[Neil Patience]

Yes thats the correct workflow for H264 footage. You still need to address the frame rate difference but I can’t fully help you there apologies for that.

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

[Neil Patience]

Ok well you have several issues there, firstly you should not have edited with the H264 footage. I am surprised you don’t have flash frames and other issues on cuts just from that alone. You will find many many posts here where people have done that and got themselves into all kinds of problems. You should always transcode H264 to ProRes for editing. ProRes LT is fine for those sources no need to use HQ.

You need to standardise your frame rate. I would guess 29.97 would be best since that is the majority of your footage. However I am in Pal land and cant remember the best way to get from 23.98 to 29.97. I am not sure how great FCP is at handling the pull down. You might be better off using Compressor for that part. Sorry I cant be more specific its not something I ever have to deal with but someone here will know or just search for some posts on that there will be loads I am sure. I am assuming you are using FCP7 not X as the rules on odd frame rates will be different between to two. So you need to check that out also if thats the case.

Once you have sorted out the ProRes transcode and the frame rate issue what I said in my earlier post pretty much holds true. It looks like the majority of your footage is 1929×1080 so create a sequence for that. Your DVCProHD footage will then resize to match.

Once you have fixed all of that export a 1920×1080 master file and use that to create whatever you need.

Unfortunately you have pretty much gone wrong from the start with this one and its not a really quick fix.

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

[Neil Patience]

Sadly its not as easy as just telling everyone that its 23.98. It also depends what the delivery requirements are for your master. Going from an erroneous 23.98 sequence back to 25 is going to be a mess. Your 25 frame footage will almost certainly have some nasty motion artefacts from being at the wrong timebase in any event. Audio is at the wrong speed – its a pretty big problem really.
As you have seen all the edit points are incorrect and there is no easy way of getting that right other than manually fixing each shot and re-timing the audio to fit the correct frame rate.
I think it would be incredibly risky to try just to patch up the film and leave it at 23.98 – the chances of that not coming back to bite you in a huge way are pretty much nil I think.

I can only say best of luck its going to be a pain to fix but there is no easy solution to that one.

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

[Neil Patience]

[thomas adjani] “Can someone please tell me what I need to do to get a consistent letterbox all the way through my movie?”

When you export, check that the size settings are correct I assume that would be 1920×1080 and make sure you dont have the preserve aspect ratio with letterbox option checked. Normally that should be fine however it sounds like you might have some mismatched source and sequence settings there as nothing should end up being letterboxed at all.

If your settings dont match then things are slightly more complicated. So only worry about the stuff below if you do have mismatched settings.

DVCProHD is 1440×1080 or at least it is in PAL land and I assume you shot the DSLR footage in 1920×1080. So you are dealing with different source frame sizes.
But hopefully only the 2 types.

In the first instance, make sure that you create a 1920×1080 sequence. You can check that, just drop one of your DSLR shots onto that new sequence. If the settings are correct that should match exactly without the need to render or change any sizes. In any event FCP shouldl ask you if you want your sequence settings to match your clip when you put down the first shot on a new sequence – so just say yes to that question.
Then when you add the DVCProHD footage FCP will automatically resize it to 1920×1080 and everything should be fine from then on.

In terms of your existing sequence its hard to know whats happened without seeing it but I would first create a new 1920×1080 sequence. You can use the method above to do that if you wish. Once you are happy that all matches, cut and paste your existing sequence into the new one.
If your settings were incorrect the first time around you will notice that some or even all the pictures will appear the wrong size. If thats the case then its going to be a little laborious to change them all but I would do the following. Select everything right click and select remove attributes. You want to make sure that there are no distort or basic motion attributes. Then all of the DSLR footage should look correct but the DVCProHD footage will look squashed/letterboxed. You then need to add a distort to the DVCProHD footage in order to remove the letterbox. Once you are happy that is correct on one clip just copy and paste the distort attributes to all the other DVCProHD clips. You should then have a complete sequence without any distortion or letterboxing, everything looking the same size and shape.
Then I would export the sequence without using Quicktime Conversion, just a straight self contained export. You can then use Compressor or whatever your favourite tool is to create whatever files you need from that.

Sorry thats a bit long winded but that should cover all possibilities.

