[Jamie Pickell]

Dave,

I’ve been dealing with the headache of going from 6 back to 5.1.4 for the past two weeks. I am not sure of all the bugs, but I think you should look out for the following:

Export XML version 2.0, FCP 5 will not import XML 3.0

Remove any freeze frames you have, they appear to halt the XML process.

I think you’ve done the right thing in removing the motion affected shots and making them 100%, the remapping feature seems to not work so well in XML land

Also, I highly, highly recommend you have your Facility get the latest version of Automatic Duck FCP Import so you can import an OMF of your sequence, it will save you time and headaches in the audio portion of your timeline.

Good Luck!

Jamie
FCP 5.1
OS 10.4.9
Dual 2.5 G5
Kona 2
XRaid

[Jamie Pickell]

Walter,

What is your offline to online strategy? Due to the short turn around of the show I cut, I do everything in 10-bit and never offline so I haven’t had to deal with these headaches. But now I have some editors working off site and in the facility that are doing offlines on other projects and we are running into headaches in the online process because we’ve been using the Media Manager tool. Right now everyone is on local storage, but the facility is thinking of taking the few FCP edit stations and giving them shared storage ala XSan and FinalCut Server and adding more FCP stations to replace some of the Avids.

The current model they run in the Avids is to offline on MediaComposters or Adrenalines and then online in a Symphony or DS system. Supposedly the process is “flawless”, or at the very least they know how to avoid potential pitfalls. If they switch over to FCP, what is the best model in order to do the offline to online process?

Yours and anyone else’s thoughts are much appreciated.
Thank you.

Jamie
Dual 2.5 G5
10.4.9
FCP 5.1
Kona 2
XRaid

[Jamie Pickell]

The editor has been trashing prefs on this machine quite a bit because newly digitized material defaults to zero start timecode and reel numbers default to 001. I had that problem once when I upgraded from 5 to 5.1, but trashing the prefs one time solved it. Any other suggestions?

Jamie

[Jamie Pickell]

David,

Thank you for your reply. I just checked and the distort is set to zero. It looks as if the image has a black matte with a square cut out in the middle laid on top of the image such that the hole reveals the image and the black hides the rest. (no filters are on the image) I’m lost as to what is going on. When she starts to drag the outpoint of the clip on the timeline the image in the Canvas Viewer shows the full image, but when she stops dragging, it goes back to only showing part of the image. Right now her work around is to take video into AE, blow it up to 720×480 and kick out a DV25 file.

Jamie

[Jamie Pickell]

Dashley,

You can make a freeze frame of the image you want, put it on the layer above your main video and crop it in the motion tab. If you want to go the Photoshop route, export the frame as a still image, take it into Photoshop. Duplicate the layer, (I always do this so I have the original image), turn off the base layer, with the duplicated layer as the active layer, cut out the portion you don’t want. You should see the checkerboard background where you have deleted portions of the image. Now use the wand tool to select the checkerboard, then select inverse from the Select menu, then click the channels tab and click on the “save selection as channel” button at the bottom of the channels window and you should see a new channel added called the alpha channel. Save your image as a Targa file 32bit (second window that pops up after clicking save). Import this file into FCP and lay it on top of your primary video layer.

Jamie
Dual 2.5 G5
FCP 5.1
Kona 2
XRaid

[Jamie Pickell]

Chris,

I edit a half hour show for PBS that runs 26:46 – from start of picture thru end of credits. I have also delivered half hour shows for various cable channels. Usually you provide a show that is at least 25 min with recommended paper cuts (places that can be edited out to make room for commercials) as well as recommended places for commercial breaks. I know the Discovery network of channels (TLC, Animal Planet, etc.) and the National Geographic Channel have in-house editors that do cut-to-clocks. Meaning they take the finished programming and edit out portions in order to hit a specific clock. Many times their target length is 23:30. They also need to find places to insert breaks and usually they have to fall within specific portions of the show. The more information you can provide to your client the better.

Jamie
Dual 2.5 G5
Kona 2
FCP 5.1
XRaid