[Jeff Greenberg]

Noise industries and Coremelt both have a plugin pack that does exactly what you want.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
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[Jeff Greenberg]

Yes, but keep in mind that the actual pixels aren’t square. On a computer, it’d be closer to 640×480

I can hear you go ‘Wha????”

Remember legos? Well, video uses legos that aren’t square – they’re a bit tall. If you had 720 (the width) skinny legos next to 720 wider legos, you’d still have 720 wide – but the wider ones would be measured longer. In other words, the dots aren’t square, but are skinny and tall.

FCP and every other editorial tool accounts for this – and in HD everything is square and matches the size you see on a computer (mostly.)

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
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[Jeff Greenberg]

Philip,

At a certain level, FCP 7 can edit any video format that QuickTime can handle – when you toss it into the timeline, if it’s the first clip, it asks you if you want to adjust the sequence to match the clip and boom off you go.

Except, lots of video is ‘non standard’ for video, as confusing as that sounds. FCP was designed a decade ago, optimized for common video types – think about it – there were no cameras shooting on anything other than tape!

Since then, Apple has added more and more capability – but it’s optimized for what’s called “I-Frame” editing – where each frame has all the information on every frame. A G4/G5 Macintosh could handle the decoding and playback in real time.

When we moved over to HD, many of the camera manufacturers chose to store footage using techniques that were common for distribution codecs – where every frame DOES NOT contain all the information – and this is to save space. The two major formats – MPEG-2 (used in HDV cameras as a source, but DVDs as a distribution) and h.264 (used in DSLRs as a source, but youtube as a distribution).

Final Cut 6 and 7 can certainly try to playback the h.264 footage that comes from your DSLR camera. But they’ll struggle – you may make a cut at a spot where you’re not on a full frame – FCP may have to load into ram as many as 14 other frames just to display the frame your playhead is on. This stresses the system, and around the COW (and actually from apple itself) – it’s considered to be a mistake to work directly in h.264; just because it’s QuickTime, doesn’t mean it plays well with FCP.

Apple was cognizant of this problem. HDV, DSLRs, and even the iPhone, produce video that doesn’t edit easily on any computer. In iMovie, Apple came up with a codec called AIC – Apple intermediary codec, that would work on even the G5 that they were selling.

But their solution for their pro market was to design a codec with Professional Resolution (ProRes) that would hold data better – at the price of requiring an intel mac. ProRes will make the files larger, depending on your choice of ProRes, significantly larger – but the tradeoff is that the mac doesn’t have to work as hard, and therefore, can handle multiple streams (like a picture in picture).

For most DSLR users, either ProRes LT or ProRes 422, will retain the quality of what’s shot without making the size gigantic. Uncompressed HD, roughly, would be 40+ times the size of the h.264 files you’re taking off your camera.

TL;DR: ProRes is a codec designed to deal with the fact that sooner or later you pay the piper – and provides a great compromise between keeping the quality high and providing solid response in FCP. The only drawback (from your POV) will be the file size.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
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[Jeff Greenberg]

In QuickTime Player (and QuickTime Player 7 not QuickTime X) the choice is to open an Image Sequence….

Then you can save it however you like.

In Motion, you navigate in the File Browser to your image sequence. By default, motion handles image sequences as collapsed.
Then you change the duration of the composition by clicking the frame count in the lower right corner.
Then save as a Motion File and it imports directly into FCP.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
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[Jeff Greenberg]

Eh, I’ll answer it here.

Traditionally, working in AE, you don’t get RT playback of visual elements – you put in the audio, and hit the * key to drop markers where you intend for thigns to happen.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
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[Jeff Greenberg]

Drop them to a timeline that matches, export; there should be no render needed – only the time to copy all of the files to a single QuickTime file.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
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[Jeff Greenberg]

No idea what the problem is. And if it’s fine on the mac – it’s somewhere AFTER the mac that the problem exists.

But I can tell you how to troubleshoot:

Find a way to monitor the output after each step along the chain. Barring that, you’ll need a way to replace each unit/cable to see if it’s the problem.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
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[Jeff Greenberg]

Grab the top of any column you want to move. Drag and rearrange.

Right click on a column – you’ll find the ability to hide columns you don’t want, show columns that you do….

And then you can SAVE this information and load it with a new project.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
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[Jeff Greenberg]

First, don’t turn off a layer – choose the layer and hit CNTRL-B – Enable/disable (toggle). This will keep the rest of your renders.

Second, you know those little boxes on the edge of the track panel? They’re set to AUTO select when you have no selection (which is what Open is doing – opening as you go along your timeline)

CMD + Num Pad track number will turn off a track, causing it to open the track underneath

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
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[Jeff Greenberg]

The flat out advantage of buying Keynote is you can directly export a file that will go into your avid – and is ready to go for changes too.

Most of the other stuff will be hand built – but check out NewBlue FX. I seem to recall they have some of those cool transitions.

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.
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Contact me through my Website