Michael Buday
Forum Replies Created
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Chroma-Keying Keying highly compressed footage like HDV is always a real challenge. The compressioon takes it greatest toll on the color sampling, so blue and green screen keying often suffers.
I’ve not (yet) had great luck with FCP’s built-in keyers for blue or green keying. You might try downloading a plug-in trial version of one the the better known keyers out there, like Primatte or Ultimatte. The other option is to export the required scenes to be keyed to another app. like After Effects, which probably has much better keyers then FCP for this purpose.
All the best,
Michael Buday
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You have to turn ON the auto-select for the track you want to match to. That’s the little grey square to the right of the channel indicator on the track patch (left side of timeline).
All the best,
Michael Buday
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Andy, wow – thanks so much for taking the time to test that work flow for me. I will try that next time this problem arises. Last night, I had to make a decision, so I went ahead and did it the cumbersome way. I did a global search and replace at the FINDER level to fix the media file names, then I manually changed all the clip-names in FCP (ughh!), then spent several hours relinking all the clips and sequences to the new media file names.
This is where AVID really learned their lesson a long time ago. Many people don’t know this, but you actually change the name of a media file at the OS level while the Avid is playing that file, and it will automatically re-link to the new name without user intervention. This is because Avid doesn’t rely soley on the name of the file, since it can be so easily screwed up when transferring between systems, OS’s ,etc. Instead, if it can’t find the file by name, it looks into the file header where it stores a GUID that can’t be screwed by the user or the OS.
Apple should adopt this kind of robust media file linking! Other then that though, I’m pretty happy with FCP so far!
Again thanks . .
Michael Buday
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Remember that there is a difference between the MEDIA START and END and the marked IN point and OUT point of the clip. It could be that the actual MARK IN/OUT of all the clips is a few frames “inside” of the actual media start and end times.
Make sure that you’re checking the EDL SOURCE IN/OUT times by comparing the EDL output to the TC shown in the TIMELINE for each source clip (turn on the TC overlay for the source TC and place the playhead at the beginning and end of each cut).
If this doesnn’t solve your problem, the you could have a TC offset problem or a sequence setting that is wrong.
All the best,
Michael Buday
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Have you tried playing the offending tape back in any other deck to make sure there’s no problem with the tape? Also, have you checked to see if the DSR has any menu function that allows you to force the deck to playback in DV or DVCAM regardless of the what it thinks the tape format is?
All the best,
Michael Buday
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“Michael, wait until you want to repatch specific tracks between sequences whilst being able to view both timelines 😉 It can’t be done. What I’d like to see Apple do is to go one better than Avid and allow a split-view timeline. Imagine if the track patching area moved to the centre of the window and a new source timeline area was revealed to the left…”
Yeah, I know. I already discovered that huge limitation. You split timeline view idea is GREAT idea. Glad I thought of it! (just kidding). No really, it couldn’t get much more intuitive then that. I’ve done a lot of software and GUI design over the years, so I know a good GUI idea when I hear one!
Hope Apple is listening . .
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“I’m intrigued to hear why you’re working on FCP. Last time I saw you, you were touting Sony’s XPRI at NAB. What inspired the move?”
I haven’t abandoned XPRI or any other platform in order to cut of FCP (I still own and use a couple of Avids), the time was just right to plunge in, learn it and have it as another tool in my arsenal. An existing client of mine approached me with a project that they wanted me to cut, and the director had already started cutting on FCP. After weighing the pros and cons of staying on FCP or moving to another platform, I decided that enough work had already been done that warranted continuing on the same platform. So I decided to ante up some cash and buy a system of my own.
Overall, I’m very pleased with how it performs as an offline system, though I am making a list of gripes that I’d like to see sorted out. How it performs as an online system is yet to be determined, but I can tell you that even now, I miss the realtime capabilities of the XPRI! You don’t know how much you miss something until it’s gone! However, I’ve learned to enjoy the coffee (or lunch) breaks that naturally occur when you have to render something. I just click the RENDER button, get in my car, and head for the beach!
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Thank you everyone for all your answers. Bret, your answer best suits my needs ’cause I sometimes do need to repatch tracks during this process, and the auto-select behaviour you described is just the ticket I’m looking for.
Again, thanks all for your help.
All the best,
Michael Buday
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Check your render settings. Make sure they’re set correctly and at the best quality.
All the best,
Michael Buday
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Do all your AFX output settings (aspect ratio, etc.) match the sequence settings on FCP? What type of file are you exporting to FCP (most likely QT, but what flavor? codec, etc).
What is the format of the existing FCP project? (DV? uncompressed?)
All the best,
Michael Buday