John Pale
Forum Replies Created
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Not sure if it helps you, but you can tell FCP to not show through-edits in your preferences.
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Mark,
The limitation I mention in my post above probably contributes more to the rendering criticisms that you have heard more than anything else. It’s a clear difference in performance from Avid and one that a lot of people making the switch are shocked about…since its something an Avid could do for many years, they just assume FCP can do it… and are stunned and annoyed at all the rendering they have to do on a fully decked out, Kona 3 equipped FCP system. I do a great deal of work on sports programming, so I run into people who are frustrated with this limitation all the time. However, not every show has the same needs. If you don’t need keyable graphics all over your show, you will probably never notice or care about this limitation. If you are doing complex layered graphics, using lots of plugins, that always need renders on both Avid and FCP you will also probably not notice the difference. I have delivered network shows on both platforms. You need to do your homework about the strengths and weaknesses of both (which you are doing!) and think hard about what your needs are. -
I’m a big supporter of FCP, but I will say with certain types of programming you will have to render a great deal more types of things that will happily play in real time on an Avid.
If you do sports or news programming with lots of lower thirds, clocks, popups and other keyed items, you will quickly want to throw your FCP system out the window. Basically all Avid systems can do at least one layer of real time keying (matte keying in Avid lingo)…most sold today can do more than one. FCP cannot at present do ANY realtime keying (okay…low resolution Unlimited setting aside)…and since the rendering involves creating a new media file from the top down, you may also chew through tons more disk space. Its rather odd, considering even a relatively inexpensive FCP system can do multiple layers of picture in picture…but a fully decked out FCP system cannot play a simple keyed lower third in real time. Apple has simply not designed their RT Extreme engine to handle this type of material in real time….I’m pretty sure the hardware can handle it (as Avid runs on Mac and happily does it)…its just the software has not been optimized for this purpose.
If you do more narrative work, with only a few lower thirds….or conversely more intensive layering, that would need to be rendered on both Avid and FCP…the difference in platforms may not be that significant to you.
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Drag your 4:3 NTSC movie into Compressor.
Use the Preset (in Advanced Format Conversions) for DVCPROHD 720p60.
In the Inspector, go to the Geometry tab and go to the bottom where it says “Output Image Inset (Padding)” select 4:3 – 1.33:1.
Thats it.
To preview the Pillarbox (to make sure you did this right…go to the upper right corner of the Preview window in Compressor and press the button in the upper right corner. Be sure to slide the split-screen slider above the preview window all the way to the left to see a preview of the entire encoded frame. You may have to toggle back and forth, as sometimes Compressor’s preview does not update right away. You should see your image pillarboxed. At least it works here.
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These requirements exist for a reason you know.
Your system will not be able to handle FCP 6, even if you could find some way around it.
An older version will probably work, if you can get your hands on a copy.
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Its totally doable using the Kona 2, however be aware that you are losing quality by recompressing your footage (originally compressed in camera as HDV) to DVCPRO-HD. Do some tests and see if you can live with the quality. Depending on the footage it may be an acceptable tradeoff for ease of workflow.
You cannot really work with ProRes on a dual processor G5…you can kinda make it work on a Quad, but really you should be on an Intel MacPro. So staying HDV or working in DVCPRO HD would be your best options given your equipment.
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Open in Cinema Tools and conform to 29.97. It only takes a second and doesn’t actually do anything to the file (since it really already is 29.97), just fixes the metadata thats fouling up FCP.
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Are you feeding black burst to the deck and is the reference switch in the proper position?
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Export Quicktime movies (in the Avid Meridien codec) of your still sequences, just in case the Moving Picture stuff does not work. In my experience, the plug in a bit finicky about moving files, and compatibility between versions. Be prepared for it not to work at all, and be pleasantly surprised if it does.
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What happens if you use the Link command to link the video to the audio you want? (Select the Video and new audio in the timeline, then go to Modify/Link).
Does it now match to the proper audio and video?