[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

What’s the point of taking a software approach to this – inevitably taking a lot of time to do so, no matter how fast the computer – when a hardware approach is relatively inexpensive in the first place? If you really need to do a lot of MPEG encoding, especially if you have some PC’s floating around, you might want to look at Digital Rapids’ cards. They’re very affordable and do the job in real time.

One size does NOT fit all. One program should not be expected to do everything you happen to need to do, especially if it’s not part of what that program was designed to do. Final Cut was designed to edit. If you need fast MPEG encoding, look at a product that’s designed to do just that.

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

Or perhaps you could give the final rendered Quicktime file to a post facility and have them play it out for you. This would likely not cost much more (if any more) than renting a deck and trying to do something you haven’t done before (not to mention assuming technical responsibility for it).

Do it yourself is fine when it makes sense. But just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should, especially if there’s no advantage to it, and especially when professional services are available at about the same cost.

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

Apple does not support MXF. You must convert them to Quicktime, the only format Final Cut supports. That’s what the P2 import interface is for.

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

No, there are no frame flags. These are only generated when footage is shot on a Panasonic video camera, in which the camera front end is actually running at 23.98. The only recording format for DVCProHD is 60p (aka, 59.94p). Since the D5 doesn’t know anything about 720/23.98 (neither does any other video equipment – it doesn’t exist as a video format, only as a data format), and since the input signal from the telecine is 720p/60 (if it was recorded in this format at all – it might have been converted from 1080/23.98p), it has no awareness of any particular cadence.

The only way I know of to remove this pulldown is to either convert to 1080i/60 and use Cinema Tools, or possibly to use After Effects -although I’m not sure that AE understands frame based 3:2 pulldown either.

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

What you “should” do is have a video post facility make the delivery element, even if it’s generated from something you created. Whether people using FCP like it or not, the world still operates with technical standards, and depending upon the broadcaster or program distributor, these standards often involve matching specific technical specs for which most people here don’t have proper equipment, experience, or expertise in dealing with.

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

I assume you already know that SpeedGrade costs approx. $29,000 per seat and requires an NVidia Quadro FX card?

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

I understand your personal pride, but I would also suggest that you give a bit of credit to whomever shot the material in the first place. Good looking material doesn’t get that way purely because of a good post path, although a bad post path can certainly harm good material. In any case, I’m sure the director of photography would thank you for your efforts, and you should do the same.

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

I hesitate to say this here, but it really does apply to projects like this.

You could consider using Avid, and none of this would be an issue. All of the resolutions could be imported in their native form and freely mixed in a sequence, as long as the frame rates are the same. Xpress Pro HD would run on the systems you described, although it won’t use the Decklink cards.

Hopefully Apple will address the issue of mixed codecs and mixed resolutions on a common timeline in a “future release” of Final Cut. With new formats seemingly appearing every week, this is becoming a much more acute problem.

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

There is no conversion. There is no such thing as 720/24p video. The DVCProHD tape format is 60p all the time, regardless of what you’re feeding into it. The footage is padded with 3:2 pulldown for 24p, and other pulldown patterns for other frame rates (and the additional frames flagged for automatic removal when desired) before it’s recorded. That way the recorder can stay at a constant 60p.

The deck can use the frame flags to interpret the pulldown and output in different formats, depending on the option cards you have installed in it. If you have the HD-SDI option and can supply proper sync, it can output as 1080/60i or 1080/24p directly if you recorded with the camera in 24p mode.

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

Yes, I did answer your question. I suggested getting everything to 24p as early in the process as possible. That means converting it prior to offline to some kind of 24p format – i.e., an HD format – then downconverting that to use in the offline. I also offered an alternative that would be a useful way to avoid the issue entirely -making the entire project a lot simpler – if your project was primarily a video finish, and considering you’re asking these questions on an Internet forum, the fact that many projects discussed in these forums never get to film becomes relevant, whether yours fits into that category or not. I wasn’t expressing any opinion on this, I was simply offering alternatives. In other words, trying to be helpful.

So please keep **your** idiotic opinions about people you don’t know to yourself.