[Howard Ferguson]

Hi Dave,

Thanks again for your help !

I followed Ken Stone’s helpful presentation too.

Via those instructions, I removed the pulldown, and started out the project in a 23.98 Timeline.

The procedure seemed to work fine. Resulting clips looked good, played well.
(I did see the footage before pulldown was removed, and that was certainly unusable.)

All my Sequences, except this troubled 29.97 Sequence, are in 23.98.

I just made the mistake with a later Sequence, and accidentally did a lot of work with that stuff in a 29.97 Timeline.

There was a lot of Rendering involved,
(and the MacBook Pro did crash while Rendering occasionally)
but in the end,
the only problem I had was the color situation,
which turned out to be a universal problem- with the 23.98 and 29.97 Frame rate Sequences.

For future reference:
Is there a smooth way to fix an accident like this ?

Where 23.98 clips, which work fine in their proper frame rate Sequence,
have been accidentally put into a 29.97 Sequence Timeline,
and edited in that Timeline ?

Is it just a matter of putting them in Compressor, and changing the 23.98 clips to 29.97 ?

If that’s the case,
What is the proper method to get Final Cut to find and recognize those changed clips ?

Thanks very much for your helpful hints !
I got them on record now !

If you just want to record everything that’s on a tape,
without subdividing in while Capturing-
What’s the best way to do that ?

I’m looking into recording directly from the camera to the computer,
to save the time of recording from the tape playback.
Do you know a good way to do that ?

Thanks much for your advice on starting a new thread too.

I got to thinking the same thing last night, and posted a bit of that color situation.

That gets so complicated, I’m not surprised there was no response.
But just writing it down helped me work through the problem,
and I thought someone else with the problem might find it helpful in a future search.

Sometimes, I find really obscure stuff in searches that turns out to be very helpful.

Thanks again for all your help !

Howard

[Howard Ferguson]

Thanks for your responses !

I use Final Cut on a MacBook Pro, booted from an external RAID.
It’s nice and portable, as I need my Final Cut computing to be.

My friend I mentioned doesn’t even use Final Cut.
He was just curious what it’s limits were, and I told him I’d ask this forum about it.
It’s more of a “science project” for him.

I’ve got 20 years worth of Macs sitting around here, most of them still in use for the specific tasks at which they excel.

Thanks again !
Howard Ferguson

[Howard Ferguson]

Whoops . . .

Correction from my original posting. It’s Opacity, not Occupancy . . .
This is a total restatement of the posting:

I just wanted to post this in one place, since it involved a number of different color related issues in other threads.

I’ve had a problem in one of my 23.98 Sequences, with the color shifting at places along the Timeline-
Not during playback in Final Cut, but after Export to Quicktime.

This Sequence has video clips, along with clips of still PNG images at times.

In this case, the images are of White text on a transparent background, hence the PNG format.
And that fades in and out via Opacity controls, and it moved around the screen via location and size controls in the Motion controls. All of these commands are Key Frames.

The problem was:
The Exported Quicktime movie shifted in color in various places, compared to what I’d been working with in Final Cut.

When I compared the Quicktime movie with the Timeline in Final Cut, I realized that one of my PNG files that was transparent, was causing the Exported Quicktime movie to display the correct color, in the Quicktime export.

The difference of this clip, from all the other clips was:
It’s Alpha was set to White.
The other clips were all either None/Ignore, Straight, or Black.

So, I created a new video track at the top of the window,
expanded that clip to it’s longest length possible,
then copied and pasted that clip into that video track, the entire length of the piece.

Those clips are never visible . . .
But somehow, they fix the color shifting problem.

The clip has a soft focus filter and some motion controls.
It’s always set with the Opacity at Zero.

And having it there makes the color in the resulting Exported Quicktime movies stop shifting in color at various locations along the Timeline.

This doesn’t fix the overall color paleness in the Exported QT movies, but the actual shifting of color from one part to the next in the same Sequence seems to get fixed doing this.

More on that-
Exporting via Quicktime Conversion, using the Animation Codec, seems to resolve the overall color paleness issue.

But I’m confused.
Those QT Conversion files aren’t supposed to be as high rez as the full rez Export to Quicktime format. If both are Exported at the same high quality settings.

The QT Conversion Export is 8.21 GB.
The Export via the Quicktime format, with the same settings, is 6.92 GB.

In the QT Movie Inspector Window-
I see the only difference in these two files, other than size, is the data rate.
125.5 for the QT Conversion.
105.79 for the QT format (the top one).

In the Final Cut 5.1.4 browser-
I see two differences in these two files,
other than size,
is the data rate and the Alpha setting.

Data Rate:
14.9 MB/sec for the QT Conversion.
12.6 MB/sec for the QT format (the top one of the Export menu).

Alpha Setting:
Straight for the QT Conversion.
None/Ignore for the QT format (the top one of the Export menu).

Which of these two setting would you consider to be best ?
Would there be a better setting for Exporting at the highest quality, and best color ?

I very much appreciate any and all thoughts on this stuff !

Thanks for your time in considering my problem !

Howard Ferguson

[Howard Ferguson]

Hi Dave,

Thanks again very much for your helpful response !
Sorry for the delay in response, but I wanted to understand better the situation before responding.

Yes, I did capture the video from the AG-DVX100A as per Noah Kadner’s instructions.
(Perhaps you could send me a link to the instructions to which you refer, and I’ll check to make sure we are talking about the same thing.)

It was a series of clips from the camera.
It was all that was on the tape, but I think it was shot as series of eight segments-
Where the machine was turned on and off in between.

There were disruptions in the time code, so for whatever reason, it could not be Captured as a single clip.

That video appears fine in Final Cut.
Did anything appear to be wrong with those clips in the browser graphic I included before ?

I experimented a bit with the size of those still images.
And it turned out in this situation, the 600dpi images looked the same as the 100dpi images.

I should note that these images are all of handwritten text.
In some cases, that text is:
cropped from the page they are on,
processed in Photoshop,
Saved,
and that file was dragged into the Final Cut browser.

In some cases those are images with foreground and background, with the text appearing on a background surface.

In some cases those images of text are White or Black on a transparent background, hence the PNG format.

Also, the text is often processed via the filters in Final Cut, as well as the Motion controls, over time using Key Frames. (I learned a lot and discovered a lot of cool stuff for future use.)

The only problem I’ve had with the still PNG images is:
Sometimes, when I am moving them around the screen,
there are rare times when the motion becomes fast to the point where the lines of the text becomes jaggedy- until the moving image stops again.
I don’t know why this happens sometimes, and not others.
This happened in both 600dpi, and in 100dpi.
So for this project, I chose 100dpi, due to the quicker Rendering time required.

The purpose of this part of this project is to present the actual script from those pages, so using a text generator in Final Cut was never an option.

My color problems appear to be something about Final Cut.
For instance, the Final Cut Filter generated Sepia colors can be quite washed out in places on the Export, compared to the image in Final Cut. Other places, not so much.

What color there is in the actual still text images doesn’t appear to be changing.

I have undertaken this procedure, to the extent of using the Animation Codec:
https://provideocoalition.com/index.php/aadams/story/the_quicktime_conundrum_solved_by_our_readers/

The color produced is very close to the original images I am seeing in Final Cut, and the resolution is significantly higher than the previous Quicktime movie I was able to generate using the Quicktime Conversion from the menu, with settings at the actual Codec.

Curiously, this method is a help with the color problem in the 29.97 Sequence we are discussing, but-

Not with the color shift problems of the proper Frame Rate Sequences that are 23.98.
(Those sequences have far fewer text still images also.)

Also, I should say-
I’m using FCP 5.1.4,
and the selection to “Enable Final Cut Studio Compatibility” does not appear in any version of Quicktime that I have, 7.2 to the latest 7.6.

Can you tell me what qualifies a system for having this option ?
And if others with Macs do not have it also, how does it help the color in Export to QT problem ?

There was a separate color shift problem in the 29.97 Sequence, which involved the color shifting at places along the Timeline. I won’t go into all those details here right now, but it seems I’ve found a fix for that problem.
Here is the new Thread on that situation.

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/1038132

Thanks very much for your help with my problems !

Howard Ferguson

[Howard Ferguson]

Hi Rafael,

Sorry for the delay in response, but I wanted to understand better the situation before responding.

Could the reason I’m not seeing that is because
I’m using FCP 5.1.4 ?

The selection to “Enable Final Cut Studio Compatibility” does not appear in any version of Quicktime that I have 7.2 to the latest 7.6.

Can you tell me what qualifies a system for having this option ?
And if others with Macs do not have it also, how does it help the color in Export to QT problem ?

Still trying to figure out how to get the same color I have in Final Cut into a high rez Quicktime movie.

I have additionally discovered something very interesting, concerning color shifts I was having from scene to scene along the Timeline in a Final Cut Sequence.

I put that into a new Thread.

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/1038132

Thanks for your help !
Howard

[Howard Ferguson]

Hi Mr LaRonde,

Thanks for your response !

I would note from the start,
There are No Nestled things involved in any of this.

Responding to your questions here:

What kind of footage are you using in this project?

A lot of PNGs from PhotoShop.
The only motion footage was originally filmed on a Panasonic AG-DVX100B shot in 24PA,
Tape of that original footage Captured into Final Cut Pro 5.1.4 from a Panasonic AG-DVX100A.

