Gareth Randall
Forum Replies Created
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[Mark Spencer] “you can send your FCP clips to a new Motion project, then import your existing Motion project with the graphics into that new project.”
Cool, thanks Mark, I’ll probably use that approach.
[Mark Spencer] “What you probably want, though, is Motion 5 and FCP X where you can have your Motion project saved as an effect right inside FCP X.”
I’m afraid I’m holding off on even touching FCPX until Apple has made good on its promises to listen to the pro market and put necessary pro functionality back. If it doesn’t, my company is probably going to shift to Premiere Pro CS6 when it becomes available next year.
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It’s not a field dominance issue, is it? FCP sometimes doesn’t do a very good job of sorting out field order on reverses. You can fix this with Effects>Video>Shift Fields.
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You mean you’re getting the same problem but you don’t know if it’s your network or the software?
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Hi Larry,
Your client needs to provide you with a high-resolution copy of his logo that you can use full-screen for the opening part of the video. Then just duplicate it, resize it with the Motion tab, and reposition it in the corner of the screen. Takes five seconds.
If you don’t want the watermark/bug to be a solid box with the logo inside, then you either have to ask if the client has the logo complete with embedded alpha channel, or you’ll have to use something like Photoshop, Pixelmator or Motion (the app, not the tab in FCP) to create a mask for it. You might be able to use a blend mode or a chroma/lumakey filter to remove the background too.
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Aha, I didn’t know that ClipWrap could transcode, I thought it just rewrapped.
If the “conform” button in Cinema Tools is greyed out, though, then it’s a fair bet that the OP has only rewrapped, not transcoded. Either that, or Cinema Tools is corrupt and needs reinstalling.
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[Marcus Eckermann] “However, when I take the transcoded 50p ProRes 422 clips into Cinema Tools to conform to 25p, the Conform button is greyed out”
If you’ve just used ClipWrap on the files, then they haven’t been transcoded, they’ve only been rewrapped. The video codec is still AVCHD, which isn’t a codec that Cinema Tools supports for conforming.
If you want to reconform them in Cinema Tools you will have to take the rewrapped QTs into Compressor or some other app and transcode them to ProRes, which will obviously take time.
Just FWIW, Toast Titanium will take native AVCHD files and allow direct transcoding to any codec that exists on your system with no need to rewrap first. It’s more expensive than ClipWrap though.
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Thanks Jeff. By the looks of things I’ve got to get the FCS Export Suite from the company that makes MXF4mac.
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Out of interest, are you typically importing single files on the order of 50-60GB in size?
Just downloaded the trial of 5.5 and it’s doing pretty much the same thing. I’m using a quad-core iMac for this (our 5.0 installation is Windows) and it’s a little bit faster in that you can load the file into the viewer window and scroll through it without the system hanging, but it’s still very slow to update the picture and you can’t hear any accompanying audio until it’s actually been conformed.
Is there no way to bypass the conforming process? What is it actually doing, anyway? Other NLEs don’t seem to need to do it.
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You can change your timeline’s starting timecode by going to the little pulldown menu in the top-right corner of the timeline, choosing “Sequence Zero Point” and entering the timecode value you want the sequence to start with.
As an example, if you were delivering to a broadcaster in the UK, you would set your Sequence Zero Point to 09:58:00:00 and construct your sequence as follows:
09:58:00:00 (i.e. first frame of sequence) – start of colour bars and tone
09:59:30:00 – cut to black
09:59:50:00 – cut to production slate/VT clock
09:59:57:00 – cut to black
10:00:00:00 – programme start
As it’s for a festival it sounds as if they don’t mind which hour you pick, as long as you conform to the same basic procedure. It’s probably good practice to follow broadcast convention though.
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[Areful Eeslam] “But is there any other way to know is the footage going to tape is proper 16:9??”
The fact that it appears squashed on the VTR monitor should confirm it. I’m assuming you’ve worked in an anamorphic 16:9 sequence in FCP, yes? And it looks like proper full-frame 16:9 in FCP? Then you would expect it to look squashed on a 4:3 monitor that does not have a 16:9 mode.
If you actually want to output it as 16:9 letterbox within the 4:3 frame, then as Rafael says you will have to drop it into a 4:3 sequence first.