[Neil Patience]

Hi Japjeev

A blackmagic card is a video i/o card. There are also similar cards made by AJA and also interfaces like the Matrox and the Kona iO

There all broadly perform the same function which is to provide a broadcast quality video and audio input and output via standard BNC and XLR connectors.

Typically this would be used with a video monitor and also to provide signals for video scopes, deck inputs and outputs, speakers PPMs etc etc.

Some also perform SD to HD and HD to SD real time conversions.

So you need a Kona or Blackmagic card if you want to have any of that kind of monitoring or deck connection.

Obviously if you use a 5D then you are likely using log and transfer to transode your footage to ProRes rather then tape capture so card is not directly needed. However it would be useful for proper moonitoring.

You will need external drives for your media – if you try saving HD footage to your sytem drive then you will have all kinds of issues. In terms of drives USB is going to be too slow. You will have lots of problems with dropped frames.
Firewire 800 can just about manage ProRes footage but may struggle with the extra bandwidth needed for HQ, certainly more than a single stream.

You should really be looking towards a raid of some kind to give you the drive throughput needed for HD pictures.

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

[Neil Patience]

If you look at your XML file in Text Wrangler you can see the font info in the header – it says you are using Arial in your file. You can edit this to be Arial Bold.

In terms of line colour line width and line softness I have not seen these as options in the subtitles that I usually create however the Title Exchange programme does allow quite a bit of customisation of titles depending on the XML format so those options may be available there.
I usually just use it to get from FCP to DLP

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

[Neil Patience]

It sounds like perhaps your sequence settings are different to your source material.

What format/codec is your source and what kind of drives are you using for the media ?

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

[Neil Patience]

I too am not an expert in XML and I am not sure about Dreamweaver XML specifically however
whenever I have made DCP subtitle files from FCP I have used this bit of software.
It can pretty much convert any format to any format.

The temp version allows for 50 lines to be converted so you should be fine with that.

https://www.spherico.com/filmtools/TitleExchange/

You can also check the files you make in text wrangler – you can see in the header the font used, font size and if they instruction for bold is “true” etc etc

https://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/

Hope it helps you

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

[Neil Patience]

Cant quite make up my mind if the recent couple of posts pointing out the ability of FCPX to work with iMovie projects means that it is really quite useful or are just damning it with faint praise.

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

[Neil Patience]

Broadly a codec is something that encodes a data stream or signal for storage or perhaps transmission and decodes it for playback or editing.
Hence codec – coder-decoder

There are many types of codec as you will see from this list
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_codecs

However in video we only work with a more limited selection but that can still lead to issues.

Some are optimised for good quality at a high compression rate, H264 for example which is very often used for DSLR cameras as a shooting format.
However H264 is a very poor codec for editing as it is not a frame based codec and requires a lot of computing power to decode it.
So in that case the file size is made small for HD but it is not universally the best option.

So in the example of H264 you always transcode to ProRes (an Apple codec) in order to edit.
This increases the file size as ProRes is not as compressed as H264 and has a higher bitrate.
So this does indeed increase the file size but it makes editing much easier and faster in FCP.

In the case of your Z1 camera, that shoots in DV format, which is another type of cedec, and can shoot DV, DVCam and HDV.

So for HD you would choose the HDV format – this will give you the best quality of the 3 options.

FCP can edit in any of those options without having to further decode/transcode so you do not need to change the format or codec like you do in the H264 example.

So just shoot HDV and then do an Easy Set up in FCP for HDV at the same frame rate etc and you should be good to go.

Hope that helps

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

[Neil Patience]

Regardless of anything trumping anything else,

What I would like to know is what did the client manage to talk to the editor about, not for a few minutes or a few hours but “days communicating” and yet somehow the words “I cut something on iMovie can you help me” didnt come up in the conversation once – for several days ?

Based on what you have said, in my head this scenario goes:

Client:
Hi I am looking for an editor to help me with a project that I am working on, I have done some rough cuts but need some finishing – could you possibly help me ?

Editor:
Sure, love to help – what format did you shoot on and what did you use to do your rough cuts ?

Client: Oh I shot on DV, HDV, DSLR (whatever) and I have done some rough edits on iMovie but I am looking for someone finish and polish them for me.

Editor: I only work on Avid I am afraid, I could suggest some ways of getting your work into my system but I wont be able to read your project files directly.

Seriously, they communicated for days without this ever coming up once – the editor never asked and the client never mentioned formats, editing systems, project files, sequences – what the hell were they talking about ?

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

[Neil Patience]

Hi

You will not get better quality out of the 5D by using 4444 just much larger files however you may as well use 4444 as then you are working with everything being the same codec.

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

[Neil Patience]

Most people suggest that ProRes 422 is fine for 5D footage as there is no real quality advantage to be gained from using 442HQ.
Certainly 4444 is overkill and there is absolutely no need to use that.

Having said that many people use the 442LT codec as this also gives excellent results.

I prefer 442 or sometimes I use HQ if I know I am going to grade however to be honest I have yet to notice any real difference in quality between the two. I have a good amount of fibre raid storage so the file sizes are usually not too much of an issue.

H264 is a compressed intraframe format designed to give a high quality image at a low bitrate. As such it is great for shooting and distribution but a very poor choice for editing.

In transcoding to a frame based codec like ProRes, ideal for editing, you are increasing the bitrate and using a less compressed format so the file size increases accordingly.

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

[Neil Patience]

I upgraded to FCP 7 from Final Cut Pro 4 so I would say you will be fine since you have a full version of FCP 5.

What may prove harder is finding an upgrade version to buy. I am pretty sure they are no longer available from Apple but they do come up on eBay etc from time to time.

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