[Jeff Meyer]

If you need a robust text tools you might do best creating the text in After Effects or Photoshop and bringing it into Final Cut. Make sure you get the frame size and pixel aspect ratio correct, otherwise the proportions will probably be wrong. That info can be found in your sequence settings.

[Jeff Meyer]

For Final Cut I essentially live out of three folders:
• Projects – all projects are in their own folder here. I also keep ancillary files (graphics, logos) in here. It’s easy to forget to backup those small files.
• Scratch – L&T media and render files go here.
• Completed Projects – exported QT moves go here. I find it handy to have one folder where completed things are located.

To your questions:

#1 – It’s wise to keep your camera reels on a drive separate from your scratch drive. Right now all your eggs are in one basket. Hard drives will fail, and based on the workflow you’ve explained if your 1TB drive fails (mechanical, power surges, someone trips over a wire, corruption) you’re in bad shape.

#2 – I would say have a drive for your MXF media from the camera. I would keep this detached from the wall and the tower, and offsite (fire, theft, etc) as possible. Log and Transfer (capture scratch) onto a larger 2TB+ drive. I would keep the projects in a “projects” folder on this drive. Put the autosave vault on your system drive.

With this setup if the large drive fails you can open the project from the autosave vault on the system drive and “recapture media” from your MXF drive and be up and going. If the MXF drive fails immediately purchase a new hard drive to backup your scratch drive, and back it up.

#3 – You can perform a finder-level copy/paste of your scratch to another drive. If Final Cut can’t find the media it will show you a reconnect media box. Just point it to where you moved the files.

[Jeff Meyer]

With the Pros you can upgrade to 16GB of RAM if you purchase it 3rd party – and for a rather reasonable rate. This is assuming you don’t get the new high-res version that has the RAM soldered onto the logic board. Look into “16gb Macbook Pro” on Google if interested.

[Jeff Meyer]

The issue is video streams use a different color space, and it doesn’t properly display on a computer monitor. You can calibrate your computer monitor til the cows come home but they won’t be the same. Note that Adobe RGB and sRGB are both RGB color spaces with values for red, green, and blue. Video color spaces (Rec. 601 for SD and Rec. 709 for HD) are YUV, or a luminance channel, then channels carrying the deltas for red and blue. This may seem like a silly arrangement, but it was rather brilliant when it was devised as it allowed a seamless transition from b/w broadcasting to color broadcasting.

To answer your question, you can’t trust the display in Photoshop or Final Cut for video work, but you can trust an external monitor that goes through an IO box. The IO box gives you an output from Final Cut in the YUV color space. Plugging an HDMI monitor into a Mini-DisplayPort or Thunderbolt port doesn’t count because you’re working in RGB at that point.

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One thing that might be helpful is checking your gamma interpretation. Excerpt from the FCP manual:

To change the Gamma Level property of a clip in the Item Properties window
Select a clip in the Browser or in a sequence.

Choose Edit > Item Properties > Format (or press Command-9).

Do one of the following:

Control-click the value next to the Gamma Level property, then choose a predefined gamma value for the clip (Source, 1.8, or 2.2) from the shortcut menu.

Click in the Gamma Level field and enter a gamma value or type “Source,” then press Enter.

Tip: To see how a clip’s gamma affects its brightness, try changing the Gamma Level property of a clip while viewing the clip in the Viewer or Canvas.

( https://documentation.apple.com/en/finalcutpro/usermanual/index.html#chapter=85%26section=8%26tasks=true )

[Jeff Meyer]

XF cameras shoot in XDCAM 422 codec. If there’s no render bar you should be good to go. If you’re worried you can change it to Log and Transfer into ProRes422 using the gear and Preferences icon in the L&T window.

[Jeff Meyer]

Compression is all about finding the balance between quality loss and file size.

I would target something like:
Export to Quicktime
Compression: H.264 (multipass if you have the time)
I would use the Limit Bitrate option instead of the Quality slider. It’ll give you a file size estimate. I would start at 8mbps for 720 or 25mbps for 1080. Depending on the complexity of your footage and the need for quality you can adjust up or down to taste.
Sound: MPEG-4 AAC, Stereo, Auto, 192kbps
Frame Size – I would leave it at unscaled, but if you’re at 1080 you can shave off a lot of size by dropping to 720.
Frame Rate – Don’t type one in and it will be unchanged.
Interlaced scaling should be OFF
Deinterlace video should be on if your source is 1080i, otherwise it should be off.

Remember, if you’re testing for quality you can work with a sample of the video instead of ten minutes. Pick a portion with a lot of motion in the frame.

When you find settings you like, save a preset.

[Jeff Meyer]

It has proved to be an issue with the four seats at our shop. Most of our projects require a fast turn around and pulling older footage. Because of this files come from several places and color correction is done with the 3-way. Even on a ProRes sequence Final Cut crashes. If we have a project that’s just going to be some simple cutting I use XDCAM because of the file size.

I’d say give the XDCAM a shot, if Final Cut crashes regularly you’ll quickly discover you need to work in ProRes. If it works fine in XDCAM then you’ve just saved a lot on disc space.

[Jeff Meyer]

For simply cutting I’d say XDCAM is great. I’ve found that when adding filters (mainly 3-way CC and broadcast safe) or ProRes4444 layers with alpha above, even in a ProRes422 sequence, Final Cut gets rather unstable. If you just cutting save the disc space, if you’re going to be stylizing the video I’d say save yourself the headaches and work in ProRes.

[Jeff Meyer]

The bitrate or data rate can be considered the quality of the movie, so I don’t think you want to drop that down to 1,000kbps. That’s pretty low for 720.

I haven’t had the best of luck with exporting using Quicktime Conversion, and I think this is where your stutter is coming in. In addition using QT Conversion it ties up Final Cut when you could otherwise be working. What I would recommend instead is to export a copy of your project at full quality (File, Export (not QT conversion, just export and leave it at current settings) and then take that into Compressor. You can check the exported file before going into Compressor and go frame-by-frame with it. If this export has stutter issues you need to reimport your footage, as something went wrong during importing.

Here’s a good tutorial about using Compressor for Vimeo. Bring your exported QT movie into Compressor to make the Vimeo file. I would always opt for multipass encoding if time allows.
https://vimeo.com/24014623

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[Jeff Meyer]

Your timeline setting should match how you’re shooting. What’s your camera set to be recording right now, 720 or 1080, and is it set to 30p or a different framerate?