[Kristin Leys]

Sony XDCAM discs aren’t BluRay.

So yes you need an XDCAM deck, the PDW-U1 being the smallest/cheapest option.

Also I believe there’s still issues with the Sony FAM driver (included with the XDCAM transfer software) and Snow Leopard. Just another potential spanner in the works.

[Kristin Leys]

I don’t think FCP has a “find media relatives” equivalent.

Probably due to the different media handling paradigms that the two programs use.

Which is weird, because when I think about it I use that function quite a lot in AVID. But never miss it in FCP.

Bit like transfer modes. Got them in FCP, and use them. Don’t have them in AVID, and I don’t miss them.

The beauty of having competing software and products.

[Kristin Leys]

I replied to the wedding video post suggesting GenArts Sapphire plugins.

I used the flicker filters to solve a similar issue with fluorescent lights on PAL SD footage.

The results weren’t perfect. But with some effort I restored several ‘critical’ scenes.

This was for a documentary where reshooting wasn’t an option.

You can try the demo version to see if the filters will work for you.

[Kristin Leys]

I’ve had the pleasure of fixing several similar ‘flickering’ shots.

It’s hit and miss but I’ve had success using the GenArts Sapphire plugins.

They have two flicker filters, one works in luminance only, the other in rgb.

Sometimes it’s a quick fix, others not. At the extreme end, I’ve had to roto out different parts of a shot and apply the filter separately to each.

But it has saved entire sequences from a documentary I was cutting. In that case it was fluorescent light flicker, it affected each colour channel differently so Sapphire’s RGB flicker filter worked a treat.

Worth a look.

[Kristin Leys]

Never used this trick with an SDHC card before, so hopefully it works the way I think it does.

In finder the card should mount as a removable drive. You should be able to access it directly on the desktop. There will be a directory called something like ‘clips’ which will contain the the actual media. Copy the appropriate file to your desktop. Then use XD Transfer to import the copy from the desktop.

OR, you might need to copy the entire card to the desktop for this trick to work. Just copy the contents to a folder, and the point XD Transfer at that folder on your desktop.

I’m not sure how sensitive XD Transfer is to the directory structure. Been a while since I had to do this.

Hope it helps.

[Kristin Leys]

In the past with similar trouble clips I’ve copied the offending clip to my desktop in finder and then imported from there.

Never struck this particular problem though so your mileage may vary.

[Kristin Leys]

I started on Grass Vally linear systems, old fashioned numbers on screens. No wimpy timelines here, and god help you if you didn’t keep your list clean manually.

Shifted to Avid Media Composer about 10 odd years ago. Did the courses, and a lot of hours. Developed some serious hard wired muscle memory.

Took a job on FCP v5 I think? About 5 years ago. Freaked for a couple of days, then had it sorted by the end of the week.

It was about three months before I was any where near as fast in FCP as I was on an Avid.

These days I’m completely suite agnostic. I switch between Avid and FCP frequently. It’s not unusual for me to drive both systems in one shift working across several projects. In those situations when I change over it takes maybe 10 minutes for my brain to ‘flip the switch’ and things to become instinctive again.

Although I customise my keyboard on both systems, I don’t make FCP into Avid or vice versa. I keep the basic defaults in place. It means I can walk into any suite, reset to defaults and be cutting in no time.

Handy trick for a freelancer like myself.

[Kristin Leys]

Industry standards tend to change fairly quickly, since this is posted in Mac OSX forum I’ll assume you’re interested in software which works on that platform.

Adobe After Effects. It’s a good solid workhorse, fairy easy to learn, bloody near impossible to master.

Foundry’s Nuke. Fantastic, very powerful, used by the top end film guys. Seen as the successor to Shake.

Apple Shake. Now end of life. But still loved by many.

Eyeon Fusion. Windows only. Almost as good as Shake. Still being developed, and getting better all the time.

There are others such as Autodesk FLAME, but they tend to need pretty specialised hardware. Right now After Effects and Nuke would be the top two contenders for compositing at the moment.