[Michael Schmidt]

Found these for anyone looking for Avid workshops in the Toronto area. They vary from cheap to not-cheap, Avid-authorized to not-authorized.

https://www.charlesstreetvideo.com/index.php

https://www.sheridaninstitute.ca/programs%20and%20courses/professional%20training%20programs/film%20and%20television%20professional%20training/avid.aspx#courses

[Michael Schmidt]

Thanks for your quick response, Mark.

Ouch! Yeah, I’m on a MacBook. Things seem to work fine, generally, but I guess Motion rendering must be a limitation of my system. I tried an upgrade last night to no avail.

Michael

[Michael Schmidt]

Hi all,

I am having a very similar problem, but possibly even simpler. Please help.

Basically, the title cards I created in Motion do not display after being rendered in Final Cut. They display properly before being rendered, as when I place my cursor on a frame of the title in the timeline, but not afterwards, neither when I place my cursor on a still frame or when played back in real time. It’s crazy. What am I doing wrong?

Some facts: I am running Final Cut 6.0.4 and Motion 3.0 on my MacBook with OS 10.4.11. I am using FCP sequence preset “Apple ProRes 422 1920×1080 24p 48 kHz.” (For those who don’t know, this is actually 23.98 fps.) Motion did not offer a ProRes preset, so I created a new “custom” preset replicating the specs from the FCP sequence preset. Could this be where I went wrong? If so, does anyone know of a ProRes plug-in for Motion?

In addition, I’ve checked my timeline to ensure nothing is covering the titles. I’ve also checked my .motn files to make sure the lighting is turned off. Changing and altering both of these things did not change the end result.

I should mention, these are very simple title cards, and one end credit scroll, white text on a black background. With the exception of the scroll, completely static. Simple. All pop-on, pop-off, and one fades up and pops off. Again, they look fine when unrendered, placement, size, etc., in one instance the text overlays the image in the FCP timeline, but when rendered the text disappears. (In the case of the overlay, the image looks fine, unaltered, just no text.) Any ideas?

As always, thanks much,
Michael

[Michael Schmidt]

Hey Bryan,

Thanks for the note. Much appreciated.

Nope, I did not create the current project in an older version of FCP than I’m using now. Created in 5.0, opened in 5.0. So I don’t know what the problem is. Again, I simply transferred some of my media from one hard drive to another. When I went to reconnect I got the “Mismatch” problem.

There is some good news, however. Since I posted this thread, I took some time to tool around a little. I saved a couple copies of the original project file and then reconnected the media to each copy using different Audio/Video Setting sequence presets.

In my previous post, I mentioned that the DV NTSC 48 kHz – 24 fps preset resulted in fewer error messages than when I reconnected the media using Uncompressed 10 Bit. The sole error message using this 24 fps preset said that the “Media Start and End” differed from the original media. But when I actually went and compared the in and out points of several audio clips in this new project with my old (un-reconnected) project file, I found that they shared the same audio in and out points, at least in the timeline. This was not the case in the project where I reconnected the media using the Uncompressed 10 Bit sequence setting, where clips were trimmed and/or volume nodes had drifted way out of sync.

In the latter example, the variance was anywhere from a few frames to a few seconds based on the length of the original clip. Some clips were a couple seconds (off a frame or two, or not at all). Some clips were a couple minutes (off 12 frames to a couple seconds).

Back to the former example, the 24 fps example. Since these sound clips are are non-dialogue FX, music and tone, at this early stage it’s difficult to tell if things are exactly like they were before I made the hard drive swap. But I’m feeling pretty good. At first glance, the lengths of the effected clips appear dead-on correct, and listening through the tracks, it also sounds like the volume nodes are mixed properly, not thrown off like it obviously was with the Uncomp 10 Bit reconnect.

Again, I should mention that the reason I’m bad mouthing Uncomp 10 Bit is not because I believe there is something inherently wrong with Uncomp 10 Bit. The reason I’m doing this is because the media for this project was imported when I was using the DV NTSC 48 kHz – 24 fps sequence setting, and the project was also cut with this sequence setting. The problem seemed to occur when I used the Uncomp 10 Bit setting for an alternative sequence within this project, which again is primarily a 24 fps project. Or I should say that the problem occurred when I changed this setting, then disconnected the media and tried to reconnect it.

For some reason, I’ve found that you need to import your media with the exact settings for your sequence, or face the consequences, even if this media is uncaptured, stand-alone media files. What’s more, it also appears you have to reconnect those media files with the same settings.

The thing that continues to puzzle me, though, is that even when I return to the original settings, and reconnect the media, and the media appears to fall into the exact same place as the original project file, I still get an error message that says the “Media Start and End” differs from the original. It makes me wonder what I’m missing. Is it something, or just a glitch? But for now I’m happy.

My only theory is that I could have originally (and mistakenly) imported some of the audio files while using the Uncomp 10 Bit setting, then edited them in a 24 fps timeline. When I disconnected the media and reconnected using the DV NTSC 48 kHz – 24 fps setting, FCP could have recognized the media as being “mismatched” (i.e. 29.97 frame, instead of 24) but still the same length in the 24 fps timeline. But this theory doesn’t really explain why the media would change so drastically in length (in and out points) when reconnected using the Uncomp 10 Bit sequence preset. In fact, one might think if I did happen to use this preset originally, this would be the one to use again, to remain consistent. I don’t know.

I have taken this one step further as well. I have quit out of the new properly functioning project, disconnected the media and reconnected again. Seems to work perfectly well. No error message. No problems. Go figure.

Please, if anyone has an explanation for this, add your thoughts to the thread.

Thanks,
Michael

[Michael Schmidt]

Thanks, Josh! I tested this on a 10 sec. portion of the project, and it seems to have done the trick.

Greatly appreciated,
Michael

[Michael Schmidt]

Thanks for the suggestion, Chrispy, but to no avail. The AJA codec seemed to make the audio (or cursor) run smoother, but still no picture.

Do you think it’s because my MacBook doesn’t have a strong enough graphics card to handle the data rate? It is a regular MacBook, not a MacBook Pro. And the data rate for uncompressed media is more than 10 times that of DV.

Thanks again for your help. Much appreciated.

Michael