Kevin Monahan
Forum Replies Created
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I don’t like the idea of using FireWire drives on the same bus as your DV Deck, it’s a recipe for dropped frames when you daisy chain. You are forced to work this way with an iMac.
I recommend a lower end Mac Tower over an iMac. With a tower, you can add a FireWire PCI card if you want to use FireWire drives. That way the drives and the deck will be on separate buses.
I would also suggest some good external speakers and a video monitor. That way, he can monitor video properly.
Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com -
If you’ve got the dough, Xsan via Fiber Channel is what you really want for project sharing scenarios. Check out the Xsan forum for more info.
Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com -
Hello Dave,
I think that with proper technique, you can do a pretty good job of keying right in FCP.You might start by reading this article I wrote:
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/chroma_key_fcp_hd_monahan.htmlYou may also check out more techniques with my book (see my sig file).
I would say that most people would recommend an additional keying plug-in as well, like DVMatte Pro, Boris Continuum, or Ultimatte (there are many, actually). If you have the dough, it’s nice to have one or two of these if FCP can’t do the job.
To take it to another level, others may recommend using a standalone video compositing program like After Effects, Combustion, Motion or Shake.
Above all, it’s mostly about technique over tools. So read before you tweak. If you just play around, you might get frustrated without some base knowledge.
Good Luck.
Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com -
Jeremy,
That would be the case if you had your speakers attached to the Mac and you were not monitoring video with a video monitor. This is the case for maybe doing some offline work or portable work.Not everyone works that way all the time.
Many editors DO monitor video on an external monitors at all times while cutting in their studios. In that case, the speakers should be connected to the DV Deck/DV Camcorder or the outputs of the Video Capture Card/Breakout box and not the Mac.
Every time someone has issues with audio, it usually breaks down to if they are monitoring video externally or not monitoring video at all, and in each case, it is crucial to have the speakers are connected in the proper location.
Since I use audio from other apps and like to monitor video externally, I like to patch both my DV Deck and Mac audio to a Mackie 1202 mixer and then attach the speakers to that. That way, I can monitor audio in any situation. I recommend this scenario for everyone that cuts with FCP in the pro realm.
Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com -
Not bad….except it makes a luma matte rather than an alpha matte. I find alpha mattes to be much cleaner.
Is it possible to re-assign the previous Timecode to the Motion Rendered Clip with the Modify>Timecode command? That might be easier and you’d get the alpha defined matte. I don’t have the hardware to run Motion, so I can’t check this.
Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com -
AFAIK, you simply cannot monitor HDV through FireWire to a SD monitor. That’s a 1080i frame that needs to be downconverted to SD frame size in order for it to display on the SD monitor. You need a Kona 2 or a large Io box to downconvert the signal. It’s odd that you can see signal when capturing, that’s for sure.
Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com -
Check out my article:
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/chroma_key_fcp_hd_monahan.html
It’s the one Tony was referring to.
just grab the keying filter and play around a bit.
Sorry, but I can’t agree with that advice. There’s a bit more to chroma key technique in FCP, like adding the chroma smoothing filter first, etc.
Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com -
1. Select the clip
2. Option + L breaks the stereo pair
3. Shift + Apple + A deslects the clip
4. Option click on the desired audio track to select it
5. Type the Delete buttonKevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com -
I’d get a PCI card to make a new bus to separate the firewire drive and the camcorder. Another solution would be to avoid firewire drives and use internal SATA drives only. A third solution is to export your sequence as a single QT ref. movie, then reimport it an play that instead.
Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com -
click to add another keyframe here up in your Motion tab – now change the scale value to 100
It is a wasted stroke to add a second keyframe. All you need to do is change the slider or enter a new value and a second keyframe is automatically added for you.
Cheers.
Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com