[Erik Lindahl]

Offline RT is good if you have HUGE amouts of material and are low on disk-space. I really dislike the format since it isn’t even full resolution. Offline RT actually is a JPEG-breed codec, however, no other JPEG codecs will give you and RT which even for offlining is very annyoing for me. Sad, since JPEG gives you alot better Quality at lower bitrate than DV.

By suggestion is to stick with DV25. Full resoltuion and framerate, very compatible codec, gives you heaps of realtime effects and it’s quite size-friendly on your drives.

[Erik Lindahl]

Thank you Chris!

I’ve been trying the demos of the apps and PI seems pretty “outstanding” when it comes to the smoke-effects. Particular seems to be able to do a pretty good jobb to but has a lot less presets to work with there sadly.

Might have to get both then. The AE integreation is very good to have!

[Erik Lindahl]

It seems to be a win/loss situation 🙂

The AE-plug is a big plus, but it seems Particle Illusion has ALOT more presets to work with.

What to choose, what to choose

[Erik Lindahl]

You can change the setting of a clip after it’s captured as well. There is a checkbox both in the browser and in the clips info/settings dialogbox. This goes for both videoclips and sequences.

Just for reference – might safe you some headake 🙂

[Erik Lindahl]

I must say this is one of the stranger “non excisitng” features of FCP since day one. FCP relies on QuickTime for most if not all of its media work but doesn’t handle MP3 at all (basically it’s useless). This is of course a very minor issue to most, but it is annyoing that something QuickTime Player or iTunes does easily can’t be done in FCP.

However, selecting an editing-system based on this is mad. AVID might handle this, but after you’ve imported that mp3-file, try finding the source of it on your HD 😉

I’m not sure compressor can do MP3 > AIFF conversion, but mostlikely it can. Create a batchfolder and wa-la.

[Erik Lindahl]

Alot of things have be updated to QuickTime and the Core of OSX so if FCP breaks wouldn’t be a surprice. But I think you can relax, sources say it works fine.

[Erik Lindahl]

MEDIA MANAGEMENT
What I mean about “iTunes-style media managment” is that FCP manages my media for me, if I want, on a per project or per bin setup. That is, everything I do in FCP is atomagically done in the Finder as well. In some cases you DON’T want this (i.e. clips are shared amongst different systems), but for many this is what you should have an option to do.

For instance, you might had an AIFF file off a CD, a DV clip off a FW-drive and a few pics off your local network. All you main media that you’ve captured to the FCP project is stored in the capture scratch for that project. This is good on one way – very flexible. This is terrible in another – media can easily got lost.

FCP should ask we how it should handle my media. “Exuse me sir, you’re adding a clip off a removable drive, would you like me to transfer it to your media folder?”. Also, I’d very much like renaming of items in FCP be represented in the Finder, now I have to do a lot of double work.

This is what I mean about “iTunes-style media management”. Since different users have different needs I reckon this should be a “per project” or “per bin” option. I.e. itmes stored in my “shared media” bin is NOT dynamically fiddled with. However, items in my “project media” bin IS dynamically fiddled with. Alot of AVID-editors would like this, it would bring FCP closer to AVID yet stay open “as-is” today.

PERFORMANCE
Well… The Dynamic RT thing sounds great, but what does it actually mean in real life? Will I see a greater number of RT effects on the same machine as today? Is the interface/workflow “snapier”? For instance, scrubbing a clip in the view today is a lot faster than in the canvas. Sertain overview items slow down performance quite much today, is it still that way? Being the higher requirments, will a machine (say a Dual 500 or Dual 1Ghz G4) perform as good, better or worse in FCP5 compared to 4.5? Why the higher requirments if performance has been tuned up?

[Erik Lindahl]

Yes, it could be missunderstood… But the “lossless editing” thing has been talk about since DV came, and that’s also “wrong”.

[Erik Lindahl]

With the latest version of Compressor 1.x for Final Cut Pro HD 4.5 you get MPEG1 encoding.

FCP > Export QuickTime > Compressor > Encode MPEG1 > Done.

[Erik Lindahl]

iMovie and FCE uses a quite brutal way of editing HDV. The HDV MPEG2 stream is converted to an “Apple Intermediate Codec” during capture. Then when your finnished with your editing, it’s transcoded back to HDV/MPEG2. This makes it impossible not to release a loss in picutrequality while ediitng.

FCP5 seems to have native HDV/MPEG2 editing, which means you DON’T loose quality when editing straight cuts. However, if you apply filters or crossdissolves, the picture will be recompressed giving you you a generation loss (only one, not TWO as with the iMovie/FCE solution).

For HDV Editing go with FCP5!