[John Pale]

[ReelJolly] “I was always under the impression that the TC info was imbedded with the 1s and 0s on the digital tape. How can it be different at the same frame three different times?”

Try a different tape as a test. If everything works normally, then you have a recording with bad timecode.

[John Pale]

You want the DV NTSC Easy Setup.

Whether you can perform insert and assemble edits depend on what the deck supports. I am not familiar with that model. Is it firewire or RS-422 controlled?

Pre black about :30 seconds at the start fo the tape, with your timecode set to whatever you want. Then use FCP to perform an assemble edit using Edit to Tape.

[John Pale]

Whether its noticable or not depends on the track, the quality of the encoding, and the way its mixed with the other sound in your project.

If it’s “full frontal” in the mix, I would definitely get the CD and rip it (provided you have permission) to WAVE or AIFF. I don’t know of any service doing downloads of uncompressed music….the record companies (until EMI just the other day) have insisted on music downloads having DRM (anti-piracy), which is currently only available with Apple iTunes AAC encoding and WMV.

If you use compressed audio, you should use iTunes, Quicktime Player or Compressor to convert it to AIFF 48K Stereo for use in FCP.

[John Pale]

Doesnt seem to work, at least in QT Player. Nevermind.

[John Pale]

If you have the latest Avid Quicktime Codecs installed

https://www.avid.com/onlineSupport/supportcontent.asp?browse=&productID=0&contentID=10554

This installs the Avid DV100 Codec, which should read the file.

[John Pale]

https://www.avid.com/onlineSupport/supportcontent.asp?browse=&productID=0&contentID=10554

[John Pale]

[stu aull] ” If you – or anyone, knows how to get at these pages separately, PLEASE tell me!! I guess I could load the PDF document onto my drives. Not sure how that would improve quality though??”

When you open a multipage PDF in Photoshop or Illustrator it gives a dialog opens letting you choose which page you want to work with. In Photoshop you customize the resolution and size in this dialog. Make sure you are using sensible numbers….Make sure you are in RGB and not CMYK. Then do a “Save As” to your media drive. Do this for each page you wish to use. Import the new separate pages from your Media Drive.

For the record, I just tried doing this using the FCP User Manual PDF file and it works well, with no artifacting.

[stu aull] “No, not rendered, but FCP output is attached to a broadcast 20” video monitor. Even the “parked-on-the-timeline” output is pretty grim on the NTSC monitor.
Files are 200dpi 1500×2300 pixels – I’ve tried various sizes – all BIGGER than 720×486 – smae crummy results.”

Try rendering. You may be seeing draft quality.

[John Pale]

Are they rendered?
Are you judging quality on the computer monitor and not your external video monitor?

What are the dimensions of your pictures? The pictures should be at least the size of your frame (720 x 486 for NTSC).

Also–not a good idea to import directly off a CD. Copy them to your media drive and then import from there.

[John Pale]

I should add that it doesn’t matter that you shot HDCAM…its perfectly okay to use DVCPRO HD as an editing codec.

[John Pale]

Use the AJA Kona DVCPRO HD Easy Setup appropriate for the flavor of HD your footage is in.

The file size is smaller than uncompressed SD, you get lots of RT and great picture quality.

Dont bother offlining at an SD resolution.