[Jeff Meyer]

I want to throw this out there first – to “conform” is to make something comply to standards. We’re using it for two different things in this conversation.

The Modify -> Conform to sequence command in Final Cut adjusts the video to match the sequence.
The Conform process in Cinema Tools changes how the file is played back.

Cinema Tools is an application that comes with Final Cut Studio. You should consult your Final Cut installation discs if you don’t have it installed. Cinema Tools changes how the file is interpreted, so the 60fps is played at 24fps. Cinema Tools will do the speed transformation instantly.

Twixtor is very, very different. It analyzes the motion in the file and creates intermediate frames.

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Considering shutter speed, the most film-inspired frame rate to use on dslrs is 1/50. At 24fps with film each frame occupies 1/24th of a second. Half of that time is spent being exposed (1/48th of a second) and the other half is spent moving in/out so the previous and next frames can be exposed. With digital the temptation is to use the shutter as an exposure balancing tool, but it changes the visual quality of the motion. Things that are moving have a certain amount of blur at 1/48th of a second that the viewer has come to expect from years of seeing 1/48th of a second as the shutter speed. When you shutter up to 1/100 you cut the blur in half, and things don’t have a “natural” amount of motion blur.

With film cameras the shutter speed is considered an angle due to the rotary shutter. 1/48 is considered a 180º shutter at 24fps. 1/96th would be a 90º shutter.

Personally, I have a background that involves sports, so I’m not too crazy about keeping a 180º shutter. We tend to shutter up to create sharper, more pronounced motion. It’s great for replays. When you get into narrative work you’ll find the shutter is fixed at 1/48th, or 1/50th if you’re shooting SLR. Where your teacher/professor got 1/80-1/120 I’m not sure. Perhaps they were trying to compensate for not having ND filters available to balance the exposure.

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With the 180º shutter angle concept established, it’s important to realise that slow motion is a special effect shot. If you want to give the impression of time slowing down shutter up, use 1/250/ 1/320, 1/5000 to freeze the motion. If you’re feeding it into Twixtor or Motion’s Optical Flow the faster the shutter the happier the software will be, because having hard edges on things that are moving allows it to do a better job of making more frames. If you’re using Cinema Tools exclusively you might avoid the extremely high shutter speeds, otherwise it will look very, very choppy.

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When you change the frame rate, you need to adjust your lighting or other elements of exposure to compensate. When you go from 1/50 to 1/125 you’ll need to more than double the light. Either add more light, open the lens up and keep an eye on what’s in focus, or ISO up knowing that the image will be more noisy. Just like there’s no such thing as a free lunch, you can’t change only the shutter speed and expect the image to look the same.

[Jeff Meyer]

By “Conform” I assume you mean you’re opening the 720 footage in Cinema Tools and using that to conform the footage to 23.98? If you aren’t that’s the proper way to handle the footage for slow-mo. Be aware that this process isn’t reversible, so if you want to use the footage in real time at some point be sure you make a second copy of the file in Finder before conforming.

With regard to the footage looking smaller, that’s because it is. 720p is 1280×720 in square pixels, and 1080 is 1920×1080. For the footage to fill the frame you’ll need to stretch it to fill the frame. Use the Modify -> Conform to Sequence command to make the footage fill the frame. Your footage will be a bit softer, so you might use a mild sharpen, or add a touch of grain to the footage.

As for the color temperature shift that’s either because the white balance on the camera changed or the lighting changed. It could be as simple as clouds rolling through, a light being gelled, or using auto-white instead of manually setting the white balance. If you’ve set the white balance and the lighting isn’t changing the color won’t change, unless there’s some crazy jank going on with your equipment.

[Jeff Meyer]

If you’re familiar with Motion – a part of Final Cut Studio – it has a record button that allows you to move things around and it’ll make the keyframes for you. Sounds like what your HTML5 software is all about. You can take the video on V2, control-click on it and pick Send to -> Motion. That will send your clip into a new Motion project with the correct settings. You can press save, then go to Final Cut to render and view the results. Motion is a lot of application, but I’m not sure the results will be much different.

[Jeff Meyer]

Yup. As stated before, conform the footage to match the rate you’re editing. If you shot everything else at 23.976 then conform your 59.94 to 23.976. You might make a duplicate copy of your clip before conforming, because it isn’t a reversible process.

