[John Pale]

Here are the chapters in the Final Cut Pro manual you need to read.

Vol 1 (Interface, Setup and Input) page 70 Saving Custom Layouts
Vol 2 (Editing) Page 53 Using Markers

If you dont have the books, the manual is available in the Help Menu and is easily searchable. It took me less than a minute to find this stuff.

You are right, this is no Avid. Thats why you need to read the manual.

[John Pale]

Its only a shot in the dark, but under different circumstances in the past I had a HUGE Systems firmware issue which was causing “hits”.

I would do a test that does not, in any way utilize your RAID. If it the problem goes away, you should consider contacting your RAID manufacturer.

[John Pale]

I hope its a misunderstanding too. Let us know what happens.

[John Pale]

Before taking legal action, try again and demand to speak to a supervisor…you may have just gotten an ill informed person. Sometimes its a matter of persitence and speaking to the right person. Anyone who knows FCP knows the 5.1 revision is a significant one, despite the version numbering. Most point upgrades are free, and available in Software Update…this is not. They would not have such an elaborate upgrade procedure if it were not a significant update.

[John Pale]

The blocking can be casued by the bit rate being too high. The effect will vary according to the tolerance of the DVD player. If you try the discs on various DVD players do you get different results? If you are burning DVD’s and not replicating, keep the bit rate under 7 (I usually use 6.5). Most “Hollywood” DVD’s are actually encoded with bit rates much lower than that. Always encode your audio to AC3. Do not use straight AIFF audio, as it eats up bandwith. If the project is under 90 minutes, its probably best to use CBR (single pass NON VBR) and not VBR. 2 pass VBR is good for longer projects, because it variably assigns a higher bit rate to more complex areas and a lower one to the less complex parts. Compressor sometimes will allow the bit rate to spike higher than the max you have set, so its important to be conservative when setting the maximum. Dont make the min and max too close to each other either…3.5 min 6.8 max usually works fine for me, though your milage may vary. Leave the GOP settings at the default..they are correct for almost all circumstances and should only be changed if you really have a special cirucmstance and know what you are doing.

If you try all of this and still have problems, you may want to experiment with doing a test not using your RAID…there is a small possibility that this could not be an encoding bit rate problem at all.

Another potential cause can be video levels being too high, freaking out the encoder…is everything broadcast legal?

[John Pale]

Compressor does a good job with the downconvert during the MPEG encode. No need for SD timelines or for additonal software.

[John Pale]

Not that I do it a lot, but I have worked on a long form project in DVC Pro 50 with 5 streams with no problems at all. My system specs are not as good as his, so he may be right to expect something is wrong.

FCP 5.1
Power Mac G5 Dual 2GHZ
2.5 GB RAM
Huge Media Vault 400GB

[John Pale]

They are there with mine…but they are simply called DV50

[John Pale]

Best to use the Avid Quicktime Compressed codec. You will probably find 2:1 or 3:1 compressed will retain decent picture quality and have reduced file size over uncompressed

download from here..

https://www.avid.com/onlinesupport/supportcontent.asp?productID=0&contentID=3555&typeID=

For best results, export a reference movie from FCP in the codec you edited in, then use Quicktime Pro or Compressor to convert. The Avid Codec can be a bit unstable within FCP, but works fine elsewhere.

[John Pale]

It really doesn’t get more basic than this.
Not trying to belittle anyone, but this does not belong in this forum.