[Martin Baker]

We don’t know what is going to happen until we get our hands on FCP5 test it out. Until then there’s no news to report I’m afraid.

Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
________________________________________
Ten Final Cut Plug-ins for just $10 each

[Martin Baker]

Hmmm…! As I understand it, the way that Cinewave was able to do mixable codecs is that it let the CPU decompress the movies so they all got fed them to the Cinewave hardware as an uncompressed signal. The Cinewave hardware then handled the effects i.e. It won’t let you do RT Extreme AND mixable codecs, it is one or the other.

Blackmagic need to clarify how this would work on Decklink? If it uses the same philosophy then we’re back to basic RT effects again.

Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
________________________________________
Ten Final Cut Plug-ins for just $10 each

[Martin Baker]

Which sounds like a dream come true (now Cinewave is has been killed off) but strangely there’s absolutely no mention of this on the FCP5 site, so is this a Decklink only feature or an FCP5 feature?

Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
________________________________________
Ten Final Cut Plug-ins for just $10 each

[Martin Baker]

I have several friends who work on Adrenaline and the only positive thing I hear from them is that it renders really fast. Apart from that it’s the same old Avid frustrations such as ange has described (oh and more crashes than the older Avid Meridien systems).

When the NAB announcements are out, it might become a very easy decision for you to make as it was for us when deciding to switch from Avid to FCP after NAB 2003.

Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
________________________________________
Ten Final Cut Plug-ins for just $10 each
Multicam Lite – The first multicam solution for FCP

[Martin Baker]

Go to User Preferences > Editing tab and enable “Dynamic Trimming” (Shift-Command-D also toggles it on/off). Dynamic Trimming will give you a more Avid-like approach so you can use JKL to trim the edit point (with audio) without having to set a new in or out point. Takes a bit of getting used to – if you’re trimming in normal or faster than normal speed then the trim takes effect when you hit “K” to stop. If you’ve got K already held down to go slow or frame by frame then when you release K the trim takes effect.

In the same place there are also checkboxes for whether you want to listen to the sequence audio or the only the audio on the track you’re trimming.

Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
________________________________________
Ten Final Cut Plug-ins for just $10 each
Multicam Lite – The first multicam solution for FCP

[Martin Baker]

What you’re describing is a field mushing problem such as putting a field based clip into a progressive sequence and resizing it. Have you double checked your sequence settings? Are you working progressive or regular field-based?

Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
________________________________________
Ten Final Cut Plug-ins for just $10 each
Multicam Lite – The first multicam solution for FCP

[Martin Baker]

It’s easier than you think James 😉

1. Create a new, non-anamorphic sequence
2. Drag your final 16:9 sequence from the browser into the 4:3 sequence and it will automatically be letterboxed.
3. Export.

BTW where are you seeing the shimmering? (i.e. field problems) On a video monitor or on the canvas?

Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
________________________________________
Ten Final Cut Plug-ins for just $10 each
Multicam Lite – The first multicam solution for FCP

[Martin Baker]

The magic is probably this: QuickTime movies have the ability to have their Playback Size saved with the file. The Playback Size is totally independent from the native pixel size so what almost certainly is happening is that FCP is setting the Playback Size to 1280×720 even though the native size is 960×720 – in other words QuickTime is doing a horizontal stretch in real time upon playback. Apps such as After Effects usually ignore the native size and use the Playback Size so to them it appears to be a square pixel movie. Presumably FCP does the opposite – using the native size rather than playback size.

All this theory is easy to confirm – just open up a DVCPROHD movie in QuickTime Player, press Cmd-J to bring up the properties and then select “Video Track” in the LH popup and “Size” in the RH popup. You’ll see figures for Current Size (playback) and Normal Size (native) there.

Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
________________________________________
Ten Final Cut Plug-ins for just $10 each
Multicam Lite – The first multicam solution for FCP

[Martin Baker]

Basically no there isn’t. RT Extreme will only work with certain codecs and frame sizes and 1024×576 square pixels isn’t one of them. Converting footage etc won’t make any difference. Out of curiosity, what frame size are the MP4s that you output to?

Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
________________________________________
Ten Final Cut Plug-ins for just $10 each
Multicam Lite – The first multicam solution for FCP

[Martin Baker]

DVCPROHD isn’t a square pixel format. It’s either 960×720 or 1280×1080 on tape, on disk and inside FCP. We were all lead to believe that HD meant the end of the silly non-square pixel thing but unfortunately it isn’t true. Apple had to add a new pixel aspect ratio in FCP4.5 to cope with the non square pixels of DVCPROHD.

This is a good article for getting started with the technicalities:
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/dvcpro_hd_workflow_balis.html

Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
________________________________________
Ten Final Cut Plug-ins for just $10 each
Multicam Lite – The first multicam solution for FCP