[Matt Campbell]

Peter, I’ve just download your logo, HotHand.png, and sized down and ran my own test using the ProRes 422 720p59.94 easy setup. With the Canvas set to 100%, yes you get pixelation. And you will. Just as everyone else said FCPs Canvas is degraded on purpose. If you had an external monitor or even a consumer TV hooked up, you would see that the image file looks completely fine. No stair stepping at all. Even if your final destination is web, you should still be monitoring externally. About 1/2 the stuff we create is for web and I always have my monitor on to check for safe zones and playback. FCP canvas will never look as good as your final QT output for the playback on an external monitor.

As I mentioned before, you can change the Video Processing and Render Control tabs in your sequence settings to help a bit. Hope this helps.

OS 10.5.5, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 9 gb ram, with BM Intensity Pro card

[Matt Campbell]

what about your video card? 512 ram on your video card should be plenty sufficient.

OS 10.5.5, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 9 gb ram, with BM Intensity Pro card

[Matt Campbell]

Maybe its defaulting to your Documents folder on your OS hard drive. You could also this: when the reconnect media window pops up, try hitting the search tab. This will scan your drives for the file name.

A good habit to get into is keeping your projects organized. Your capture scratch is only for captured media. Anything else you want to import should come from your project folder. Some people keep the Capture Scratch and FCP cache files on a separate drive from the project files. It should always be on a separate drive from the OS.

With my system being screaming fast with a RAID 0, my project files, capture scratch and cache files are all on the same RAID setup. That gets backed up to a FW800 drive. This frees up the OS drives to do there computing thang.

I create a Project folder. In there place your FCP project file. Then create a Media folder. In there place your Images, non-captured video, audio files, motion files or anything else.

I know this was long but when I started out, someone else gave me this advice and its saved me tons of time. Hope it helps.

OS 10.5.5, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 9 gb ram, with BM Intensity Pro card

[Matt Campbell]

I’m not a IT guy nor an expert but are you PCs fast enough to playback the video? Is your network fast enough?

OS 10.5.5, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 9 gb ram, with BM Intensity Pro card

[Matt Campbell]

So does that mean this was shot 30 fps Progressive? If so, that’s what I shoot with our HVX 200 on P2. I shoot 720p30PN all the time because it downconverts nicely to NTSC 29.97 using Compressor. Do you need to conform using Cinema Tools or can you just convert with Compressor?

So, can’t he just up, down, or cross-convert the files to 1080i29.97 or whatever format he needs? NTSC, 720p60, 1080i60?

OS 10.5.5, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 9 gb ram, with BM Intensity Pro card

[Matt Campbell]

Another question, you say you transcoded from h264. Why? Can’t you get the originals from the camera. Just curious as to why your originals are h264. thats a compressed codec. are there cameras that shoot to that?

I‘m trying to create a multiclip from 3 different media sources. Camera 1, camera 2, and an audio source. The video footage from both cameras are ProRes422 (Transcoded from h264), full HD, at 30 frames per second. I’m aligning by placing an inpoint over the clickboard used at the shoot.

OS 10.5.5, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 9 gb ram, with BM Intensity Pro card

[Matt Campbell]

Why did you convert the audio to 44.1? It should stay as 48 khz and possibly 16 bit. Although I think 24 bit should be ok. Maybe there was a shift in your conversion.

OS 10.5.5, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 9 gb ram, with BM Intensity Pro card

[Matt Campbell]

MacBook Pro with Duel adapter (but no Snow Leopard)

Do you mean just for offload or are there issues with FCP and Snow Leopard. I use the AJ-PCD20 for offload now. And with FW 800, she’s pretty fast. I’m on FCS 2 with an Intel Xeon and am about to upgrade to a Intel Nahelam with Snow Leopard (yeah new machine). I hope there aren’t any issues with FCS 2 or 3 and P2. We pretty much only use P2. Can you clarify what you meant by No Snow Leopard?

OS 10.5.5, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 9 gb ram, with BM Intensity Pro card

[Matt Campbell]

That was quick. Thanks Shane. Just the type of detailed response i was hoping for. appreciate it.

OS 10.5.5, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 9 gb ram, with BM Intensity Pro card

[Matt Campbell]

My apologies Mark, maybe I wasn’t clear in my question or description. I was also able to get the background to match by sampling as well but my problem is I need those colors to be accurate, value wise. There is a visible difference in the 2 files. I know my monitors and playback monitor need to be accurate and calibrated but that still doesn’t explain why the RGB values are different.

I just don’t understand why those colors shift when imported into motion. Do other programs have issues like this? i.e. After Effects, FCP, etc… How would a big production studio or post house handle this?

OS 10.5.5, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 9 gb ram, with BM Intensity Pro card