Dylan Reeve
Forum Replies Created
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Using FCP 6.0.2
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I am usually marking In/Out and hitting F9. Not always marking though, as at times I want the entire sequence anyway.
I believe (although I’ll have to check) that I’m seeing the same result with nests I have created by selecting clips and choosing Sequence->Create Nest (or whatever that is). Where edits to the sequence are not consistent between the double-clicked sequence in the Timeline and the one I open from the Browser.
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The one I want is the option to copy files to a local location when importing (to the Scratch files directory perhaps!) so that when I import from a network drive or external hard drive or something I don’t have to worry about things going away if that drive isn’t connected.
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Nope, definitely not copy-pasting.
I take a sequence from the browser, drop it in the Viewer, then edit it into the timeline (with F9 or whatever).
If I then go back and make a change in that source sequence, the change is not reflected in the timeline I nested it in. If I double click on the nested sequence it opens up another one in the Timeline (so I have two tabs called ‘Part 1’ for example) which doesn’t reflect any changes made to the one I access from the Browser.
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[Jimmy Visser] “Also, we’re in PAL land – am I right in thinking we’re better to convert to 50i, or does that make the pulldown all screwy?”
This is a little out of my area of expertise (but right in Michael’s so I’m sure he’ll point you in the right direction), but in PAL 24fps (as implemented in video cameras) is a huge pain in the ass, as it’s all built around 2:3 pulldown into NTSC framerates. In PAL-land we just shoot 25fps progressive and be done with it – it works and we don’t need to suffer the pain that our NTSC friends do with maths and pulldown.
It might be that you end up working your project in NTSC framerates and then for PAL finish just applying the 4% speedup in going from 24fps to 25fps.
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I’ve never used Velocity, in fact I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of it.
If you can get a standard EDL out, and have the source tapes available that should get you most of the way there, assuming the project isn’t too complex in Velocity.
Graphics can go on tape, or by one of many supported file formats. With graphics that consist of key and fill, you will need to either export a file that supports that, or export (to tape or file) both the key and fill signals separately.
It should be possible. The most important thing is going to be making sure the EDL is managed well, so tape labels are accurate and fit within the allowed character limits for the EDL format (three number is safest, but up to 8 alphanumeric character is usually fine) and the edit is flattened to as few layers as possible.
Any effects or edits that won’t transfer in the EDL should be noted somehow – in notes on the EDL if that’s supported, or on a piece of paper.
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The Mac offers the advantage of being able to run FCP and Media Composer, which is pretty handy, between the two you should have the right tool for almost any job.
However at the moment there is the issue that all new Macs ship with Leopard, which Avid doesn’t yet support and the newer Mac Pros (Dual-Quad 3.2GHz and up) can’t run earlier versions of OS X, meaning you won’t be able to run Avid on one of those until v3 ships.
Macs are more expensive, but that can be mitigated somewhat by not buying RAM or hard drives from Apple.
Personally, and it pains me to say this, I prefer Windows XP to OS X (I like the principle of OS X more, but just not the execution). On a Mac Pro with Bootcamp you can run XP. Giving you the option of FCP/Avid on OS X, and Avid on Windows (the same dongle will run both the Windows and OS X versions).
It sounds like I’m falling on the side of Mac, but I’m not really sure – I don’t like FCP that much. If I decided I didn’t need FCP I’m pretty sure I’d go with a Windows PC.
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It just seems to defeat the advantage of it. In Avid I can edit a sequence into another one, even ‘nest’ it into a single layer if I want, but it only exists there as a copy of the source sequence, I’d thought that FCP saw it as a reference to the source sequence, which would actually seem to be a benefit, rather than the way it is at the moment, which just confuses matters because there are then sequences which only exist within other sequences, and can only be accessed through the sequence in which it exists.
I’m now curious, if I nest Sequence A in Sequence B, and then duplicate Sequence B as Sequence C, then will changes made to the nested Sequence A in Sequence B also be reflected in C? (Well, I’m confused).
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[walter biscardi] “With FCP, Media Manager is your best best, unfortunately. Apple really doesn’t seem to understand the Offline / Online workflow at all and insists that you capture all the media from a said clip instead of just the In / Out point in the timeline.
Media Management is the one hugely glaring weakness in FCP. That and how it handles speed changes in the timeline.”
Does Apple know this and just not care, or are they genuinely oblivious to the offline/online paradigm that’s still widely used by many in longer form production?
[walter biscardi] “Hey, but we have RED support, Smoothcam, Multiple codecs in one timeline and a lot of other really neat features! Doesn’t that make up for some silly basic workflow things that don’t work correctly? :-)”
Absolutely! Although we’ve edited three RED music videos on Avid. I can mix any Avid format in any timeline, and I think there’s something like Smoothcam in Media Composer. Of course, right now we can’t get HD-SDI into Avid for a reasonable price (although Mojo DX makes an impact on that)
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I’ve been an Avid online editor for the last five years or so, and have just started to do online in FCP.
It’s my impression that FCP really isn’t well-featured for the basic ingest and management aspects of this particular task. It’s certainly possible, but not anywhere near as efficient (it took nearly twice as long to digitise a sequence in FCP, vs Avid in a test I did).
The closest thing I’ve found to a decompose in FCP is to use the Media Manager, I can’t remember the options, but there’s something in there that’s supposed copy the sequence and make retain only the clip segments required to make it. Although in my experience it’s a bit flaky (others know more about what to watch out for).
In our case, with an Avid-edited project, we’re decomposing the sequence in Avid before exporting it to FCP. It’s a whole lot more reliable.
I haven’t found any rewind and eject options – FCP requires very direct user intervention to make batch capture work. Also, in my experience so far, there have been a few situations where’s it’s been necessary to exit the capture process and start it again after certain errors (losing remote to the deck is one, it doesn’t pick it up again properly until you start the batch again).
I also find the lack of feedback on what clip is being captured at any given time to be hugely frustrating (in Avid I can tell really quickly if it’s looking for the wrong timecode or something).