[Neil Sadwelkar]

I’ve found, especially for material shot on DV or HDV, converting the clip to Uncompressed RGB and then playing with the keys makes a noticeable difference in the edges.

The decompression reduces some of the blocking artifacts. This way you can improve your chances of getting a good key.

But in general there’s no ‘magic bullet’ keyer. If you’re planning on doing a lot of keying, and its a good paying job, aim to get Ultimatte. After that I would rate DV Matte Pro. That’s of course, if the FCP’s keyer, Motion’s Primatte doesn’t do it for you.

Finding a good Shake or Nuke artist who will take your shots, key them in Shake or Nuke and send them back is also a great alternative.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I’ve done this for an archive that had a hundred plus VHS tapes shot between 1983-1993 or so.

I transferred all the tapes to DV using a Sony camcorder. Some of these small camcorders have a good ‘frame synchroniser’ at their analog input. I experimented with a ForA TBC also, but found the camcorder to work just as well.

After transferring to DV, I captured to FCP over Firwwire and then did the entire thing of ‘chapterising’ it and making DVDs.

This was in 2002. The transfer to another tape was as a safety measure. The hard drives I had used then were small 60-120 Gb drives, most of them long gone. The DV tapes should be good for capture for another 10 years at least. Provided there is a DV player available in 2020.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Also ensure the tape was actually shot HDV not DV.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Gary,

This isn’t relevant to the present discussion of ProRes, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.

At the bottom of your mail there’s link called

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/adcock_gary/AJAIOHD.php

This takes you to this page…

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/Inside%20look%20at%20the%20IoHD

Which says the post has been deactivated.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I’ve temporarily given up using LnT for Red files ingest. I’ve seen the exact same issue as you are with partial files. Further, some files which get an exclamation mark during ingest, when retried, get dupes with a ‘1’ or a ‘2’ or later numbers suffixed. So you have multiple copies of the same clip but with varying lengths.

By the way, the exact same clips that abort with LnT convert just fine with Red Rushes, Red alert, or even Clipfinder.

And finally, LnT sets reel name to folder name which is not consistent with Red Alert or Red Rushes converts.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Its been a while since I did P2, but I believe it always shoots 60i but flags the 24 usable frames which you need to extract with the frame rate converter.

You need to run the footage through the Frame Rate converter in the Tools menu.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

As a further safeguard, we often take a master and then play it out to a DVD recorder with BITC. That way we have an unalterable copy of what was delivered which we can run back and check.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I too had this disdain for USB as a media drive. Depending on your needs, it might be a good choice.

For a feature I had to edit on the field at DV-PAL resolution. I had rushes of about 10 hours and an edited timeline of about 2 hrs+. Sound was dual-system, so it came off BWF files.

I did the entire edit over a few months on my MBP connected to a bus-powered WD Passport drive (250 Gb) connected via USB. I could even have an end-to end presentation of the final edit off this single drive. And all the rushes were captured to this very same drive off a DV deck connected over Firewire.

Like I mentioned, all this was DV-PAL. If your needs are ProRes, or ProRes at HD res., then USB may have a problem delivering it cleanly.

If you want to consider GigE then consider iSCSI or AoE.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Color cannot do log to lin conversions from Quicktime media (AFAIK). It does log to lin only with DPX log files.
But if your purpose is only for reference, there is a way to do a ‘poor man’s’ log to lin conversion using the ‘Levels’ filter in FCP. If you can send me one frame of your movie, I could tweak it to make a filter and send it over to you.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Title Exchange Pro, is probably the fastest (and only?) method of cleanly passing FCP subtitles to DVD Studio Pro. But it costs Eu 185. Which is money well spent, I might add.

However, if you absolutely cannot afford that, then the best way is to take your movie into DVDStudio pro and create subtitles afresh there. Of course, in your case, you’ve already spent time making the subtitles in FCP, so I guess, the the only way out is for you is to get TEP.

Or, and I can’t get the name, but there is some utility that works on the web where you can send in an XML and you get other formats.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India