[Mark Suszko]

Same as your source. Otherwise, you add rendering work. You can so thsi thru easysetups or make acustom setup, just menu thru all the setigns and save it.

I try to edit in the native format of whatever comes in, then if the output has to be something else, I’ll render that out at that stage when the project is done.

[Mark Suszko]

Well, you could try the Boris titler that is in the drop-down menu, or you could use LiveType, which really is nothing to fear. If you have any experience with keyframign at all ( and you might if you’ve used the simple Apple titler’s motion tab), You’ll figure this out. Plus, it already has many useful pre-canned moves you can just apply.

If your settings are all correct, the live type output will show up in your FCP bin and be ready to go without further rendering. Updates in Livetype should also update in FCP.

I *think* they do, It’s been a while since I needed to do that step.

[Mark Suszko]

Corny and obvious, but “A Christmas Story”( love that lamp!), and “It’s a Wonderful Life” help make it complete for me. But the real nostalgia trip I enjoy is a DVD of some old stop-motion animated shorts that Frazier Thomas used to run on WGN-TV channel 9 during holiday epsiodes of “Garfield Goose and Friends” in the 60’s.

The films are even older than that show, they were made by a company called Centaur films and not too much is known about them (wiki and youtube have samples). One is called “Hardrock, Coco, and Joe” and is about three elves that help Santa fly the sleigh and make deliveries.

A second short is “Suzy Snowflake” (um, be careful how you google image search for that one, leave your filter on extra-careful setting, don’t ask). Suzy the winter fairy flys thru town adding frost and snow with her magic wand to make the season pretty.

Anyhow, they are not especially GOOD animations, but for millions of old Chicagoans they hit a super-sentimental nostalgic chord as a mainstay of their childhood TV memories. It’s like how hearing the “Little Drummer Boy” song will make you tear up unexpectedly, thinking back to childhood Christmas times past, and people long gone. Guess I’m overly sentimental.

A local furniture store dug up copies of these films a couple years back, and had them professionally cleaned up and burned to DVD as a way to get people to come into the store (to get a free copy).

Brilliant marketing, as the DVD also contains their humerous commercials and some cute and goofy intro hosting bits to the animations. Do you know of another furniture company who’s promo DVD becomes a family heirloom, played every year?

[Mark Suszko]

Legally impractical. I think this is one of those things that occasional face-to-face get-togethers are still good for. My experience has been that within the local production community, word gets around fast enough by mouth alone.

[Mark Suszko]

These stations all need to buy new baking pans:-)

[Mark Suszko]

terri, what you’re referring to as a toolbar is what we call a a BOB or “Break-Out-Box”. It’s just a handy way to bring the connectors out from the back of the machine to a more convenient spot, so you don’t have to get on hands and knees every time you want to swap a cable.

Considering your budget, a used ADVC-100 off Ebay would work great. Ina pinch, temporarily, you could also use a Dv camcorder with firewire and composite video outputs, but really this is a very short-term stopgap method. The pictures go out from FCP to the camcorder, then out via an composite connector into your switcher. If it’s an old switcher, ot may have to first go thru a proc amp and time base corrector to be usable.

[Mark Suszko]

There’s a multi-point garbage matte you can apply. You could also try changing compositing mode to “multiply” over a cleaner white layer, before trying anything else.

Worst case, I have had very good luck using photoshop as a poor man’s roto system. (and if you know the history of PS you’re smiling at that phrase) Anyway, The idea is to export>using quicktime conversion>image sequence to a folder. I choose targas. In photoshop, open the first image in the folder, turn on the actions recorder, do the touch-up moves in there, save the recorded actions. You then can have PS batch the rest of the images in the stack all by itself with a couple clicks. I used this method a few months back on a job very similar to your problem, replacing the background where more traditional chroma or luma keying was just not working for me, and I didn’t have a way to work on it in a regular compositor.

The beauty is in how fast the rest of the stack processes once you get the “recipe” right for the first image. When the folder is done, you can just re-import to FCP, having first made sure the bin is set to give each imported still a duration of one frame. In practice this is a relatively smooth and seamless process to do. But if it’s too scary, you could just draw a more detailed mask in photoshop based on one frame, stick that in a layer on the FCP timeline, and composite thru it.

One of the neat things about FCP is how many diferent ways there are to do just about anything.

[Mark Suszko]

I like how you pull your punches, Bob;-)

Your P2 story reminds me of an anecdote I share with a lot of people who have problems with beaurocracies. You probably know the roast beef story?

(Short version)

A woman serves her family and visitors a delicious roast, with the end cut off on one side. Everybody remarks how great it is, one person asks why the end is cut off that way.

The cook says she doesn’t actually know, but she she was copying what her mom used to do, that’s where the recipe came from.

So grandma is consulted, she says she copied it from HER mom, and never questioned the practice.

They find great-gramma, who is about 100 years old but still able to hear and understand the question. Her answer:

“Meh, ain’t no special reason; I had to do it because I didn’t have a bigger pan to hold the roast in!”

So it goes with organizational policies that never get questioned. Questions are good and healthy.

I’m still fighting battles with folks who think a fake 24p pulldown effect presented on a 16×9 letterbox inside a 4×3 SD frame constitutes “HD”.

The P-2 thing is going to make me chuckle the rest of the day…. Thanks.

[Mark Suszko]

What kind of card, if any, are you putting in the Final Cut system for your input/output?

We use the AJA IO and this lets me bring in or put out pretty much any signal format I want, I have my FCP system feeding RGB to a traditional CRT tube monitor, component to a betacamSP deck, a composite video NTSC signal going into an antique Grass Valley 100 switcher, SDI feeding into and out of my DVCPro25 deck. All simultaneously, pretty much. You can use an external box like the AJA or a card that mounts in your Apple tower and do the same thing. AJA is popular, but not the only option, Blackmagic is also popular. Couple other options as well. Look around.

[Mark Suszko]

The field reversals may happen from more amateur producer/editors who think progressive looks more “film-like” (i.e. “cooler”), or they mix interlaced with progressive footage, but they don’t check final QC on a CRT TV display for such side-effects. LCD screens may not reveal the problem.