[J. Tad newberry]

looks like you got some great answers already! since B-roll is not an option this time, my favorite cover for jumps cuts is the white flash frame, as someone has already mentioned. it is very acceptable these days, and sometimes helps to feel like it is adding a bit of “energy” to the edit. another option not mentioned yet is to shrink your video down (say to 50-75% or so) and put it on one side of the screen. (also, it would be good to fill the BG here with something snappy, like the company logo, or the dreaded (though non-existent?) B-roll, or a BG from a company like Digital Juice, then flip the direction of the shot and put the next shot on the other side of the screen.

i.e., say your subject was shot looking frame right. aesthetically-speaking, if you shrink this, you should put it on screen left, so the look space is to the right. then when you flip the shot (a 180 degree spin on the y-axis), your subject will be looking to the left, so put them on the right side of the screen…or you could even leave both shots full-screen and just use this major “jump-cut” as part of the edit (or add in the white flash as well).

all in all, there are rules, but knowing how and when to break them is part of the fun. with MTV coming on the scene 20 years ago, the “rules” have totally changed…almost to the point now where there are no rules. as others here have said, and i agree, i still don’t like to see jump cuts, cutting in the middle of a zoom (if there is a zoom at all!) or other camera move, or crossing the axis line. most of these are about as having the wrong filter on your lens (indoor/outdoor), but heck, even that rule is often broken for “asthetic” purposes.

have fun!

[J. Tad newberry]

by the way, i don’t have FCP 6, so no Pro Res…

[J. Tad newberry]

hmmmm, yours is the first post to go against DVCPro HD for the online. but to answer your first question, yes, i am taking the project to a post house for the “online”. i hadn’t been planning on recapturing the HDCam at uncompressed because most of the other people here were saying that DVCPro HD looks virtually identical to uncompressed HDCam…and saves much hard drive space, as well as is a codec i can work with quicker on my timeline.

the HDV footage needs to be married (as a B camera) to the HDCam footage at some point in the process, and others here were saying that HDV is a crappy codec to work in on the timeline, so i went ahead and “uprezzed” it via MM for my offline here at my place. so, with that, i now have my original HDV footage on my drive, as well as the same HDV footage MM’ed to DVCPro HD footage. therefore, i’m doing my offline here all in the DVCPro HD codec, and was planning on keeping it as is for the online as i just dump it out to an HDCam master tape…but you’re saying i would be far better off to recapture all of my HDCam footage in the online in an uncompressed codec? what then of my HDV footage?

either way, i think i need to think of a much better shooting format(s) and workflow for next month…

[J. Tad newberry]

on my wimpy SD monitor, the re-compression looks very good. my guess is that it wouldn’t hold up when going to an HDCam master, but for my offline, it will probably serve it’s purpose. it looks like i’ll have to break down and get some sort of HD capture card (and recapture my HDV footage) before going to online. OR, maybe i just drop the original HDV captured footage into my online timeline and let FCP render it into the finished DVCPro HD timeline, that also has the HDCam footage in it. OR, if (as it sounds from many here), it would probably be best to get the HD capture card, recapture the HDV footage in the DVCPro HD codec for my online, and then all would be well.

so, my question here: do i gain anything at all by re-capturing my HDV footage as DVCPro HD for my final timeline, or should i just leave it in its’ native HDV form for the online?

(i’m confusing myself just by writing this stuff…)

[J. Tad newberry]

aha! i’m thinking out loud here, and you all have the privilege of hearing a pea-brain in motion…(most of you have probably already discovered what i share below)…

i figured out why there was not outpoint to my re-captures from the last post: i was trying to capture in a codec (DVCPro HD) that i cannot use with the system i currently have. as soon as i tried recapturing in NTSC 10 bit, 8 bit, DV, whatever, they all worked. Glory Be! that issue solved…but it would be nice if FCP would just alert me to this problem instead of pretending to capture : )

i then played with subclip names and recapturing and found that FCP recaptures nicely ONLY the media asked for in a subclip, BUT the system wants to name these new source files the same as the original. so, if you have more than one subclip from an old source file (even if you’ve renamed it in FCP, which we know has nothing to do with the name of the source file), it will say you are trying to capture a file with a duplicate name. i can then just add an “a, b, c, etc.” or “1,2,3…” whatever after that original source name and everything is captured fine.

OR, when it tells you there are additional files to be captured and you have the choice of “add” “continue” or “abort”, if you say “add”, you’ll get the entire original source file in its’ entirety, and all the subclips then appear in your browser as well. this makes total sense, but you end up with more media than is needed, but at least everything is there and with the proper names.

my next step would be experiment more with Media Manager . . .

[J. Tad newberry]

major frustration! i’ve created a test project for testing all of this. grabbing some long clips, then making a few sub clips, etc., deleting the original source media, then going back into the project to batch capture. so far, i have not been able to recapture ANYTHING. FCP goes through the motions of telling me it is about to grab a 3 second clip (a subclip of the source file), or grab the entire source file (depending on what i have chosen to batch capture).

every time it goes to the inpoint, starts rolling and “capturing”, but it never stops. goes way beyond the out point (like several minutes) until i hit “escape”, and then nothing is captured.

i’m testing this on a test project before doing anything to my HDCam material…

[J. Tad newberry]

aw geez! no wonder i think i should spend more time on this forum…

i found the “linked selection” box. all is well…

[J. Tad newberry]

thanks…(said with tail betwixt me legs)….

which is why i put this one on the basic list (where i probably should hang out more often). i had gone to my QT player, clicked on “About QT”, but it only said version 7…then i finally saw the little “pro” by the big Q.

you have the patience of Job…

[J. Tad newberry]

…and apparently 5.0.4 as well. thanks for the bug report page. i’ve now submitted it…

so this is STILL a problem with 6? does anyone know what triggers it to happen?

[J. Tad newberry]

thanks for the advice. there is a “special offer” from Digital Juice to get Boris FX 9 for only $149, but it sound like (even for the low price) there are better alternatives. i know AE is THE standard, though i’ve never used it. i’ve gotten by with NewTek’s AURA, then when i switched to the Mac and FCP, i’ve been using Motion for the little bit of stuff i need to do, and an occaisional jump back to Lightwave on my PC for some 3D stuff. maybe i should go ahead and just get AE…