Lu Nelson
Forum Replies Created
-
Yeah,
I don’t think there’s a solution for outputting something with a key signal embedded; but there is a new product from Matrox called MXO, which is supposed to output (and then transform via an external box) video in to “broadcast quality” via your DVI monitor port. Everyone’s waiting at the moment to see if this product will actually work as advertised. It comes out this summer.
-
Thanks!
Actually, once I posted the question, I figured it was a media manager thing. I think one might even choose “Use existing” rather than “Move”? Anyway, I’m sure “Move” will work.
To clarify: the reason I asked is that I’ve found that if I have footage with single or double quotes in either the clip name (in the browser) or the file name (on disk) it won’t work properly with the “Send to Motion Project” command. The additional quote characters bascillay corrupt the XML file that FCP outputs for the send.
So, I’m using this to fix problems with that particular workflow…
-
OK, quick response to your first issue: the canvas should show whatever your sequence is set to. With either the Canvas (command-2) or the Timeline (command-3) selected, hit command-0 to bring up the sequence settings. Set the checkbox to anamorphic. Also, look in the drop-down mini-menus at the top of the canvas window to select “correct for aspect ratio”. You should be seeing anamorphic.
-
check the view settings in your canvas — you may have ‘show overlays’ of some kind checked ON. This causes a gamma diff between pause and playback. When overlays are off it should be consistent
-
I believe the other options there ARE secondary — it just doesn’t say so. So “digital cinema preview – full screen” means “full screen on the secondary monitor. It assumes that for the most part you’re going to use the secondary monitor as your preview — that is, the one which does not have a menu bar.
-
Check the comp settings and under “Advanced” be sure your rendering plug-in is not set to “Open GL”. I found that if the renders were set to use Open GL as their render engine, still image animations always came out looking steppy and crawly. Mileage may vary, according to graphics card; but the stock graphics card I had in my G5 at the time did a very poor job of scaling and that was the culprit. That was with AE 6.5
LMN
-
addendum: Graeme, do you know if Compressor behaves this way with PhotoJPEG at 75% as well, vis a vis superwhite and clipping?
Thanks for your expertise,
-
Wow — OK, this is getting OT but very interesting to find out, for me anyway. When you say that at 100% quality it is RGB, does that mean that at 100% the superwhite values WOULD get clipped?
If so, I’m quite amazed — what is the rationale of having the codec perform in two completely different ways based on its quality setting? Anyway, just want to clarify — P-JPEG 75% is what Blackmagic calls “Online JPEG” and for which their software installer creates sequence presets in FCP, right? So I could actually use it as they’ve defined it?
Please feel free to e-mail me or start a new topic Graeme or refer me somewhere else if it makes more sense in continuing this.
I think someone needs to publish a complete white paper on the whole Photo-JPEG alternative for FCP, including the infamous P-JPEG ‘hack’ that allows real-time editing of the codec — it is more capable than I thought…
LMN
-
Uh, well that’s a surprise. I’m not sure I understand. I am talking mainly about the problem of having superwhite values (which one nearly always does) in your DV footage.
Are you saying that if you were to batch export for example, a series of raw uncorrected DV clips in your bin — or, alternately: use media manager’s “recompress” function to convert your DV footage to PhotoJPEG 75% (we’re talking about the same codec that at 35% is the basis of Apple’s OfflineRT setting, right?), that all the superwhite information in your DV clips would not simply be clipped off? That PhotoJPEG would actually allow for superwhite values? My understanding is that they would be lost; but that if you did the same operation and converted your footage to DV50 or 601 Uncompressed they would not as the color/luminance values remain the same.
Please correct me if I’m wrong.
-
Sounds like your project has one or more corrupt sequences in it, or other information in it is corrupt. Sometimes however, it can be due to other voodoo.
1. back up the project file, and the most recent version of it that you had in your autosave vault. Work only on copies that you make in the finder (Command-D to duplicate)
2. try copying it to another drive and opening from there.
3. try also deleting (backup first) fcp’s preferences and then opening FCP and then opening your project from another drive. look for “FCP Rescue” on Macupdate.com it handles this well.
4. try changing the permissions on the project file to 777 (all users get read-write-execute). Look for “Batchmod” on Macupdate.com to do this.
Further, there is or there used to be a key combination you could use when opening a project, so that it didn’t re-open any sequences you had, you might try searching for it, I don’t remember it. That way you could at least get the thing open, and sometimes it was a matter of trial and error to determine just which sequence was corrupt — as a last option scenario, you could delete that one sequence and keep going