[Mark Suszko]

It’s a “best practice” I learned from Sean. You have a choice when setting up, to keep source files in place wherever they were, or to copy them into the project. Suppose you choose to economize on drive space and tell FCPX to leave files where they are… If you pull from the P2 cards directly, you create an association between the files on those cards and the project file. The project will always want to see those files coming from the same place, i.e. the card in the reader. Then someone comes along and pulls the card to go shoot something else; you can “break” your project and lose the file associations, and you got ketchup all over your file browser and timeline.

Also, your RAID likely has better performance handling those files than the card does. What time you lose offloading it first, you likely gain back later in peppier performance when actually editing. We use thunderbolt P2 readers from Sonnet and they are easily twice as fast as the Panasonic units. And three times cheaper.

So being a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy, if the footage is costly or impossible to replace, I always immediately dub the entire card structure into the RAID and offload a clone to cloud storage as well. If it’s particularly one of those: this could make or end your career” things, as soon as I have it ingested, I’ll throw it all down raw on the timeline and render out a safety copy in prores 422, before I start the actual edit.

But that’s just me. I usually have a Plan B, C AND D. Based on painful experience.

[Mark Suszko]

My guess is you have a “build” behavior or a “fade in” type behavior set in the Inspector that is time dependent, and slicing the graphic to shorten it makes the reveal timing clash with the new duration. I’d like to see a big blow-up closeup of the inspector setting for the titles in question to confirm the hypothesis.

[Mark Suszko]

We use P2 on a daily basis here and I NEVER import directly from the card any more: any time I did, trouble weas sure to follow.

I copy the entire card to a folder in my RAID drive first, then eject the card, THEN ingest into FCPX, and I don’t get the problem you’re seeing. I have a co-worker who is too bullheaded to take my advice, and he DOES see the same problem as you… wonders why none of the clips are in chrono order. I ask him: well, did you click in the list to MAKE them organize in chronological order?

“No”, he says. And refuses to try. And he ingests off the card, which sometimes hangs. So I leave him to his devices.

[Mark Suszko]

Probably not, IMO. And the more devices you chain together for this hookup, the more potential delay you introduce.
Have you tried tweaking the settings on the Teradek in terms of reducing the compression and increasing the bandwidth?

Is this an IMAG situation, where you’re showing a closeup of the speaker to the audience in real time, or is this a feed from elsewhere being piped-in?

[Mark Suszko]

Nobody’s answered yet so I’ll suggest a DIY solution. Might work, might not.

If the leg is metal, take a high speed metal drill bit sized just a tiny fraction smaller than the dimple, drill out the center of the dimple, then use a ball-peen hammer, with perhaps a hardwood block, to tap the edges down level with the hole, or use a mini sanding disk with a Dremel tool or hand drill, to file down the edge. You can “sneak up” on this repair in stages, going from under-sized to to bigger and bigger holes, until you’ve eliminated enough of the surface irregularity to make the leg slide in and out again.

A hole in the leg is going to create a weak spot. How weak depends on how big the hole and how much metal remains around it. Could be that if the ding is small, the hole doesn’t compromise the integrity enough to matter. Especially if the leg is rarely extended enough to expose the holed section.

If the ding is really large, then you might as well replace the leg segment altogether. Me, worst-case, I’d probably try some JB Weld metal on it, backing it up with some blue tape on the inside, then sanding it flush on the outside. But that depends on if the leg segment is H-shaped, D-dhaped, O-shaped, or C-shaped.

[Mark Suszko]

Of the choices you offer, the first one works best IMO with the last one my second choice. Most of the others could either be misconstrued as computer software/programming or telecom services, a sign shop, an SEO huckster, or, they don’t signal a strong “Business communications services” component.

I’m a crotchety old fart, I guess, but I’m not a fan of company names that are overly whimsical and opaque as to what they are and do.

If I name my editing boutique: “Whoop-DeDoo!” and don’t spend a megaton on marketing to make people understand it as a brand, nobody who encounters it cold knows if it’s a cleaning product, a clothing brand, or a dessert topping, much less an editing/production facility. Why make the customer work so hard to know who you are and what you do, before you even meet?

Seems to me a communications company that can’t strongly and transparently communicate what they do… aren’t very good at doing it.

[Mark Suszko]

Cheer up, Bob – it happens to a lot of guys.

-Upgrades, I mean;-)

[Mark Suszko]

Old codger remembrance time…

There was a time in the 80’s. early 90’s when every shop, cable station, local news station, and independent home editor I knew, regardless of what software NLE they were running publicly and “professionally”… had a pirated copy of Adobe Premiere *somewhere*. Usually an older version, kept in a back-up suite or something… but they had it and they had it running.

Adobe made noises like it would go after those pirate uses, but my recollection is that it was a weak, ineffectual effort at best… and it all couldn’t have worked out better if it had been planned, because what that wave of pirated copies did was establish a wide, early user base of people who got their hands on the program and it captured a lot of mindshare in the editing community. More people used Premiere because of this exposure versus Avid, which was much more secure and locked-down by comparison back then.

I see DaVinci Resolve’s “free taste” as a logical extension of that approach, and I think it’s working better than we know.

[Mark Suszko]

Probably nobody will ever see my screenplay but my relatives. That’s okay. I’m enjoying the creative experience.
In my story, the guy marries into a family business that’s very down-to-earth and practical, and it’s a bad fit because they lack imagination and are risk-averse, while he’s a bit of a dreamer/schemer/entrepreneurial type.

They don’t think much of the husband’s work history and personality, but the wife vouches for him, so to give the new marriage a stable foundation they give him a low-level, dead-end, make-no-waves spot in the company, out of a grudging courtesy, and figure “that’s that”.

When he gets a Big Idea, one that’s very imaginative but a little risky, they don’t want to get involved, it’s not the kind of thing they’d ever be interested in pursuing, despite the potential, but he’s the kind of guy that finds it easier to ask forgiveness than permission, so he goes ahead and, bending the rules, leverages aspects of his job, and leans hard on the influence of his wife on the family, pressuring them to give him a loan, to try to achieve the Big Idea anyway. So in his actions, he squarely divides the family, his supportive wife taking his side against the rest of the family… and taking on the big risk along with it. If it pays off, all will be well. If it tanks… it will deeply wound the interpersonal relationships in the family, probably permanently.

For the rest… you’ll have to wait for the premiere:-)

But I was looking for real-life models of such an interaction for insight, they can’t be that uncommon.

[Mark Suszko]

I’m going to guess that the appearing of the drop shadow is set to fade in or keyframe-in in some way. Or the timing for the effect-in doesn’t fit with the duration for the clip. Have you gone into the inspector for this effect and checked the sliders and timing?