[Nate]

I just helped a client get her DV (jvc500) and HD (varicam) to the Miami film festival, where it played to a full house to critical aclaim. We have been told that you can’t color correct with FCP, we have been told that you can’t mix HD and Dv footage.. She did. Because of opportunity or circumstances beyond her control, part of her movie ws shot with a Jvc500 and part with a Varicam. Her Varicam footage was sent to people In DC to bump down to DV so she could off line her edit in her den on her dual gig Quicksilver. Whoever did the conversion HD to Dv was not watching their scopes and settings and Both (yes twice) versions of HD to Dv where wacked out, to much saturation, not enough gamma etc. But it still allowed her to finish her edit and bring over her FCP#3 project folder and her hard drives (4 Lacies). And yes we color corrected with FCP#4 HD and onlined her edit with a noncompressed Targa YUV (betacam SP) timeline (festivals require a Betacam SP master for playback). In the Targa YUV time line her DV graphics reset themselves as noncompressed and looked great. Her DV footage was to hot (duh) and her Varicam-DV was to saturated. She had a lot off dark party scenes and outside full sun and full color rose gardens. Both ends of your D-log curve. And yes we made it look good on those Betacam Sp masters, because we used the real time capabilities of the Cinewave RT Pro card. Realtime three way color correcting in FCP 4HD really works great if you got the rest of the hardware. But here is our secret, realtime.. yes realtime YUV Targa timeline out the back of the Cinewave RT Pro card YUV to Betacam SP UVW1800.. The rest of the secret is don’t render. For some reason each time we rendered 2 hours 6 minutes of color correction our black levels (gamma) got smashed/smushed just basically disappeared. Any luminance level between 7.5 IRE and 0 IRE smushed down towaqrds the 0 IRE level. So don’t render it, play it realtime thru a Cinewave RT Pro card using FCP4 HD and it will look georgeous and sell tickets. And this, me thinks, is the dirty little secret that big daddy, Avid, understands. And is why Avid bought Pinnacle and the Cinewave card. The card that knocked 60% of the value out of the Avid Symphony and like who needs a yearly maintenance fee, yuk..

Need more details, look up “Mrs Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing” you will be reading about it sooner or later. or email me, nate@Tvsvpro.com …. http://www.tvsvpro.com

[Nate]

Just did credits for a movie going to a festival next week. The client wanted to use what she was ‘confortable with’ FCP Text….. So we cut and pasted ‘Actors names _ people names’ from Microsoft Yuk Word… We selected text in Word>copied>pasted into FCP Text> select all > right justify all> add neccessary space bar spaces to move left column to left and eye a straight up and down line> select all > justify center…. You will have two columns that will roll as long as you have names to roll in the center of your screen and it looks really good..

And I have Boris Red 3gl and Live Type and Title 3D..

And the client is very happy..

Fun stuff