[Gary Askham]

I found the old page here…

https://69.55.239.127/support/konaNEW/kona-3-3x.php

I can’t tell you for how long so get all the drivers you’re going to need and put them in a safe place.

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FCP and Avid Technical Support
Air Post Production
Shoreditch – London

[Gary Askham]

Ask for the post house to either do their work in FCP 6 (I still have a couple of drives around with Version 6 installed for these types of occasion) or you can get them to export an XML of the final sequence so you can open it in older versions of FCP.

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FCP and Avid Technical Support
Air Post Production
Shoreditch – London

[Gary Askham]

Thank you for all your words of wisdom over the years, Walter.

I too will probably stop frequenting this forum as often as I have.

Over the next year or two I now have to transition what used to be a facility with a 50/50 split between FCP and Avid to an Avid only facility. I hope Avid still have their $999 offer on for FCP users. They’re going to make a killing (I also hope that Avid Media Composer 6 will support Kona LHi – because we have a few). I wonder how easy it will be for our Avid’s to use an Xsan for their storage??

Just 2 years ago we expanded our business to a 20 room facility and the original plan was for it to be top to bottom Final Cut Pro. Mac Pro’s with Kona card’s, 64TB Xsan, 6 Apple Xserve’s, dual Apple Cinema Display’s in every room, Mac Mini’s and iMac’s for the clients. At the last minute we changed our mind and swapped half the FCPs for PC based Avids. And I am so glad we did now. I really wouldn’t like to be in charge of a facility filled with 20 FCP systems today.

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FCP and Avid Technical Support
Air Post Production
Shoreditch – London

[Gary Askham]

The only decision I have made is that I am not going to make any decisions yet.

Although I can say I am definitely not going to be upgrading our 18 edit suites to FCP X in the forseeable future. But I’m also not thinking about throwing our MacPro’s and Xsan out the window.

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FCP and Avid Technical Support
Air Post Production
Shoreditch – London

[Gary Askham]

I’d hold off right now. A new Mac Pro is imminent.

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FCP and Avid Technical Support
Air Post Production
Shoreditch – London

[Gary Askham]

There are a few things I can think of which might help.

1 – Setup your system how you like it.
2 – Create a new ‘Easy Setup’ for your sequence settings.
3 – Use Digital Rebellion’s Preference Manager to save your preferences.
4 – Save a copy of your project and name it “Default”.

(Maybe do this twice – one for your usual HD setup and one for your SD setup)

Then next time you start a project.

1. Load your ‘Default’ project.
2. Load your ‘Easy Setup’.
3. Restore your preferences using Preference Manager.
4. Save As.

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FCP and Avid Technical Support
Air Post Production
Shoreditch – London

[Gary Askham]

FCP has a limit of 4000×4000 pixels (dpi is pretty much useless in the video world). Depending on the power of your computer you might struggle with images that are approaching this size.

A HD frame size is traditionally 1920×1080 but it’s good to have an image slightly larger as this allows you to move it around in the frame. If you aren’t doing any motion effects you can always prepare the image in photoshop and make it exactly 1920×1080.

If you have the choice work with uncompressed image formats like TIFF or PNG rather than JPEG. The files will be larger but FCP doesn’t have to work so hard to uncompress them.

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FCP and Avid Technical Support
Air Post Production
Shoreditch – London

[Gary Askham]

Yeah, BetaSX used to be quite common in newsgathering. And in the UK Big Brother was archived on Beta SX as you can get 3 hours onto a tape.

Although your M2000 will play back Beta SX you’ll need a different deck to record to. The tape case is bright yellow – unmissable.

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FCP and Avid Technical Support
Air Post Production
Shoreditch – London

[Gary Askham]

h.264 is a great codec – it doesn’t take up much space and it looks great.

But for editing it is almost useless. It uses pretty recent technologies to compress every frame in a very complicated way. For your computer to play back the video it has to work pretty hard to uncompress the file just to show it on your screen. When it comes to cutting the file and adding effects to the file it has to work even harder.

ProRes is a range of codecs that have been designed for speed. Your computer doesn’t have to work as hard and although the files are larger your computer doesn’t have to work as hard.

ProRes can be any resolution (Even 2K) so I don’t know where you got your info. And also 1920×1080 is not traditionally an anamorphic resolution – I think you might just be confusing the term anamorphic with widescreen (1920×1080 is a widescreen resolution).

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FCP and Avid Technical Support
Air Post Production
Shoreditch – London

[Gary Askham]

ProRes 4444 files are pretty massive – and for video that originated on the 5D they are overkill.

ProRes 422 (not HQ) would have been fine. I’ve used LT a number of times for music videos that are for the internet and they look great on Vimeo in 720P.

To change the setting you use the Preferences drop-down tab in the Log and Transfer tool.

The reason you are having to render is probably due to the fact your files are 4444.

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FCP and Avid Technical Support
Air Post Production
Shoreditch – London