[Ken Jones]

Welcome to the manner in how FCP handles renders!
I do what you said in your post: I delete all renders and re-render before I leave at the end of the day…
I edited on an Avid for years and you could “Select Media Relatives” for Renders. I don’t think FCP has an equivalent.

[Ken Jones]

1. If your footage will safely crop into a 4X3 sequence this is what I would do.
2. If you drop a 4X3 PPT slide into a wide screen sequence you will have a pillar boxed PPT slide. Ugly…
3. Anytime I have to include a PPT I make the web video 400X300. If the PPT text is smaller than 30pts it won’t be legible even at 400X300. I routinely make 45-60 minute web videos for some of my clients without breaking it into segments.
4. This all depends on your client’s infrastructure. Most corporations require Windows Media. Lots of corporations won’t even allow Quicktime on their systems. It’s unfortunate, but you best bet is probably to go with Windows Media. Flash is also an option. Check with your client’s IT department.
5. See #2 above.

[Ken Jones]

The reason I scale down in AE is because I export the slides from PPT as 1000 X 750 pixel TIFFs. This is the size I use for a standard definition composition (D1 – 720 X 486). The larger TIFF size allows me to zoom into an area of interest on the slide in AE.

I have tried it both ways – straight into FCP and AE. I find I get cleaner results and more control using AE. My topmost layer in AE is an Adjustment Layer that has “Levels” to lower the luminance to about 95 IRE and “Gaussian Blur” set somewhere between .3-.5. These adjustments help tremendously.

Most PPT files I am given have the lines reveal one at a time. I use a blank slide and mask it in AE to reveal each line. Each line is given a ten second duration in my AE composition. For a long PPT presentation my rendered movie might be 25-30 minutes in duration.

[Ken Jones]

I export the slides as large TIFFs. I then drop the TIFFs into After Effects and scale them down to a size that will keep everything in title safe. I add an adjustment layer and use a tiny bit of gaussian blur and also adjust levels (the whites need to be reduced). I then render to whatever codec I am using in my sequence.

[Ken Jones]

I am using the Lycom LYCeSATA-4e PCIe 4 Port. It is $184.00 at MacGurus.com
https://www.macgurus.com/productpages/sata/LYCeSATA-4e.php

I have two 7.5TB RAID 0 towers (one is a backup) that are running with eSATA port multipliers. The Lycom has worked flawlessly so far.

I used to have a HighPoint card. It was the biggest PITA. I HATED the web based interface! With the Lycom I just use Apple Disk Utility and it is good to go.

[Ken Jones]

Hmmm… well you got me. I’ve been editing DV & DVCAM since before FCP even existed (with a Nubus Mac 8100 and Radius Edit) and I’ve never had the computer only capture DV but not DVCAM.

Are you using a customized setup? Have you tried using the Easy Setup for DV-NTSC?
Have you only had this problem with one tape?
Have you tried recording DVCAM footage in both your PD150 and HVR-A1U or just the PD150?

[Ken Jones]

Thanks for the responses.

Wow. I just tested burning to a regular DVD-R and it worked beautifully. I played it on my Blu-ray player in our home theater and it looked fantastic – much better than outputting to my AppleTV. A lot of my work is short (3-10 minutes) so this should work fine. A DVD-R is MUCH cheaper.

I will eventually get a Blu-ray burner. Some resellers provide a “Mac Pro connection kit” with their internal burners. Or I might just go ahead and get the external USB/eSATA unit.

[Ken Jones]

I used an HVR-S270 for the first time on Friday. I only captured two channels of audio. It was part of a four HDV camera shoot.

Keep in mind that if you use tapes labeled as “DVCAM” you will be able to record 50% more when you record in HDV or DV. HDV and DV run at a slower speed than DVCAM (track pitch of HDV/DV = 10 microns per second; DVCAM = 15 microns per second). In other words, if you use a DVCAM 184 tape (3 hour) you will be able to record 4.5 hours in HDV or DV.

I will warn you to have PLENTY of time to set up the HVR-S270. The camera has a lot of menu options and there are a plethora of switches to set. I picked up the rental the night before and spent about 30-40 minutes getting everything set to match my other HDV cameras for the next day’s shoot.

[Ken Jones]

The only major difference between DV & DVCAM is that they use different tape speeds. DVCAM rolls at a 50% faster speed (DVCAM = 15 microns per second; DV = 10 microns per second). The image quality is exactly the same.

Are you trying to capture from a different deck than either of your cameras? Is your deck DV only? The deck will have a DVCAM logo if it can play back DVCAM tapes.
Have you tried to capture from both the PD-150 and the HVR-A1U?
Perhaps the tape hubs are getting stuck and not allowing the tape to spin freely in its shell?
Have you tried a different DVCAM tape to see if it works?

[Ken Jones]

I have never had a problem capturing DVCProHD via HD-SDI with a 1400a. The deck seems to work perfectly and doesn’t appear to get “lost” searching for time-code. But, I have always captured entire tapes and have never attempted to “frame accurate re-capture” when working with DVCProHD.

However, I have had nothing but trouble attempting to capture HDV via HD-SDI with my Sony HVR-1500. Please see my post here: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1007581#1007581

And here: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/126/859595#859595

The only workaround I have found is to change the deck pre-roll to ten (10!) seconds.

I attended an Apple/JVC sponsored event last week and I asked the Apple FCP rep about this problem. He confided to me that “Apple really doesn’t care about I/O issues with tape formats”. He said that they really don’t want to change anything if the majority of users aren’t having any issues for fear of breaking something else with deck control.

A few months ago another Apple FCP tech assured me that this issue would be taken care of “when the new software comes out”. Guess what? I upgraded to FCP 7 and still have the EXACT same issue…