[J. Tad newberry]

…I just experienced the same thing. One drive wasn’t booting up all of a sudden, and causing the computer to crash (you know, that kernel thingy where you get this nice vertical wipe saying, “restart your computer, blah, blah, blah”). I messed with the cables today. Saw that the power supply to the faulty drive was pretty hot, so unplugged it, let it cool. I have two identical 500GB Quadras and tried the other power supply on what seemed like the bad drive. It fired right up. After the power supply cooled, it worked, too. Sooo, maybe i’ll just throw a little fan behind my computers where these cords and power supplies reside and hopefully that will take care o’ the problem? Are there “better” power supplys to buy for the LaCie puppies? It sounds like a fairly common problem.

Thanks again!

J. Tad Newberry
Big Ya Productions
Power Mac G5
Dual 2 GHz
http://www.bigya.tv

[J. Tad newberry]

Hey Jerry! Thanks so much for the phone call the other day that solved this problem easily. For anyone else who is clueless as I, Jerry said i had done everything right…EXCEPT for having FCP unlaunched before hooking up the Firewire cable. Once I did that, it worked like a charm. Thanks again, Jerry!

Thanks again!

J. Tad Newberry
Big Ya Productions
Power Mac G5
Dual 2 GHz
http://www.bigya.tv

[J. Tad newberry]

Well, here we are a few months later, with the same problem. I’ve had my 800 card out of the computer for awhile, but not much work to worry about. ERROR. I should’ve got this card problem fixed while I was slow, because now I’m (very thankfully!) getting a LITTLE busier.

I contacted ATI again re: the overheating problem, and this time it is out of warranty so they won’t fix it (at least, not for free) and yet they didn’t even give me an estimate on how much they would charge. So next step…going to my local Mac Store to see if they can do anything, or if I just need to buy a new card. Anyone else having this recurring problem with this card…or have you all just moved on to the next one? Again, this one doesn’t have the other power connector, so it looks like it’s just time to buy a new card unless any of you have a solution to let me limp along a little longer?

Thanks again!

J. Tad Newberry
Big Ya Productions
Power Mac G5
Dual 2 GHz
http://www.bigya.tv

[J. Tad newberry]

p.s. i should’ve made it clear that the last 5 steps is a completely different way to do this than the first 5 steps, and the second 5 is turning out to be the cleanest way to do it, even though it will take longer with doing the keyframe steps in Motion. Oh well…

thanks again!

J. Tad Newberry
Big Ya Productions
http://www.bigya.tv

[J. Tad newberry]

It’s getting there fairly well. Thanks to the input from you guys, here is what is working pretty well if anyone is facing something similar:

1) i made sure i captured the BetaSP footage in 8 bit mode. Did a few tutorials on green screen and other keys.

2) In FCP, i first applied Color Smoothing to the clip. The tutorials said to do this, but i honestly don’t see much difference whether it is applied or not. I also tried the clip over the white BG in Composite Mode – Multiply. Didn’t see much change here.

3) Did an 8-point garbage matte to crop out the majority of the BG.

4) Applied a color key, sampling the BG near the talent.

5) Applied the Matte Choker.

Then i got the brilliant idea of trying to create my own holdout matte, and did this:

1) Original clip again, applied Color Smoothing.

2) Applied 8-point garbage matte.

3) Applied the Extract filter, and got it as close as possible to “done”, though several holes were still in it which i figured i would cover in Motion.

4) Rendered out this black and white file, brought it into Motion, and then started applying white shapes and keyframing them around to keep the talent completely covered. Saved this as my holdout matte.

5) Brought this into FCP, put in on layer 2, the normal clip on layer 3, and the BG on layer 1. Set composite mode of layer 3 to “Travel Matte- Luma”…and it looks purdy darned good!

BUT, i hereby promise to not do this again! I think I will buy the Chroma Pop…though it’s a wee bit on the little side, but should be fine for singular talking heads…

thanks again!

J. Tad Newberry
Big Ya Productions
http://www.bigya.tv

[J. Tad newberry]

thanks to all of you for your input on this. this forum is SO phenomenal…and phenomenal because of so many people here willing to help and offer suggestions. i’m making some good headway on my crappy white background, and now looking at maybe getting the “Chroma Pop” screen that Digital Juice keeps advertising. have any of you guys used that? it looks to be nothing more than just a small flex-fill type toy with chroma-green on one side and chroma-blue on the other, and looks probably perfect for garbage matting behind a single talking head.

thanks again!

J. Tad Newberry
Big Ya Productions
http://www.bigya.tv

[J. Tad newberry]

really??? so no need for Sorensen or the cheaper FLV encoders? i was just coming on here to find the latest best way to send a client a Flash file out of FCP, and was resigned to know that i either have to spend $250 for Sorensen, or $22 for Visual Hub (though it sounds like you get what you pay for as far as quality goes…), but if this H264 option works, life will be dandy and the recession is over! like Rush Limbaugh, if there is a recession or depression, i refuse to participate. : )

thanks again!

J. Tad Newberry
Big Ya Productions
http://www.bigya.tv

[J. Tad newberry]

hey noah,

thanks for your reply, but you must not have read my post very closely. i don’t have Photoshop, so can’t resize it that way, so was asking if there was a way via Motion. take care…and have a super Thanksgiving!

thanks again!

J. Tad Newberry
Big Ya Productions
http://www.bigya.tv

[J. Tad newberry]

: ) i’ll reply at your website…

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

Hi Rafael,

I’m still intrigued by this idea, and would love it if it would work on my system with the decks i already have, but it doesn’t seem to…but you (and others here) have been quite a bit more informative and responsive than the folks at BlackMagic. So far so good with my Canopus (Grass Valley) box…but i just wish i hadn’t had to shell out $280 right now! : (

thanks again!

mh