[Matt Lyon]

Yes there is actually! When you import a graphic, FCP will set its “frame rate” and field dominance to match whatever is selected as the default sequence setting (where the checkmark is in the “Sequence Presets” Tab under “Audio/Video Settings…”

I make it a habit of always having my default Sequence Preset match the timeline I’m currently working with, so I’ll be sure that imported graphics and (to a lesser extent) audio files behave in a predictable way.

Hope this helps,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Hi Maurice, which article are you referring to? I agree with Atticus that it is better to edit natively. Unless there is a REALLY good reason to transcode. This article seems to suggest that it is better to work in pro-res only if you are doing a tape finish:

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/when_to_stay_native.html

But I’m a little skeptical … I guess it depends how much footage you have to start with and if you can afford to wait for it all to transcode.

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Bad cable maybe? Do you have another deck w/ RS422 to do a test with?

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Hi Katie, you can’t just invert a film negative in FCP and get the “correct” colors because of the orange base of color film negative stock.

It is very rare for people to transfer positive prints of their rushes. The common practice is to transfer the original camera negatives using “best light” or “one light” settings (you can google the terms and learn more about them if you aren’t familiar).

If you need to save money, call around and find a facility that will offer you a discount for doing your transfer with a junior tech on an overnight shift. But be aware that if if is an unsupervised transfer, you lose control over the look of your footage.
Hope that helps,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Hi Jonathan,
You shouldn\\\’t have any problems using tif files for graphic/text overlays. It sounds like there could be a mismatch between the field dominance setting of your sequence and some of your imported tif files. As a test, go into the properties of one of the problem graphics and see if changing the field dominance has any effect (make sure to disable any of your field order swapping filters first). It is possible that this problem was there from the get go, it just wasn\’t obvious because there was no motion on your tif files.

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Does the same thing happen if he copies your bins and timelines to a fresh project before relinking and saving?
You should also check the path names that FCP is trying to look for when the media shows up as offline. You can do this in the relink media window or by exporting an XML and checking the ‘pathurl’ fields.

[Matt Lyon]

Okay, in case anyone is interested, I seem to have fixed this:

I re-installed qmaster and compressor for a second time (as root user), with no luck, then again a third time as my “normal” login, again with no luck. But then I tried a different preset then the one I was using for testing and it worked! Turns out I was using a CBR mpeg2 preset that was causing qmaster to crash. I guess CBR encodes don’t like job segmenting? So qmaster definitely needed a re-install, but my guess is it probably would have worked from the get-go if I had been using a different Compressor setting. And I’ll avoid using virtual clusters if I want to do constant bit rate mpeg2 streams.

Hope this helps,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

I’d use 2.2 gamma and 6500K color temp. Put up some NTSC bars on the monitor and set the brightness to get proper black levels on the PLUGE pattern. Given the constraints of your setup, this is probably the closet you can get. If you can, I’d at least try to output your program to a DVD at a few points along the editing process, so you can watch it on a well calibrated consumer TV.

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Hi Erin, it sounds like there is a problem with the write permissions on some files on the drive, which prevents FCP from modifying the metadata. A quick possible fix is to select your media drive in the finder, and open the “get info” window.

Turn on the “ignore ownership on this volume” checkbox and then see if that fixes the problem. If it doesn’t, I may have some other solutions, but let us know if this works first.
Good luck!

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Matt Lyon]

Hi Sidharth,

I’m not sure if I understand your post exactly. You are using two separate studios. One to do the HD conform and one to do the grading and film output?

The best thing to do is to speak to the technical folks at these facilities and figure out between everyone a workflow that satisfies everyone. But I imagine that whoever is doing the conform will be using Smoke or similar? They should have the ability to output a hard drive filled with DPX files, which you could send directly to the baselight facility.

Hope this helps,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto