[Jeffrey]

Well, it’s really a give and take relationship here…I think it’s pretty undisputible that any AE effect is much better than a stock FCP effect, especially the motion, rotate, and scale porporties. So I’d definatly go with AE from a quality standpoint, however, AE and FCP don’t intergrate well and the workflow between the two is cumbersome, once you render in AE and bring that into FCP and then need to make additional changes, you need to re-render in AE, a real time waster. So from a time-saving standpoint you’re better off with FCP.

So what’s more important-time or quality? I’d go with quality all the way.

Also a third option would be to use Apple’s Motion application if that’s available to you. It intergrates seamlessly with FCP and has way better motion effects. Good luck.

Jeff

“TV said that? Then it must be true.” -Homer Simpson

[Jeffrey]

Your combination of an IO and Firewire drive might be the problem. As far as I know, when using an IO you need an additional firewire card to run you media drive off of. The IO uses pretty much all of the firewire bandwith, giving you capture, droped frames, and playback problems.

Jeff

“TV said that? Then it must be true.” -Homer Simpson

[Jeffrey]

Just as an FYI: (and if you allready know this, just ignore me) When CC’s are tranfered from an analogue signal (line 21) like from a BetaSP source, they are tranfered to the DV tapes VAUX data area. In the DV world CC’s no longer reside on line 21. And if you’re editing with the DV codec with a 720×480 frame size, CC’s cannot be added to line 21, they must be encoded to the VAUX area. To do line 21 encoding you must be using a codec that supports 720×486.

The guys at CCaption.com know a lot about this stuff. And they pretty much make the only CC software available for MAC and FCP: MacCaption.

You might not be pooched yet, depending on your whole signal path, I’d check with the guys at CCaption.com and see what advice they can give you.

Jeff

“TV said that? Then it must be true.” -Homer Simpson

[Jeffrey]

I can definatly confirm that captions WILL pass through FCP un-harmed until you apply an effect of any kind. Any sort of render will erase your captions from only that renderd portion of the video. We need to run captions through FCP every day and we can do it as long as we don’t render anything. The render re-compresses the video and the captions are lost in that re-compression.

Also, not all VTR’s will keep those captions intact either. Our Beta decks work fine and always keep the captions safe, but beware if you run it through a DV Deck, captions WILL NOT run through a DSR-45!!! The only path through a DSR-45 to keep the captions is through the Monitor Out connector; component, composite, and S-Video WILL NOT keep the captions. However, the older DSR-30 WILL keep the captions through any path. I cannot vouch for capture cards like the Kona or AJA IO.

Jeff

“TV said that? Then it must be true.” -Homer Simpson

[Jeffrey]

John,

We’re in the same boat as you. We’re sending our tapes to a captioning provider. We have extensively looked into all the CC options out there and the best (meaning: fastest, simplest, and cheepest) FCP solution seems to be MacCaption.

We looked into hardware encoders and the whole work flow of: transcription > CC formatting within captioning software > encoding CC’s to Beta through a hardware encoder in line with our signal flow – just seemed to be a long, time consuming, expensive, and complicated solution.

With MacCaption the whole process is contained in 1 package (except for transcription, which can be handed by a fast-typing employee or in-expensive speech recognition software). And the captioned master QT movies can be saved to a DVD-R or similar media for archival and re-runs if necessary. And looking at prices for a CC provider, MacCaption pays for itself in a few short months.

PS. we’re planning on paying for the provider for a few more months, then “discovering” MacCaption, therby saving the day, and the boss, lots of money and scoring us big points with the boss. And points with the boss equals new cameras and other fancy equipment for us!

Jeff Carrion

“TV said that? Then it must be true.” -Homer Simpson

[Jeffrey]

Well, I stand corrected. This will put a grin on my co-workers face.

But let me ask this:
I came to my now de-bunked theory by a problem we had when we did our audio the way you all stated here. We would calibrate our FCP’s tone at -12 in FCP and 0 on Beta, but we found that when we do this, as i have just tested on a spot i just finished, that when your tone in FCP is at -12, and you set your Beta to 0db by that tone, and you set your program audio to bounce at -12 in FCP then it bounces at like -12 on the Beta deck, wayyy below the 0db mark.

So even though the tone went through at -12db (FCP) and 0db (Beta), and the audio is bouncing at -12db in FCP, the program audio is wayyy too low on the Beta deck!!! Am I missing something here?

BTW, we route the signal from the MAC thru Firewire into a DSR-45, then out of the DSR-45 via XLR to a Mackie 1402-VLZ then, via XLR, to a UVW-1800. (The meters on the Mackie read 0db with tone and wayyy below 0db during program audio)

Jeff

[Jeffrey]

You can directly import just about anything into FCP like psd, jpeg, tiff, etc. Just do a File>Import>Files and select the images you want. Select one at a time or all 200 at once. As far as re-sizing, that depends on what you want to do with the pics when they’re in FCP. If you want to do zooms and pans and tilts on the pics then you should leave them at a rather large size. If not, then re-size them to fit into the 720×480 window (assuming you’re working with DV) And, in that case it’s best to re-size in Photoshop, you could even record an action in CS2 to make it a batch process.

Jeff

[Jeffrey]

Paul,

We’ve been researching a closed captioning solution for months now and we have discovered a lot of issues. First, like you have discovered, a DSR45 will NOT retain captions when played through its component or S-Video outputs (haven’t tried the monitor out yet, I’ll look into that), however, an older DSR30 WILL retain captions through its component outputs. We do a lot of dubbing from FCP to the DSR30 to BetaSP and we are able to retain captions throughout using the DSR30.

We also found MacCaption to be rather un-FCP friendly. It really seemed geared towards an Avid or Media100 application (being 720×486). What method are you using to get your captions into FCP?

We have just started having our show captioned by a outsourced captioning provider, for $10/minute!

I have also been told that CPC Caption is comming out with some sort of FCP captioning software application, making it even eaiser for us little guys to do and afford captioning. Only 10 days ’till Jan. 1st! Good Luck!

Jeff

[Jeffrey]

Great! Thanks for the reply. I’ll contact you after the new year. In the meantime I’ll keep experimenting with your plug-ins.

Jeff Carrion
Director/Editor
Midwest Outdoors Television

[Jeffrey]

Thanks Graeme,

Heard your interview on the COW podcast, very interesting and imformative stuff.

I downloaded the demo versions of your plug-ins but I don’t think I’m setting them right because my video just doesn’t look quite like the XL-2’s 24p. Any advice on the various settings for a good 24p or 30p look? (I know settings are very subjective so maybe you could just offer a good starting point other than the default settings the filters apply.)
Also, how does your product compare with Magic Bullet? I’m really hot on the tail of finding a good film-look and need all the info I can get.

Thanks, It’s great to get good info straight from the source!

Jeff