I underwent the processing described at this website,
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/122/857925

to adapt the camera format to Final Cut,
and that seemed to turn out properly.

Then I resolved the interlacing situation with each of those clips from that camera in Cinema Tools,
and they appeared properly afterward.

Concerning the data that I am dealing with within Final Cut-
of which you have requested further info,
I am including the monitor screen images of what I’m seeing in this regard,

Here are multiple shots from the Final Cut Browser, to include them all down the list.

And one from the Sequence Settings window from this ‘problem’ Sequence.

And the Audio Video Settings.

Please let me know what other info I should present, if this is not sufficient.

The terms within the Final Cut functions are other than what they actually are.
So it’s a bit confusing.
For instance, they call Frame Rate = Vid Rate . . .

My client requires only that I post his/our interesting creations on a website.
And in the form of a DVD, which will present the same images to a computer monitoring viewer.

I do very much appreciate your time and attention to my problem in this !
I will be happy to provide whatever information necessary to resolve this situation.

Thanks again for your help !

Howard Ferguson

[Howard Ferguson]

Hi Mr LaRonde,

Thank you very very much for your response !

Admittedly, I jumped in at the deep end on this project without nearly enough background in the specific workings of Final Cut Pro.

I have been indeed working visually with the computer monitor representation of the Final Cut images.

(I’m creating the images for computer viewing,
and the video (TV) monitor representation of everything in the project look to be really bad resolution from an external video (TV) monitor, (from the very start, even in the correct frame rate sequences)
and not at the proper size on the TV monitor- inadvertent cropping with parts missing for some reason.

But the computer generated images in Final Cut Pro 5.1.4, and the Quicktime movies generated from those have been pleasing to both me and my client.
Except for certain color issues (in the QT movies that are Exported from this particular Sequence),
So we pressed on.)

I will undertake the suggestions which you have so kindly offered !
Carefully.

Thanks also for your warnings of possible failure !
I have the project isolated on three different, unconnected RAID HDs.
At various stages of success, each.

But it is important to know,
in your experience-

Will these measures, that you have suggested, correct the color issues, to which I referred ?

The problem of inaccurate color is the singular problem/obstacle to our being finished with the project,
for our purposes at this time.

So, if the color problem is fixed, we’re done . . .

Color inaccuracy is the only problem we have with the appearance of the Exported Movies from this Sequence right now.

If we could get the Export to look that same as what appears in the viewer in Final Cut, that would be just fine.

Is there a way to achieve that, without extraordinary measures ?

Also,
If I could ask (for future reference)-
If a PNG file (produced as the result of editing in PhotoShop) is dragged into the browser of Final Cut,
at the time when a specific Sequence is selected in Final Cut,
what Frame Rate is it registered as ?

All of those PNG files that I dragged into Final Cut were registered at a certain frame rate,
and even though dragged into the same Sequence- under the same conditions,
they were not all the registered in the Browser at the same frame rate.

I can’t thank you enough for taking time from your certainly busy day to offer your experienced guidance in helping me with my problem !

Howard Ferguson

[Howard Ferguson]

Hi Rafael,

I very much appreciate your help with this.
I don’t find any Final Cut selection in the Perferences General Menu of QT 7.5.5 or QT 7.2.

I’d be happy to know more of this.

Thanks !
Howard Ferguson

Here’s a screen shot of what I’ve got:

[Howard Ferguson]

Hi Rafael !

Thanks very much for your response.
I don’t find that as a choice in QT 7.2 or in 7.5.5.

I’d be happy to learn of this !

Thanks again,
Howard

[Howard Ferguson]

Hi David, and All,

I’m hoping you will have tips for me.

I am also currently encountering this problem of color shifting from the work in Final Cut Pro, to the Exported copy.

My Exports are being displayed in Quicktime 7.2, on a MacBook Pro Santa Rosa 2.4 Ghz, in OS 10.4.11.
Generated from Final Cut Version 5.1.4.

Details from the Browser on a specific problem clip are:

Vid Rate is 23.98
Compressor is DV/DVCPRO-NT
Data Rate is 2.9
16-bit Integer
Alpha is None/Ignore
Composite is Normal
Pixel Aspect is NSC-CCIR 601
Field Dominance is None

The Quicktime Movie Export (Self-Contained), set to the Sequence settings- and with no compression,
does not provide an accurate color copy of the original.

Instead, it is washed out, pale.
At times it is very different from the original I’ve been working with in Final Cut.

All on the same hardware and software, booted from an external RAID.

All help with this very very welcome !

Thanks !

Howard Ferguson
Chicago