[Lance Moody]

I basically have only one gear on the internets! LOL.
Great to hear from you!

Lance

[Lance Moody]

Yes,

The self-contained movie will be perfectly usable–having the characteristics of the original sequence settings. A self-contained movie is just a Quicktime movie.

[Lance Moody]

Hmm…check to be sure that you have nothing (like a black layer, for instance) filling the background (use View>Background>Checkerboard to check this).

I would suggest exporting the sequence as an Animation codec Quicktime and be sure to include an Alpha (millions of colors +). Should work fine.

Lance

[Lance Moody]

Actually using proxies is not the recommended (by Red) method.

There is a new white paper at the Red site.

I am a big fan of converting the material one of the ProRes formats.
This can be slightly time consuming (as it converts) but once converted the material plays back much more robustly, quickly and reliably. And it is higher quality than the proxies.

FCP7 does this conversion automatically for you using the Log & Transfer window.

Lance

[Lance Moody]

Hilarious.

You might check on the 2-pop discussion boards circa 2000. I was a frequent poster there (before the Cow was created I would guess), often working with Ralph Fairweather (privately and publicly) on FCP issues. By the way, 9 years is just with FCP, 10 years before that with Avid, and 10 years before that as an online guy–doing spot work at the national level.

I haven’t posted here much because I have not really run into many issues. And at any rate, what does that have to do with the price of tea in China? You may imagine your post count means something in the scheme of things but I suggest otherwise.

Again, I agree that a clean system is the best route to go but I also contend that an upgrade is not automatically the great evil you suggest. The dogmatic way you present your case (and your unsupported claim of superiority) is off putting to me.

Lance

[Lance Moody]

“It’s very much like people who claim to drive cars for years without changing the oil. Because the car gets them to their destination they claim there are no performance issues and there’s no impact on their engines. ”

Of course I also work at lots of other studios, which gives me (over 9 years) sort of a baseline, perhaps? Nothing like the, no doubt, scientifically verified one you are describing.

I think here we have strayed from real knowledge and into mumbo jumbo. I see that all time with computers–weird things people believe about how their computers work, rituals they follow, etc.

Usually those people have one common trait: they are full of crap.

I’m not saying it is stupid to do a clean install. I am saying it might not be necessary.

Dogmatic assertions (upgrade=degraded system) are not necessarily accurate or in my opinion, helpful.

Lance

[Lance Moody]

While I certainly don’t want to minimize the quite good advice contained herein, I have to admit that I have never done as drastic a reinstall as is suggested here.

I have been using FCP since 1.0 and while I have migrated from machine to machine over the years (thus getting a nice clean system to start with), I think I have always just used the upgrade option when I had it available.

So far with FCS 2009 and now Snow Leopard, all seems to be working as expected. I weighed the time investment and heartache to decide the course I would take and I don’t regret my decision.

I will mention that I don’t use many 3rd party plug-ins in FCP (I save those for AE).

Thanks,

Lance

[Lance Moody]

My timeline:

First I read this thread.

10 mins later Snow Leopard arrived
40 mins later Snow Leopard (standard upgrade) installed

Then found and installed drivers for my Black Magic Intensity Pro card (look for the special link for Snow Leopard).
Repaired permissions.
Intensity Pro did not seem to be working.
Then UNINSTALLED Intensity Drivers–Shut down computer, disconnected power (a ritual I imagine allows the card to reset itself, who knows?) . And reinstalled them. Please note that installing the BM drivers deletes all the FCP settings

Now about 2.5 hours after Snow Leopard arrived:
Intensity Pro seems to be working properly.
Final Cut Pro seems to be working ok with my (in-progress) HD spot.
After Effects seems OK.
Had one strange problem with a folder of SFX that I no longer had permission to open-worked it out.
Civilization IV works.
Am happy.

Lance

P.S.:
In fairness I should mention that I had a full Time Machine backup. The Snow Leopard install disk has a utility built in if you want to go back to an earlier Time Machine setup.

Love to see how the upgrade to Windows 7 would compare…if Windows 7 had FCP…which they don’t.

[Lance Moody]

As a very long-time user, I love the update as well but let’s all admit that it is rather modest compared to previous ones.

And the earlier poster’s comments on keyframing are well taken. I simply won’t do any movement (of mortices, etc) in FCP since it is unable to do a nice ease-in ease out. I can see that many people do move things in FCP using keyframes, and I have to mention that all such motion stands out like a sore thumb.

Lance

[Lance Moody]

Rick,

Thanks for taking the time to post this solution. It helped me with the same problem.

Much respect,

Lance Moody