[Eric Mittan]

No, Tom, I think what he’s saying is that if you take the time to update your LiveType projects to Motion projects, then it means that when you need to make changes to the text, it can be done from within Final Cut. Making changes in LiveType always meant round-tripping (stop what you’re doing in Final Cut, go to LiveType, make the changes, save, and return to check your work). But Motion templates can be edited from directly within Final Cut Pro. No round-tripping is required.

[Eric Mittan]

I believe you CAN encode flv files using compressor IF you have the CS4 collection that includes a plugin to compress to flash video from quicktime-enabled programs. I’m sure Master Collection fits the bill, and likely Production Premium would also work.

I also believe DVKitchen can do flv files and, like compressor, has the ability to create droplets that let you drag and drop to convert.

[Eric Mittan]

I have a similar problem I’ve been trying to work out.

I work in the newsroom at a television station where our news switcher is digital standard def, but not high def. Our newest camera is the new JVC HM700, as we needed a replacement camera and didn’t see the sense in buying any more standard def cameras. The switcher will not be moved to HD for at least a couple of years. We’re an all final cut shop, and our playout system takes DV files for the newscast (4:3, obviously) I need to figure out how to get footage shot on this camera to air, meeting these conditions:

The 16:9 footage from the HM700 needs to be cropped to 4:3 using a center cut. We’ve chosen center cut over letterbox because our graphics department will still be producing 4:3 graphics.

All our edit stations will keep their current sequence preset default of NTSC-DV 4:3. I have turned autoconform sequence off, so that anyone cutting footage in a new timeline will not be asked if they’d like to chance the sequence preset to XDCAM (which our playout system will not accept).

I’ve determined that the best scale setting for the footage is about 75%, so I want to scale all footage to that level automatically when it’s placed in the timeline. Right now, it defaults to fitting the source media completely in the frame, essentially letterboxing it. I’ve unchecked “Always scale clips to sequence size” and I still get the exact same result.

So with all that background, I’m asking if anyone knows how to set Final Cut to always scale 720p60 XDCAM footage to 75% in a 4:3 NTSC-DV timeline? I know that I can have someone always set one clip and then paste the attribute to all the rest, but this isn’t a production environment and I’d really like to find a way to have FCP do this automatically. Again, I’m going to have 1 edit station dedicated to this camera, so if it ends up creating an environment where I might have to change some settings BACK in order to properly work with standard def footage, that’s not a problem. All the rest of the stations will stay “standard def only” stations. (we’re actually only running FCP 5 in our newsroom anyway, so we’ll only have 1 station running FCP 6 to handle the XDCAM stuff anyway).

If anyone has any answers, thanks.

[Eric Mittan]

I have a few follow-up questions.

If it were within the budget of the project to do so, would having 2 four-port ethernet cards installed on the server be worth it? I understand link aggregation, I’m just wondering if with the first four ports you hit any sort of performance ceiling on the hard drives. Bob, since you’re using a Mac Pro, can you also aggregate one or both of the on-board gigabit ports on the Mac Pro along with the 4 from the card? Would that add any worthwhile performance?

Similarly, might it be worth it if the clients had a slot free for them to put 4 port cards in the clients and aggregate their connection to the SAN? And again with the possibility of throwing in either or both of the onboard connectors on top of a 4 port card…would that be worthwhile?

I’m just asking with the scenario in mind of what the possibilities would be if you already had a 48 port managed switch but you only needed to connect a server and 3 clients.