[Michael Gissing]

Yes blade the clip into shots and try placing the final keyframe one frame after the cut. I suspect the CC is jumping to a new value on the last frame.

[Michael Gissing]

Do you have reference video hooked up to the Blackmagic card? Obviously if you change to PAL, both machine and card should have a PAL reference signal.

I presume you are getting picture and sound playback on the PAL machine straight to a monitor.

[Michael Gissing]

The FCP broadcast safe filter doesn’t stay safe after render in many cases. For the past few years I have been using the RGB Limit plugin that does levels and chroma but recently I had some shots that didn’t limit to broadcast safe after render.

I have since discovered a third party plug that does white, black and chroma legal for FCP called the Sweet Legalizer. It is part of a grading suite package and when you download the demo, the legalizer is free. Info here –
https://www.thegradingsweet.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_Sweet_Legalizer

and demo download here –
https://thefilmbakery.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1

So far so good. It seems to do a great job.

[Michael Gissing]

Personally, I prefer to drop all DV finals into a 10 bit uncompressed sequence for grade and online. Although you have 4.1.1 source, your final grade will render as 4.2.2 and 10 bit. I think 10 bit actually makes a bigger difference with less banding and greater grey scale for the final grade.

I also recommend using the Nattress Chroma smoothing plugin filters which helps the usually terrible reds in DV

[Michael Gissing]

How are you viewing the DVD? Is on computer or a set top player? How is the playback device setup and what aspect ratio monitor are you viewing on.

The problem may be in playback and nothing to do with the DVD encode. And don’t transcode to H264 before making your mpeg2 in Compressor. Search this forum as the best workflow from FCP to DVD Studio Pro has been covered a gazillion times.

[Michael Gissing]

If you are happy with FCP5.1, then stay with your OS. There is no advantage in upgrading as far as running FCP is concerned so don’t complicate.

[Michael Gissing]

I would finish in HD and then convert to SD using hardware conversion. That way you have the master as HD (Tape or Quicktime file) for the future

This can be achieved with Kona cards or at a facility with devices like a Teranex. Have them make a digibeta tape or Quicktime file in SD and then make the DVD from that.

Getting FCP to change to an SD sequence requires rendering and doesn’t look as good as hardware conversion. Many here are happy using Compressor to make an SD quicktime from the HD sequence. A search will reveal a lot of opinion on this as it is a very frequent question.

[Michael Gissing]

Broadcast can be subscription based or free to air. Either way it is different to a purchased object like a CD. In the case of CD’s many countries allow copying to various devices for personal use only.

A broadcast signal is not a purchased object. Either it is free to air, or you only pay for the right to watch and whilst you can legally record the program to watch it later (in many countries), the issue of making a disk copy may infringe copyright, unlike your CD example.

[Michael Gissing]

Welcome Dave,

Try making a QT file of the smoothcam shot and put that in the sequence on the track above the original.

Curious if you are using Quicktime conversion or Compressor to make the mpeg/ DVCPro50. I have seen this reported here before and I can’t remember if it was due to quicktime conversion or not. A search of this forum should show others experiences and solutions to this. Also take time to read the FAQ as many common issues are covered.

Also it is a good idea to report your setup, FCP version, sequence settings, codecs and frame rates when asking for advice.

[Michael Gissing]

Of course laws are different in each country, but I have a Panasonic device with two digital receivers that lets me record to hard drive, on air data streams in SD or HD. It has a built in DVD burner so you can archive these files. So in Australia, that must be legal.

DVR’s with receivers are capturing the mpeg2 data stream that is broadcast. I don’t know exactly the stream specs for SD or HD and they would likely vary from country to country anyway, but if you can get that data stream off the hard drive, it may just be a matter of extracting the mpeg2 data and writing to DVD or BD.