[Mark Raudonis]

You’re basically asking, “How do I get more bandwidth without paying for it?” I think you know the answer to that!

As an alternative, there are satelite providers that do promise fast internet connectivity. It’s gonna be cheaper than a land line, but I doubt it’ll have the bandwidth you need. Worth looking into though. By the way, Upload speeds are always MUCH slower than downloads in most residential installations. Businesses pay more for guaranteed bandwidth.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

[cMc] “I wasn’t sure what codecs the HDCAM deck would accept from Final Cut Pro (and the Kona LHe). “

The deck doesn’t CARE what codec you use. It sees an HD SDI signal that comes from the Kona card.

So, you can use Pro r es, DVCPRO HD, uncompressed 8 bit, 10 bit, or even SD. The HDCAM deck is looking at a video signal, not a “codec”. There are plenty of reasons why you may choose any of the above, but how the deck records is not one of them.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

This problem of media manager NOT shedding the “unused” part of the clip has been widely discussed on this and other forums. It’s a bug.

Typically, if you have created any multicam clips, this will happen. A workaround that we’ve been using is to matchframe and overcut the original clip into the timeline. When we do that, media manager seems to work. When we don’t, we get what you’re noticing… a “still fat” file.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

[Joe Murray] “I would like to hear from anyone who has made a feature request for FCP and actually had it implemented”

While I can’t claim personal credit for this, a few years ago FCP did NOT have multicam capability. I know that for me and many others on this list, not having multicam was a dealbreaker. Guess what? Apple listened and came up with a version of multicam that I think most people would agree is better than Avid’s. That came from alot of people making alot of noise about a much needed function.

So, don’t be so pessimistic. They do listen. Features are added. And occasionally, they even work! 🙂

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

My experience with Compressor has been different. Different in a GOOD way.

We’ve been able to harness distributed rendering (on 50+ computers) to create our h.264 movies for web based review and approval. The timesavings from this are truly incredible.

I’ll admit that setting this up was not entirely smooth sailing, but once we got it right, we created “droplets” to automate the process. Now, all our assistants have to do is drag a QT movie onto a droplet and the process proceeds automatically.

We have observed some random quits and failures, but that has always been fixed by restarting the system in question.

Keep in mind this does NOTHING for FCP based FX rendering or QT creation. It only works for H.264 movies. But… that step alone is worth it.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Ken,

I’m sure your method will work, but we take a much simpler approach. We have one editor who lives in Sante Fe, New Mexico and our main office is in LA. Duplicate media and projects. However, when new sequences are passed back and forth, all we do is create a new project with ONLY the current timeline in the project. That’s it. You do have to relink to the new sequence, but we’ve named the hard drives identically, so with one click, reconnect finds it all.

As you know, with FCP you can have muliple projects open simultaneously. It’s no big deal to have a “cuts project” and the main media project open at the same time.

The fear of “overwriting” one another’s work is less technical and more organizational. You’ve just got to make sure you each know what you’re working on.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

This toolset (Optical flow) comes from Shake, so I’m guessing it operates in a similar manner.
I don’t know the science behind why it’s so big, but it is!

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Let me clarify: Not renders per se, but analysis “Cache” files.

Go to preferences, click on “Cache”. At the bottom you’ll see settings for “Optical Flow retiming”. They added a button for “Delete retiming cache” because these files grow to immense proportions very quickly. It’s recommended you delete these as soon as you’ve made your timing choices.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Just saw a demo of this tonight at the Los Angeles FCP user group meeting.

Tip of the day if you’re going to use optical flow: It generates HUGE render files. Depending on your format (SD or HD) these files can be many ,many gigabytes. There’s an option to delete this renders. Use it frequently for completed work or you’re gonna run out of space.

The results look great.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

[Julian Clarke] “So FCP will work better with several smaller project files open, rather than one big one?
“

Yes, absolutely.

This is a much overlooked feature of FCP. Many former Avid editors don’t realize that for FCP, the “project” is just not that important. We regularly operate with many projects open simultaneously: different episodes, a special “B-Roll” project, various sequences etc. There’s no reason to try to “hold” all this information in one project. At the very least, you should have a project that is “sequences” only. When it starts getting unwieldly, commit it to archive and don’t open it.

Shane did a whole DVD about organizing projects. Check it out. It’s worth it.

Mark