[Jeff Meyer]

Put a second copy of your clip on video layer 2. Turn off video layer 1 (green button on the far left of the timeline) so you can see what you’re doing.

Double-click the clip on V2 to load it into the viewer. Go to the Motion tab and use the Crop controls to remove the bottom of the video. Now you can turn V1 back on add filters as needed to the top to create the desired effect. I’m not sure what the “distort” effect you’re looking for looks like, otherwise I would offer a few suggestions.

If you want more control than the crop tool offers you can use the four or eight point garbage matte filters, which are controlled from the filters tab.

[Jeff Meyer]

Your Final Cut Pro timeline should either 100% match your source media or 100% match the specs the network provided for the file you deliver. If it matches the source media you should export from Final Cut at “Current Settings” and transcode in Compressor to create the deliverable.

Since you’re working with a timeline that doesn’t match your media you can use the Modify -> Conform to Sequence menu setting to adjust your media to fit the timeline, no guesswork required.

When you have the specs the network provided for delivery we can help you get the rest of the way there, but lacking those specs we’re shooting in the dark.

[Jeff Meyer]

This is why the world was easy with Flash. It worked everywhere until iOS.

Here’s the current breakdown:
• Apple and Microsoft only accept H.264 HTML 5 video on their desktop browsers and mobile devices. Internet Explorer added H.264 support at IE9. You’ll need Flash video for IE8 and older. With Windows 8 it’ll be H.264 or nothing – no Flash support.
• Google says hey, H.264 isn’t open source so we aren’t supporting it. They created their own open WebM video standards. Android 2.3.x also supports WebM. Chrome doesn’t natively accept H.264, although browser plugins can allow H.264 video to play.
• Mozilla supports WebM and Ogg Theora natively, but does not natively accept H.264. H.264 support can be added on the Windows side.
• Opera supports WebM and Ogg Theora natively, and does not support H.264 at all.

The kicker – All browsers support H.264 through Adobe Flash, and all browsers support WebM and Ogg Theora through Adobe Flash – except iOS devices of course, and Windows 8 won’t support Flash in Metro mode.

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Since everything mobile works with H.264 (right now) I would encode a mobile version in H.264 at 640×360 at whatever bitrate you find acceptable for your content. I wouldn’t go over 500kbps – it needs to stream well over 3G.

Then for the full browser you’ll need H.264 and Flash versions at least, and probably a WebM version. The server will need to send the appropriate version to the appropriate browsers. I would let the frame size be defined by the website layout, and then the bitrate will depend on the frame size.
Compressor can make H.264 for you, but it won’t make WebM or Flash video on its own, so you’ll need a separate utility to create those versions.

Personally, I would avoid all of these headaches and embed through Vimeo or YouTube. They employee engineers who have to figure all of this out. You upload a file and it works everywhere.

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Also, to make your Final Cut Pro (7) experience better make sure you’re handling your SLR footage properly. Dragging the .mov files off of the card and onto the timeline will cause problems. Check out Shane Ross’ tutorial on tapeless workflow for the best way to handle SLR footage in Final Cut.
https://library.creativecow.net/ross_shane/tapeless-workflow_fcp-7/1

[Jeff Meyer]

This is what you get with asynchronous sources. If you were syncing camera and the audio recorder they would have the same timecode coming from the same clock. With a 60D there aren’t any timecode sync options, so you’ll have to accept that the sync may float a bit due to variances in the clocks on these two devices. The best you can do is try to find a silent moment to re-sync every minute or two.

[Jeff Meyer]

I know this isn’t of any help, but I’m a 12 core user with 20gb of RAM, and I’m not having any issues. I’m working with 1080 ProRes422 from Canon XF. I don’t think 12 core is the issue. I’m using OS 10.6.8 and FCP 7.0.3, no software updates available.

If the memory changes don’t smooth everything out you might do some research into which slots you should use for specific PCIx cards. If my memory is any good RAID cards should go in 4, and RED Rocket cards in 3. If you’re still having troubles do some research on the topic and see what you can find.

[Jeff Meyer]

Absolutely, positively change to ProRes before editing with Final Cut Pro. A Google search will reveal multiple ways to get this done. ProRes422 LT is what you want unless you’re going to be doing some steep color grading. 422 HQ is overkill for HDSLR footage.