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

[Neil Patience]

If most of your work is DV or HDV based then you do not need to have super quick media drives, having said that USB 2 and Firewire 400 is really not fast enough for video media. Firewire 800 should suit you well, go for a 7200 RPM drive. Assuming your 200 DV tapes are an hour each on average thats around 2.5TB of space needed so you better look for at least a 3TB drive for those tapes or more if they are longer. DV or HDV is roughly 13Gigs/hour.
Outside of that a firewire 800 drive will handle HD media like ProRes LT as long as you only need a stream or two simultaneously. Anything more than that in terms of simultaneous streams or less compressed codecs and you would need to start looking at a raid set-up in order to have media drives fast enough to cope.

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

[Neil Patience]

A raid is simply a way of formatting a group ( 2 or more) of physical hard drives together so that they appear as a single logical drive. The result increases the read and or write speed and in some cases gives redundancy in the event of drive failure.
However there are several ways of creating the raid which offer different levels of speed and redundancy.
Some types of raid can be set up simply using software, ie the drive utility can create them. Others need a hardware raid card to manage the data and is probably the better option rather than a simple software controlled raid.

I am UK based and have used these guys https://www.rentaraid.co.uk the site gives you loads of options and info. I am sure you can find the same products wherever you are.

Raid 0 is the cheapest and simplest option, requires no raid card and gives read/write speed increases however beware as it offers no redundancy so if one drive fails you lose everything across them all.

Probably want to look at a Raid 1 or Raid 5 setup

Obviously if your Mac supports Thunderbolt then that is fast enough as it stands.

[Robert Floutier] “Now looking at render issues, am I right in believing that the render files are stored on a harddrive and that FCP only allows a certain amount before it gets full and slows down rendering to the point when it will not allow rendering”

Your render files are saved on the drive you assign as the scratch disk which is in the system settings. You would set your external drive or raid to be the scratch disk. Obviously you can only store media/renders to the capacity of this drive/raid. Its never a good idea to fill it totally. Try to leave at least 10% free or your system will slow down regardless of the speed of your drives/raid.

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

[Neil Patience]

I know that all DNxHD encoding and decoding in Symphony Nitris is 10 bit. I have a copy of Avid’s “Supported Formats” document which does not offer anything more than 10 bit on any format so my guess is that 10bit is the max, however that document is only up to and including V5.5
A quick look at Avid’s site does not mention 12 bit as far as I can see.

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

[Neil Patience]

I went through the same thing looking for the ability to create BluRay Disks. As Eric says DVD Studio Pro does not support BluRay so thats not an option.
Encore works very well and is fairly similar to DVD Studio Pro in terms of operation. I use a simple Samsung SE 506 portable drive which although not the fastest around works well and is not expensive to buy.
One other thing to consider in terms of keeping costs down is the Adobe Creative Cloud option which I think is about $50 per month, or the student discounts are very generous should that be applicable to you.

I have made quite a few BD now with Encore and generally found it to be pretty reliable and a good option.

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

[Neil Patience]

[Robert Floutier] “I can tell you that My media is usually on my desktop, which I have recently discovered isnt the way to go.”

I would say that drive speed is one of the more common reasons for FCP to run slowly. You should never save media to your internal OS drive as you have worked out.
You need a fast external drive, ideally 7200 rpm and as a minimum Firewire 800 connected. I say as a minimum because although Firewire 800 will handle a stream or 2 of HD that is really the limit. After that you should really be looking at a raid of some kind esata for example.
Obviously if your Mac supports Thunderbolt that will be quick enough. But always fast external storage for your media. (Or an internal additional drive or drives if your machine allows.)

Make sure you edit your footage in a suitable format, for FCP ProRes is the preferred codec. So if you shoot DSLR for instance always transcode to ProRes before you start editing. Trying to edit H264 is just going to cause you headaches.
Always make sure your sequence settings match your footage, then you should not have to render so much.

FCP7 cant use more than 4 Gigs RAM as it is a 32 bit application. it may help to have more RAM in terms of running other software but FCP itself tops out around 4 Gigs so as long as you have that as a minimum you should be fine.

Those are the basic rules, others may have more info.

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

[Neil Patience]

Good software suggestions from Rafael however just a small point, Final Cut Express does not support ProRes so you would have to go to something like the Apple Intermediate Codec instead.

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv