[Herb Sevush]

Johannes –

I edit extensively with Multi-clips on two FCP systems in my office – frequently starting on one system and finishing on another. The problem you are reporting seems to happen about 1- 2% of the time when I do this. I know of no solution other than creating new multi-clips and re-creating the edited section. Multi-clips, once created, cannot be repaired. They also seem to be vulnerable to corruption. It seems to be worse if the clips are not identical in length and time-code, but even when they are this problem pops up.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Correction – apologies to the Crystals

He sure ain’t the boy I’ve been dreaming of but
He’s sure the boy I love

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Alexander –

This is coming from an old codger so take it for what it’s worth.

1. Is it realistic for someone such as myself to attend a university in my home State of Michigan … and concentrate on film, or will employers look down upon that since i am not attending a major California/New York film institute

I could care less where a prospective intern went to school. The value of an NYU or USC type school is in the networking opportunities it provides for the students — believe me, they will be as totally unprepared to do real work after graduation as anyone else. My basic feeling is that all recent grads, from whatever school they went to, know absolutely nothing, except how tp play beer pong. Which is fine, I’m not looking for expertise, I’m looking for the right attitude and an inquiring and interesting mind. That’s as likely to be found in Michigan as Ny or LA. Not all employers are like me, some are impressed by Ivy League credentials. You can’t please everyone, you just have to please the right one.

3.Is this industry only truly accessible from the west and east coast or are there pretty much equal job opportunities nation wide in this field?

If you want to work in Features or Network TV, go west young man. Otherwise there are opportunities everywhere.

4. Lastly with an undergraduate degree in Electronic Media and film Studies, is it realistic to expect a job right out of college or just by asking that am i affirming to all of you out there just how clueless i truly am?

You’re not clueless, you’re young. Relax, if you’re truly passionate about this field, a job will find you. It might not be the one you were looking for, but like the song said – “he’s not the boy I was looking for, but he’s sure the boy I love.”

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Cory –

It’s not perfect. Occasional crashes, nothing too annoying. For the price, it’s worth it.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Cory –

I can’t help with the comparison, but I can tell you that I run Parallels to run Photoshop and AE and it works fine.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Sean –

“I was always able to output TC over firewire to … our AJ-HD1200A”

Can you explain exactly how you do this? I have always used the edit-to-tape feature and a lot of workarounds because I didn’t know this was possible. What menu settings do you use on the 1200A?

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Joe –

I’ve been running a 3 drive, raid 0, striped set with internal drives for over a year now. It can definitely handle DVCPRO HD – it can handle a four camera multi-clip of it in fact, although it drops resolution a little to handle it. Using the Black Magic disk speed utility I get reads of about 125 MB/s in this configuration.

However …

I just purchased an 8 drive MaxxDigital array for the following reasons –

Raid 0 arrays are more prone to crash than individual drives -if you have a 3 drive array you are 3 times more likely to crash, with 5 drives 5 times more likely, etc.

Even though I have all my media on tape, the idea of having to recapture terabytes of material in the middle of a job is not something I want to increase the possibilities of. The external arrays can give you Raid 5 protection, along with much faster reads – my MaxxDigital tests out to 515 MB/s in raid 5. The extra cost of the external box will more than pay for itself if it prevents 1 mid job crash. Plus the additional speed will enable you to work in uncompressed HD if you need to.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Kent –

One thing about “optical flow” in Motion – it takes forever. The reason being is that no matter your in and out points for the slo-mo sequence, “optical flow” analyzes the ENTIRE CLIP. To speed things up the best thing to do is export a new quicktime file of only the part of the clip your interested in, with appropriate handles on either end, and them export this into Motion. The clip can be a reference movie if you want. This work-flow will speed things up enormously.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Kent –

The Slo-Mo feature in FCP is not great, with or without frame blending. If you had upgraded to FCP 6, the “optical flow” slo-mo in Motion 3 is much better, would probably do the job for you. For FCP5 the only solution I know of is the plug in “Twixtor”, which works great. It’s expensive and takes a long time to render, but the results are excellent.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Simon –

My guess is that, based on what you’ve said, FCP will pose a huge learning curve. It’s a very good editing system, allowing for great flexibility in work-flows – and this very flexibility can be very difficult for a beginner.

It is a very quirky program, with features stuck in different menus all over the place. There are so many different ways to do anything that it can be difficult at first to figure out which one to use.

My advice, based on your comments, would be to try Adobe Premiere Pro. It’s similar to FCP but more limited in how it does things – this limitation is actually helpful for a beginner. It’s much more consistent in it’s menus and work-flows, not quite the hodgepodge that FCP can seem to be.

Just my $.02

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions