[Keith Mcgregor]

Did you remember to repair permissions after installing anything? You did a clean install and rebooted? It sounds more like a video card issue? It’s just happening without cs5 running in the bkgrnd? (Re-install of FC is a daunting and time intensive task as should be left as the last resort.)

Reality? What did you make it?

[Keith Mcgregor]

First, there is no interlacing in 720P, that’s what the P stands for. Second, are you sure it’s not a shutter speed setting? I have not seen a “jerky” 60p footage, only crisper without motion blur. And lastly, if you shot it 60, there isn’t a way I can think that would be feasible to make it look like 30 with motion blur but you can use Cinema Tools to conform it to 30p and it will be 30fps. Sorry no definite answer but what you shoot is what you get.
-Beef

Reality? What did you make it?

[Keith Mcgregor]

One of my clients had an Everio and it came with a cd that had the codec needed by quicktime. All I did was drop it in the ~Library/Quicktime folder and away quick time went! Opened the folder and it saw the .tod and was able to open and resave using only quicktime. Hope that helps!
-Beef

Reality? What did you make it?

[Keith Mcgregor]

-“There are some that are 2.26ghz, 2.66ghz, 2.8ghz and 3.0ghz. I assume these numbers correspond to the year it came out?”-
No, those are processor speeds.
-“What is the difference between a Nehalem Xeon, Xeon “Harpertown” or Westmere?”- Check:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon
I have been informed they are processor types with differing chipsets. I don’t believe there are software makers optimizing for each, or for just one. Contact your software companies and see what they say.
If you can get 2 dual quads you should be good for a year, then think about trading them in for 12 cores running Lion. (24!)
Used are fine if you can get a warranty or apple care for them and it might be cheaper to purchase ram for an older machine. I was running a dual 2.3 until last week (early 2006 model) and it served me fine until Intel-only software. And my ram was considerably cheaper. If you can maximize the processing power and keep the system running clean, there should be no problem purchasing and older (year or so) 8 core intel machine.
-“Are all of these Graphics cards fine what what I do? ATI Radeon 2600, NVIDIA GEFORCE GT 120, ATI Raedon X1900 XT 512MB and NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB.”- What do you do? Just for your monitor? I have used the stock video card with no problems and I use Maya and After Effects. You might want one with more that 512 mb though as more and more apps are using the gpu these days. Just find the requirements for your software, and that it’s mac compliant and fits into your pc slot. What mac are you currently running? (processor speed, memory, graphics card and year of old model) Hope this helps!
-Beef

Reality? What did you make it?

[Keith Mcgregor]

Have you tried the reveal in finder option for the unconnected media and see if it points to it? You made sure to set your scratch disks and not move the material? When you log do you rename the clips as you ingest? Is your harddrive unstable? Full? Near full? Is this the only project that does this? Did you defrag your drive? (never do that to a fcp drive) If you export an xml of the proj and look into it does it have the right file path to the media? Are you running other apps at the same time? Is fc automatically ejecting your hd? In my experience it is not a good idea to use a boot drive for your media. Use disk utility to verify your hd and repair with the original disc if necessary. I have used disk warrior and onyx for some time now to keep the machine cleaned and rebuilding the directories (not sure if it has anything to do with this prob but I try to fix and clean everything I can) and all has run smoothly. Can you upgrade to snow leopard? Did you trash the prefs files? Have you removed old render files, auto saves, thumbnail and waveform caches? (not sure it will help but anything is worth a try)
A very odd problem indeed. Sorry can’t be more help.
-Beef

Reality? What did you make it?

[Keith Mcgregor]

My question is: how did you get those clips out of fcp? Did you remember to add handles? Is it one video file with multiple in out points? Or multiple videos? I have never had a problem unless they contain the exact same name or didn’t have handles. Can you dupe your seq, give it a different name and try replacing track 1? For round-tripping with AE I usually render out a reference file (not self-contained) and bring that in to AE and do efx and render that as animation quality and replace in fc. Also, there is a free (still?) little app called fcp to ae. I have used that to great success a few times.
-Beef

Reality? What did you make it?

[Keith Mcgregor]

When you export from fcp to compressor you might as well use dvd best settings 120 min if it’s long or 90 min if it’s shorter. Since you cannot make a high def dvd don’t bother exporting to hd sizes. You could also just let dvdsp compress it but I have heard compressor is better.
-“Is it the industry standard to export the video and sound separately from each other when importing it in DVD Studio pro or not, if it is, how do you do it in compressor, what target and inspector settings do you need to choose and set for the video and audio export separately?”-
When you right click and navigate to the settings folder, use “ALL” as it will make a separate file for each, if you just look at it in compressor it’s self-explanatory there are 2 types there; 1 for video and 1 for audio. You shouldn’t need to change anything if your editing at the right frame rate and size for your region. And you would have to use mpg2 because that’s what the dvd standard is. Just make sure dvdstudio is set for your region and check the 16:9 display mode, and in the simulator do the same, there should be no problems but as always check it twice and not on the computer you made it on, use a crappy dvd player and a nice one. For the hdtv, that depends on upscaling features built into the dvd player, tv, the kind of cable or all.
-Beef

Reality? What did you make it?

[Keith Mcgregor]

QT doesn’t suck, it’s avi that is a problem (at least for me it has been). You said the images were fine so why do you now say QT sucks?
– “I am little bit concerned may be exporting image sequence from FCP was better quality?????? I did not notice difference in images and size of an image is the same but however just curious.”-
I do not render out image sequences from final cut, I deal with contained QT movies and have never had a problem. Since I don’t know what the standards for DCP are I cannot recommend any settings but it seems as if it would be jpg2000? I can’t find much info on it on the web but I am looking. Meanwhile, I saw a post here somewhere that talks about a folder having a file limit. If your movie is long then there might be a file limit per folder and that’s where it stops. I have always used After Effects render engine to process many image sequences and then join them together since my deliveries have been 1 QT file.
-“And I did not get your question at the end.”-
That’s because it’s philosophical and it’s just a message signature…the phrase goes, “Reality is what you make of it.” So I ask the question what you made, not directly at you, but everybody. It’s kinda rhetorical.
-Beef

Reality? What did you make it?

[Keith Mcgregor]

So set your sequence to proRes (I just tried ProRes LT) and full raster size. I didn’t see a difference between the jpgs and png but I use png and always make the pics 72ppi to conserve on resources. Render out a reference file and drop that into compressor. With the right settings for your machine in the Qmaster prefs, it should render much faster and not give you any more headaches.
-Beef

Reality? What did you make it?

[Keith Mcgregor]

Very frustrating. Since the project opens, try right-click on sequence in proj browser, choose export xml. Open in new proj with others closed, re-link and try there. Even when you delete render files, open proj and NOT rebuild them does the problem persist? Otherwise I could it be a filter related issue? What kinds of freebies and demos do you have? Have you repaired permissions on your mac? I know it sounds stupid, but some third party software jumbles the system and repairing permissions usually fixes things but could be unrelated. What are your specs? And I hate to think it, but if you have premiere, try exporting an xml for your whole proj and open it in premiere or avid if available (current versions only, as those have been tested by the Avatar team). Also if you open the proj, (a copy) select your footage and make offline, can you open the seq? There has to be something here clogging up your masterpiece. There have been times fc gets wacky with too many nested seq; audio edits not showing up in master seq, transitions not showing, old render files hanging around, entire scene not showing, so the least amount of nesting the better as it’s still 32 bit. And no, there is no safe mode, never heard of such a thing with editing software, just the os.
-Beef

Reality? What did you make it?