a new HD and kept the old one in too. These days there are no problems with the suite. Except occasionally FCP cannot save the project file. It will warn that ‘File cannot be found’ So I force a save onto another drive, quit FCP. Move the forced save back into the proper drive and carry on.

I don’t get any SBBOD anymore, but I can’t advise exactly what is was that fixed it, it was two years ago. I’m pretty sure however that is was a full OS reinstall. My first Tiger install also seemed buggy, after a few days I reinstalled and since then it’s been OK.
The only maintainence I do, is to run cron scripts (Cocktail OSX App) repair permissions, and check to drives using speedtools and disc utility.

I often have Livetype, Photoshop, FCP, FTP App and Safari at the same time and the system seems to be fine. Hope you get it sorted.

[Duncan Craig]

Yes! Had quite a few times recently.

I would describe it as dithered green pixels. Around the outside area of a graphic, not hard to the edge, but like a dithered drop shadow of random, airbrushed and spread out green pixels. It only happens after rendering for me. I’m running AJA IO UC 10bit PAL with the latest OS and drivers, etc.etc. Perhaps it’s a colour space issue?

Although, IIRC only ever happens on photoshop files and graphics for third party files.

I have other problems too – when I turn on drop shadow in the motion tab the position of the image for that layer will move up by half a line and soften badly, been playing with field orders to try and fix this, no luck. So I sometimes have to switch to DV50 instead. I need to look at it some more though.

Duncan.

[Duncan Craig]

Mark,

There are the shorcut shown above sure, but I still copy and paste to the end of the timeline, adjust the speed and drop it back up the timeline, it’s better for me as it’s more tactile to grab and etc.

[Duncan Craig]

The graphics card has little (if anything) to do with your problem I expect.
What version of FCP are you using?

If it is FCP5 check that you don’t have Real Time (RT) pull down in the timeline set to safe and the quality/framerate set to high too.

It maybe that it has decided to drop the framerate on playback to keep up with the CC (Colour Correction) but it’s unlikely.

The next logical thing would be to start a new sequence (check the settings for the sequence are correct Apple+0) and paste the items from the old timeline into it, see if the problem persists. If it still has the problem, do a few edits ino the new sequence add the CCs again, and check, then restart mac and check again. If the problems come back, you must have a prefernces problem I would say. But without seeing the drops myself, as well as the setup of the machine (how snappy it feels, the colours of the bars on the timeline etc) there are too many variables.

Post a screengrab of the Mac (APPLE+SHIFT+3) on a free picture hosting site, and post a llink here.

Also post your full setup, mot impotantly the versions of OSX and FCP you are using.

And as stated before, always grade (CC) to an NTSC monitor (Or PAL if you’re like me)

[Duncan Craig]

I been requesting this to Apple for years.
And not just for FCP.

I want an OS-wide system.
When you copy files on the desktop for example, OSX will make a little ‘cluck’ noise when it’s done.

Great but not enough. I want it so that any OSX progress bar (copying files, rendering in any App, exporting from FCP, saving, safari downloads, adding complex filter effects in Photoshop etc. etc,) has a little tick box in it, when the progress bar windows shows up and starts to move, you can then select the tick box knowing you’ll get a specific alarm sound, which you set in your OSX Preferences.

Surely it’s just a simple OSX skin change, to add a button like this?

Can I copyright this please? 😉

In fact can we start a list of names on the cow for those in favour and get this sorted now!!