[Michael Gissing]

[Richard Martz] “You ONLY NEED TO MATCH THE HORIZONTAL RESOLUTION. The vertical resolution can be what ever is necessary”

I have had keyframed psd’s like the one you describe and still needed to add a small amount of Gaussian blur to stop jitters. Font and speed still matter with this method.

Also it must be mentioned that the results need to be judged on an external monitor. Often when it looks right on an external interlaced screen, it looks horrible in the FCP canvas and vice/versa.

[Michael Gissing]

There should be some updates that affect DVDSP as well. Make sure you are also up to date with pro apps.

There isn’t a problem with your install not being clean on Snow Leopard. People have had problems doing upgrades from Leopard to Snow Leopard and also FCS2 to FCS3. Both OS and FCS version updates are best done with clean installs.

[Michael Gissing]

[Scott Sheriff] “”Apart from the fact that I wouldn’t consider running FCS2 on Snow Leopard,”

Is that based on actual experience, or repeating what others have said?”

It is based on constant reading of opinions and other contributors real world experience on this forum and a desire to make a balanced judgement to minimise problems and down time.

I am, like you, amazed at how people have ignored warnings about the best way to install and upgrade. You have obviously studied the advice, opinions and read all the sad stories of those that don’t do their homework.

My choice was a total system upgrade. New hardware, SL on new drive, FCS3 – waiting until 10.6.2 and FCP7.0.1 were available. I saw no point in upgrading hardware, OS and then reinstalling FCS2.

The price of the FCS3 upgrade is trivial and the huge improvements to Color plus the new flavours of ProRes are ample reasons to do an OS and FCS3 upgrade simulataneously. I still have 6.0.6 on my old G5 so I have legacy.

[Michael Gissing]

If AE is on the same computer as FCP 7 then you have a new choice of ProRes 4444 which has an alpha channel.

With FCP6 you have animation codec which also has an alpha channel.

[Michael Gissing]

Apart from the fact that I wouldn’t consider running FCS2 on Snow Leopard, I wonder if your version of FCP6 was updated to a later version but when you reinstalled, you haven’t updated to the same or later version that you used to edit with. That would cause the software to report the Unable to open..Later version message.

What version of FCP6 are you running? At the very least I would recommend 6.0.6. The early releases of version 6 were quite buggy.

[Michael Gissing]

Don’t know what the Tricaster can or can’t do but surely it can output an uncompressed 10 bit 422 maintaining the 1920 x 1080 ratio of the original.

XDCam is a highly compressed format, plus you are changing the pixel aspect to 720. It is far from lossless.

If uncompressed is too tough to play, then convert that to ProRes in Compressor once you have bought the file into you FCP Mac.

[Michael Gissing]

How did you import the footage? When you say you shot stereo, did you record a stereo image or just feed the sound mix to both channels?

If both channels are the same, then you don’t need to have two channels of the same signal panned. One channel can be panned to center so that it comes out both L&R output from FCP. You don’t need to double a mono track.

[Michael Gissing]

ProRes is a much improved codec over AIC.

[Michael Gissing]

Have you tried using the built in Boris crawl? The FCP rolling text tool is awful but Boris is buttery smooth.

Also there is a new credit roll tool in Motion if you have FCS3. I haven’t tried it yet but it is supposed to be smooth as well.

With credit rolls from AE, I have always asked for the roll to be rendered with fields to a quicktime file. (99% of my work is delivery to broadcasters as interlaced 25 fps HDCam). If your project is interlaced, then an interlaced roll will look much smoother. It is always a fiddle with speeds and fonts and blur with progressive projects in PAL in my experience.

[Michael Gissing]

All those years of training as a telecine op, film camera assistant and lab processor, I remember how hard we all tried to avoid those problems.

Every time I see people adding edge fog, flashed frames, orange light leaks, grit, grain, scratches and weave I cringe at how hokey and pseudo retro it looks. Nothing hides crap content and nothing is more annoying than covering good content with crap effects. Please just edit and give these dud retro FX & transitions a rest.