[Jason Porthouse]

Just my 2c worth – I have a BM Multibridge and so far am very happy with the price/performance ratio. It will cross-convert 720 to 1080, and upconvert SD to HD. Haven’t tried cross-convert, but the upconversion looked fine to me.

I run a small boutique shop and for the money, it fulfilled my needs. I hope that it will continue to do so – if not, I’ll pay the extra (at least double) for AJA. They’re both good products, you really can’t go wrong with either IMO.

Jason

_________________________________

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*

[Jason Porthouse]

Dunno if this may help, but when I had random crashing when working I turned off thumbnails in the timeline and it stopped.

I still have the odd crash on opening a bin and converting to big icons. I think there’s something squiffy in the thumbnail cache side of things – looking at the activity monitor shows some strange memory usage. A restart cured this – I remember reading about FCP memory leakage a while back, this may be related.

As to the Edit to Tape, make sure you’re using it right – do a search here. I think you have to make sure the sequence is in the viewer NOT the canvas – it’ll crash if not. I’ve fallen foul of that before.

HTH

Jason

_________________________________

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*

[Jason Porthouse]

[walter biscardi] “We never do that and I would never recommend that as it’s better to have more control over your finished product. “

I totally agree re the control – but , FWIW, for client approvals (not quallity critical, say for a version cut) it’s a much faster way of knocking out a DVD… took me about half the time than the FCP-Compressor-DVDSP route, and the encoding looked OK. Will be doing it again…

Jason

_________________________________

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*

[Jason Porthouse]

OK, here’s an idea – but I dunno if it’s practical. Is there a way of tagging posts as ‘Basic’ or ‘Newbie’ from the get-go – so a moderator could look at a post and quickly give it a marker – that way, we’d know what’s ‘basic’ or not and can prioritise answers accordingly. You could then do away with the basics forum…

just an idea…

Jason

_________________________________

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*

[Jason Porthouse]

Matt,

you’ve sure as hell confused the heck outta me!!

So, are you dealing with SD DV or HD HDV? In a way it doesn’t matter, as others have stated – firewire is just data, and the stream you get from FW is exactly what’s on the tape. Capturing DV or HDV this way results in files that are no better or worse than the original.

If you had a deck with SDI out (or component) then you could use this to capture via the AJA to a different codec. Capturing to DVCPro50 or ProRes is a popular workflow here – good quality/space ratio. BUT – and this is crucial – the footage won’t look better – UNTIL you start to add effects, graphics, colour correction etc.

You can have the best of both worlds to an extent, if you adopt the workflow many here use – that is to capture and edit natively (by this I mean DV or HDV via FW) then, on ‘picture lock’ make a duplicate sequence, then change settings to ProRes or Uncompressed (depending on your initial material and system specs – so I’d use ProRes for HD and maybe Uncompressed for SD – my system is a tad too slow for Uncomp HD), re-render and output. This preserves much of the quality by bypassing the DV and HDV codecs poor handling of recompression.

If your still confused about this (and it sounds like your boss is too) then I’d seriously consider talking to your nearest facility house or find a local freelancer who’s versed in finishing in FCP and see how much their advice or labour would cost. A day with someone who knows the process inside out would pay for itself in terms of end product.

HTH

Jason

_________________________________

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*

[Jason Porthouse]

I run a Yamaha 01V in my suite -overkill I guess, but handy to have. One day I might sell it on and replace with one of the MIDI/mixer hybrids, which would probably suit better. But nowadays for simple monitoring, Mackie, Behringer et al do mixers in the sub $100 bracket that are perfectly good enough for monitoring and even mic to line conversion for VO’s and the like. Wouldn’t be without one myself.

I guess there’s still a part of me that hankers after the ‘Rick Wakeman’ like feeling of being surrounded by acres of incredibly complex kit, even if it ain’t doing much – ahh, suite memories of a 32 channel Grass Valley mixer with an equally absurd audio panel and an Abekas DVE… just need a lame suit and a cape…

JP

_________________________________

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*

[Jason Porthouse]

Suzin,

Please don’t take this as a flame, it’s not meant to be – but this is the sort of post that really gets my wick. Kinda like me going on a motoring forum and saying ‘I want a car. Tell me what to get…’

We need a bit more info. You need to do a bit more homework! A cursory read of the FCP manual would give you options to consider – using the 3-way CC, basic workflows etc. Have you thought about the problem? Have you considered your options? If so, what specific issues are you facing?

We’re all busy professionals here. I’m happy to help, as will many others, but you need to meet halfway.

Jason

_________________________________

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*

[Jason Porthouse]

I keep my setup fairly simple for FCP. The tip is single-click. The lower button on the index rocker is ctrl-click (for contextual menus) and the upper double-click. I find that works best for me…

In Color it’s much the same only I have the upper rocker configured for value changes – so I can click on a numeric field, hold down the upper button and slide right or left to increment or decrement the value.

For PS3 it’s the same as FCP with the eraser active.

I don’t tend to use the buttons but that’s just me – one day I’ll see someone elses setup and think ‘Why didn’t I use my buttons like that?’ Till then I’ll just muddle through! I also keep it simple because not every place I cut likes installing the Wacom software, so if I relied too much on a fancy setup I’d be stuffed without it…

You’ll need to run with it for a while before you find your optimal setup.

Jason

_________________________________

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*

[Jason Porthouse]

I’ve got the A5 Wide. The usable area is 6.5 inches by 4.5. I find sometimes, for dual screen work, on the odd occasion I need to drag from one to the other, I’ll run out of room on the tablet. It’s led to a few expletives filling the air as I’ve dropped a file on the desktop… I’ve learnt to plan better now. As I use it in ‘mouse’ mode (relative instead of absolute) it’s not quite such a problem, and for me as a freelancer the portability is handy… however, I can see me getting one of the larger widescreen models for my suite in the future. It’s a nice price/size/performace ratio though…

HTH

Jason

_________________________________

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*

[Jason Porthouse]

The Panny pro plasmas are pretty accurate in terms of colour rendition – and have a good set of controls to tweak away till you get it right.

I’d consider getting one ISF calibrated (which, according to a local calibrator, they do exceptionally well – better than most other plasmas) to REC 709 standard – then you’d have a pretty accurate picture. Not TV Logic standard, but one I would trust for non-critical correction and evaluation (and it’s not so far from that either – compared to my Sony broadcast CRT). I see some banding occasionally on mine (it is an 8-bit panel after all) but overall I’m very pleased with this display. I’m running HD and SD via component at the moment… SD looks remarkably good on it too, given a good source. You can often find them secondhand via home cinema forums – lots of people bought them as alternatives to domestic panels, and it seems people with ‘upgradeitis’ swap them out for full 1080 panels… I got mine in the UK for £500 with HDMI and component boards. Bargain for what it is..

HTH

Jason

_________________________________

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*