[Matt Larson]

16:9 in NTSC is anamorphic, so you’ll need to have a monitor that can work in 16:9. If it’s a 4:3 CRT, there is ususally a 16:9 option that formats the image, or if it’s a 16:9 monitor, just set it to stretch the image to fill the screen.

Same with the Quicktime. Open the exported video in QT and hit cmd+j and change the display size to 864×486 (for D1). If you are sending to Compressor though, just compress the 4:3 file and make sure you check the Anamorphic box in the Compressor settings. DVDSP will make let you choose the display options.

If you really just want the video letterboxed and not 16:9, change your sequence to a 4:3 NTSC setting in FCP and add the 16:9 footage. FCP will letterbox.

[Matt Larson]

If by chance you have a Kona card, you can output your FCP timeline with timecode burn-in on the fly and then recapture.

[Matt Larson]

Are youworking with “Edit to Tape”? That’s a common error message with “Edit to Tape”. If that’s the case, you have 2 options:

Drag and drop you sequence into the Edit to Tape window and you will get the Insert and Assemble options

OR, Drag and drop your sequence into the Viewer window, and then you can use the Insert or Assemble buttons in the ETT window.

If it’s print to video that you are using, I don’t have much experience with that one…

[Matt Larson]

Open up the actual Application for FX Factory and under the “Action” menu it looks like there is an “Uninstall…” option

[Matt Larson]

The newest version of Compressor adds an option for this in the m2v “Extras” tab, but if you don’t have access to that:

Try downloading “MPEGStreamclip” Once you get it downloaded, put your m2v and aiff or ac3 into the same folder and named the same (except for the file extension). Open MPEGStreamclip. Choose Open from the file menu and open your m2v file. Click the play button to make sure you have audio. Go back to the file menu and choose “Convert to MPEG with mp2 audio”

[Matt Larson]

Check out “Conduit”. I played with the demo version a while back and it was pretty easy to use (once you get used to the nodal view). I’m not sure about render times, though. You should be able to get a free demo to check for yourself.

[Matt Larson]

Isn’t it amazing that you pay thousands of dollars for a high end supercomputer, even more for a super fast disk array, and then the whole thing is brought to its knees by DHCP polling?

Thanks for the tip. I think I figured out what was causing my issue here: Spotlight. Looking at the Activity Window I saw “mds” spiking right before FCP would drop out and then I looked in the top right corner and saw that Spotlight was indexing. My guess is since I was using AutoRender (which I ususally don’t use) it was creating some large files that Spotlight had to work to get through. I made my “Final Cut Pro Documents” folder private in the Spotlight preferences and was able to play back ok on Friday. If the issue pops up again, I’ll look in to Little Snitch though.

[Matt Larson]

I think I’ve eliminated the Kona and FCS as the issues: I duplicated a media file in the Finder to the same folder on the RAID just now and I got the same issue where the Read/Write speeds drop to 0…

[Matt Larson]

Rich, Kona card is in Slot 3 and Fiber card is in Slot 4.

I did run the Expansion utility when I set up the Mac Pro and I just verified it is still set to “Option 2” (ATI Radeon X1900 is in Slot 1 using all 16 lanes)

The fun contines…

[Matt Larson]

No luck with uninstalling and re-installing the Kona driver.