Jason Porthouse
Forum Replies Created
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Well, taking a wild guess here –
Supposition 1 – its an EX1 and not a Z1 (as David stated, Z1 shoots HDV on tape)
Supposition 2 (assuming 1 is correct) is that you’ve copied the shots over but not the whole BPAV file structure. You’re now entering a whole world of hurt, trust me I’ve been there. The director paid.
If those are correct, my advice would be to stump up the readies for this:
https://www.calibratedsoftware.com/MP4EXImport_Mac.asp
which I’ve used and is excellent, or:
which I haven’t used. But may be equally excellent.
Don’t try any other freeware, workarounds or hacks. I did, and still ended up buying the first one. I must’ve spent a day trying, so the software cost me about 4 times it’s price in time faffing!
Jason
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Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.*the artist formally known as Jaymags*
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Wot they said! Make sure you lose Animation as a codec, and convert all of your source footage to an FCP friendly codec too. I’d use Compressor or MPEG Streamclip to convert to ProRes. Make sure you convert to a broadcast standard media size – so, try cropping to 1280×720 if you can afford to lose some image, or scale to 720 vertically if you won’t notice the slight ‘squish’.
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Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.*the artist formally known as Jaymags*
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Larry, you’re certainly going about this an odd way. You’re shooting HDV but editing in an SD timeline – this uses FCPs scaler to scale the HD footage to SD. Not the best.
If you’re creating your LiveType graphics for SD, you should have LT setup for SD NTSC Anamorphic. The resulting output will be a 4:3 file if not viewed correctly – after all, all SD material occupies the same space – 720×486 (or 576 in PAL land) so I’d expect this.
When you’ve imported the LiveType clip into FCP, check the Anamorphic column in the Browser to switch the clip to 16:9. This will then display correctly.
It’s also worth playing with the alpha type – I found that this can yield benefits – from ‘straight’ to ‘White’ or vice-versa. I’ve noticed this can improve the quality of the overlay.
If I were you, I’d edit in an HDV timeline (or even better, ProRes in HD resolution) and use compressor to convert your HD master into an SD copy…
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Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.*the artist formally known as Jaymags*
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This is all to do with not getting the correct file structure off the SXS cards when transferring to a drive. Had the same problem with some stuff a while back, and the only solution so far has been the Calibrated plug-in mentioned a few posts back. ISTR trying lots of solutions, but this was the only one that worked.
Jason
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Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.*the artist formally known as Jaymags*
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Chances are he’ll be doing basic sync pulls and the like. If it’s not effects-laden work, XML works a treat. Failing that, get him to place the sequence he wants to send you in a separate project, and send that to you. You can then send him a copy of the master project to replace his one, so he’s always up-to-date with your cuts, and you have a third backup off-site.
As long as you have a protocol for ensuring no ‘cross contamination’ occurs, you’ll be fine. Having some kind of ‘quarantine’ project for the stuff he sends you can work too… if the media is identical, FCP will happily relink.
_________________________________
Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.*the artist formally known as Jaymags*
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Do you really mean Beta SP? If so, all your settings are wrong. Those settings are for HD 1080p high definition at 24fps. Beta SP punts out standard def at 25 or 30 fps (PAL or NTSC) so you’re on to a hiding for nothing. Decklink settings should be OK, but you’ll need to use a different setup for digitising. I’m not in front of my Blackmagic equipped Mac right now, but it’ll need to be something like Blackmagic NTSC ProRes422 as a setting.
Jason
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Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.*the artist formally known as Jaymags*
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Your problem is nothing to do with XMLs/EDLs. Final Cut can’t use the MP4s in the BPAV file structure natively, so you have 2 options here. One is cheap and quick, the other slow and free.
Free option – download the Sony XDCam transfer tool, and use it to encode all the material to ProRes. Make sure the filenames are the same as your project filenames, and relink to the new media. You may have a few errors (potential for reel names to be off, etc) but it should go OK.
Quick option – use Calibrated Softwares XDCam plug-in, that enables FCP to work with MP4 files. I’m using this to reconnect media from someone editing roughcuts on Premiere as we speak. It’s been fine, more or less, with the odd clip that it hasn’t been able to link to in the timeline – the media is in the browser but the TL doesn’t make the connection. I always get a reference movie from the editor so I can eye-match any shots that don’t translate, but I’ve only had three or four in a fair number of sequences, so I’m happy with the workflow.
I don’t know how the latter option would work with Color – I will be Media Managing the edit to a ProRes project with handles when it’s time to send off to be onlined & graded, so you may wish to try beforehand and see if Color accepts the files as is…
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Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.*the artist formally known as Jaymags*
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For me, it was a Fast Video machine with DPR – a kind of hybrid linear editor with NLE capability. AFAIR it had about an hour of storage, and cost a lot.
Then on to Avid – can’t remember what version, but would have been around ’95 – with a brief flirtation with FCP when it came out. I remember hearing about Key Grip (I worked with lots of Macromedia users at the time, for authoring all sorts of interactive stuff) and being exited, but FCP on the systems we had at the time was bit clunky.
First real use of FCP was version 3, at the same time as freelancing on Avid and Fast Silver. Have done progressively less Avid, and more FCP, since then.
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Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.*the artist formally known as Jaymags*
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There’s nothing wrong with the file you’re sending them, the fact that they can hear audio but only see black indicates to me that they don’t have FCP or aren’t up to speed on Pro Res.
I’ve successfully used H264 for this kind of thing before, use the same specs as you have (rate, size, dominance) and make it high quality. They be able to play it, and can then encode to whatever they need should they need to edit it.
But I feel your pain – dontcha just love producers whose sum knowledge is less than b****r all who get all ansty because they think *you’re* the awkward one for asking so many damn questions?
Jason
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Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.*the artist formally known as Jaymags*
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[Paul Jay] “Because that’s what it does.
If you want clip timecode use the timecode filter. It’s in Filters-> Video.
“Err, no – we’re talking about the overlays in the canvas window here, and AFAIK they’ve always displayed clip timecode data. Mine certainly do, just checked. The timecode filter gives you sequence time.
Dunno why it would do that, the overlays should only be visible where there’s a clip on the TL and relate to that clip. Maybe time to do so me maintenance – trash prefs, repair permissions etc. See if a new sequence does any good – do an easy setup then paste your clips across. May help…
_________________________________
Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.*the artist formally known as Jaymags*