[Jeff Greenberg]

I’m going to guess you’re using FCP 6 or earlier. (This might be even a Leopard or tiger ‘feature.)

Basically, the OS knows that FCP ‘owns’ those files.

Get info on one, change the program that opens them to QuickTime and then Apply to all.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
Come See me speak at NAB!
Compressor Essentials from Lynda.com
(older but still good) Marquee, Media Composer (3.5) and Basic/Advanced Color DVDs (1.0) from Vasst.com
Contact me through my Website

[Jeff Greenberg]

Since they all exhibit the same problem, the question is, is it the tapes or is it your mac.

I’d like you to take the deck to another mac and try it there.

If that is impossible, I’d like you to install the Mac OS on a different drive and try it on that system.

Basically, we’re trying to figure out if it’s the deck/editorial/os/cables
You say that you’ve tried a different cable…
You say that you’ve tried a different capture tool (which one – QuickTime doesn’t capture video)
Which were the free software?

That leaves the Deck and the Cables.

Do you have the camera it was shot on?

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
Come See me speak at NAB!
Compressor Essentials from Lynda.com
(older but still good) Marquee, Media Composer (3.5) and Basic/Advanced Color DVDs (1.0) from Vasst.com
Contact me through my Website

[Jeff Greenberg]

Dennis,

Don’t want to insult – but I read what you wrote and I wasn’t sure:
Have you tried switching your easy setup to HDV?

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
Come See me speak at NAB!
Compressor Essentials from Lynda.com
(older but still good) Marquee, Media Composer (3.5) and Basic/Advanced Color DVDs (1.0) from Vasst.com
Contact me through my Website

[Jeff Greenberg]

Do a software update.

If you have an older (a .0.1 difference) FCE won’t open it up.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
Come See me speak at NAB!
Compressor Essentials from Lynda.com
(older but still good) Marquee, Media Composer (3.5) and Basic/Advanced Color DVDs (1.0) from Vasst.com
Contact me through my Website

[Jeff Greenberg]

Scott:

V2 should be your logo
V1 should be a Color Matte (found underneath the generators in the effects tab or underneath the “A” on the viewer.”

Get the Color matte on your timeline, 2x click it, go to the controls tab in the viewer and change the color to whatever you want.

Best,

Jeff G

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
Come See me speak at NAB!
Compressor Essentials from Lynda.com
(older but still good) Marquee, Media Composer (3.5) and Basic/Advanced Color DVDs (1.0) from Vasst.com
Contact me through my Website

[Jeff Greenberg]

It’s faster because there’s no FCP/Compressor “conversation”. It also means that any graphics, generators etc (which would be handled as if they were uncompressed) , are compressed twice – once in the timeline codec and once in compressor.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
Come See me speak at NAB!
Compressor Essentials from Lynda.com
(older but still good) Marquee, Media Composer (3.5) and Basic/Advanced Color DVDs (1.0) from Vasst.com
Contact me through my Website

[Jeff Greenberg]

You’re going to deinterlace – and ignore the reverse telecine.

You perform reverse telecine when you first get video at 29.97 and needs to be converted back to 23.98 – to match what it was shot at.

But after the editorial process? Each cut starts a different cadence of the 3:2 pulldown. Just deinterlace (best) and move on.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
Come See me speak at NAB!
Compressor Essentials from Lynda.com
(older but still good) Marquee, Media Composer (3.5) and Basic/Advanced Color DVDs (1.0) from Vasst.com
Contact me through my Website

[Jeff Greenberg]

I don’t know if you can render this in AE directly.

I have CS 5.5 – I did this.

Built a comp in AE at 1920 x 3240. Saved the file.

Went to Adobe Media Encoder and then brought in the AE file – and picked the comp. Selected Mpeg-2, then took the HDTV preset and double clicked it.

And I can verify it DOESN’T work. I can’t get Adobe Media Encoder to have the frame height above 1088.

You’re going to have to try a different compression tool. What else do you have?

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
Come See me speak at NAB!
Compressor Essentials from Lynda.com
(older but still good) Marquee, Media Composer (3.5) and Basic/Advanced Color DVDs (1.0) from Vasst.com
Contact me through my Website

[Jeff Greenberg]

Rob,

We’re talking inside of the Apple FCS suite here..

Edit your video in Final Cut. The format is XDCam – and you should be editing XDCam throughout the entire process. It’s up to you if you want to do advanced color correction in Apple Color and/or advanced audio finishing in Soundtrack pro.

When you’re finished editing, in FCP, you’ll likely have a timeline based on XDCam Compression.

That timeline is then Sent to Compressor – a program whose sole job is to compress video from one format to another. All DVD-s are MPEG-2 compression.

Normally, when you compress files, you want to pick the smallest size where the picture looks decent. On a DVD, we have a different ‘ceiling’ – we want to fill the DVD as best as possible. We cannot make a DVD if the video assets, when compressed, are larger in total than the size of the DVD itself (4.3 single layer, 8.6 dual layer.)

Last, we use DVD authoring software to handle those MPEG2 files and properly format them for a DVD disk that can play back in any DVD player.

DId any of that help?

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
Come See me speak at NAB!
Compressor Essentials from Lynda.com
(older but still good) Marquee, Media Composer (3.5) and Basic/Advanced Color DVDs (1.0) from Vasst.com
Contact me through my Website

[Jeff Greenberg]

Just to follow up on what Craig said.

It’s going to be an h.264 file. At that size, a bitrate calculator returns a rate of 1,600 kbs to be at 60megs.

I’d run that through whatever compression tool you have…and if you’re not happy with the results, essentially there are three things you can change:
The frame rate, the picture size and the bit rate. Since your bit rate is limited, I’d suggest cutting the data rate in half first to 29.97 fps.

Let us know how it goes!

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
Come See me speak at NAB!
Compressor Essentials from Lynda.com
(older but still good) Marquee, Media Composer (3.5) and Basic/Advanced Color DVDs (1.0) from Vasst.com
Contact me through my Website