[Neil Sadwelkar]

I have simple picture manipulation needs within FCP. For what I need to do, I figured Photoshop was a bit of overkill. I tried Gimp and Cinepaint, but both were a bit clunky.

I went out and bought Pixelmator at a promo for $ 30 or something like that. It is great and does all I need to do.

I also use Keynote and Pages to create graphics from various image sources. Honest! Both Keynote and Pages have a fantastic keyer to get rid of coloured backgrounds, and can make great text, shapes, shadows. Even a bit of CC on images.

Also explore Motion to do image manipulation. For that matter, FCP’s own layering and compositing abilities are handy too.

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

[Neil Sadwelkar]

[Michael Harrington] “I’ve been on FCP for 7 years now and must of been pretty lucky with past systems and problems cause I’m still learning about things like this.”

WOW! 7 years and no Kernel Panic! You have been incredibly lucky. Not that kernel panic is a common thing. But this goes to show how rare it actually is.

Incidentally kernel panic is similar to what Windows users call Blue Screen Of Death or BSOD. I don’t think there is a Windows user who has spent 7 years on Windows without knowing what a BSOD is.

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

[Neil Sadwelkar]

This precisely my experience as well. I too began with a plan of 4 FCP suites with 2 UC capable. This has now grown to 12 suites with some being Avids. We use a mix of direct attached and AFP sharing to get around having a central shared storage.

Also, we have this requirement spring up from time to time with clients who actually want the system to be disconnected from any other. Like feature film clients. Here DAS helps.

SAN is great to have, and people like Jordan, Matt and Bob are very knowledgeable and can help you set it up right. But sometimes it can be overkill. if the ‘S’ in SAN is an occasional requirement.

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

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I think I’ve been through this before in a previous version where the difference was more stark.

Can you possibly make a 1 frame QT movie of the original and a one frame QT movie of the same frame that you got back? I could maybe make a match and send you the sequence. Then you can just apply that filter to the other clips.
You’ll have to do this from within QT player, don’t use FCP for export. And don’t export as image.

If its possible let me know, we can work out how to get the files across.

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

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Bouke and Andreas have rather good tools for subtitling. And these have less limitations than FCPs title tool.

But my suggestion of making subtitles in FCP was based on the premise that the editor has to make them. So what better way than to make them in a software you’re familiar with. Also, in a long feature situation where edits are fluid, if you make the subtitles during the edit process, they are fluid as well and keep updating with the edit.

Subtitling outside FCP is valuable to outsource the job, but it necessarily requires that you export the final edit and take it to a different subtitling software. If there are edit changes, you have to necessarily do the export process again.

I agree that STL subtitles in DVD Studio Pro suck. But I’ve observed that this is DVD player dependent too. Some of the newer DVD players rander subtitles quite well.

The suggestion of burning in subtitles and then making two tracks in DVDSP one with and one without subtitles is also great. But it has two problems. What if one has more than one languages. And what if one has a long film.

I’m from that part of the wold where movies run up to 3 hrs long, and have subtitles in at least 6 languages. So, for us, text subtitles is the only way to go.

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

[Neil Sadwelkar]

What if you converted the wav to aif before importing it into FCP and using it in your timeline?
And,24vs 25 is not a small difference. Its 10 frames after 10 sec.
A 15 min timeline would be about 36 sec off (in duration) if there was a 24 vs 25 difference.

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

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Simply make your subtitles within FCP. Then export the sequence as XML. And get Title Exchange Pro from https://www.spherico.com/filmtools/TitleExchange/index.html

With that you can import XML and export STL which you can import into DVD Studio Pro. Within DVD Studio Pro you can still edit, shift, trim your subtitles.

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

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I’ve seen this too. Not in all, but some FCP systems. Even FCS 2 systems.

I have two MacPros both still FCS 2. In one, I can open MPEG-2/VOBs with MPEGStreamclip, in the other, I can’t. In the one I can, the entire OS and FCS was freshly installed recently. In the one that I can’t and which shows this warning, the system has been upgraded over the original.

The one with the ‘DVD-capable’ MPEG Streamclip is a MacPro Quad-core OSX 10.5.6, QT 7.6.2
The one with the ‘DVD-impaired’ MPEG Streamclip is a MacPro 8-core OSX 10.5.7, QT 7.6.2

So there’s possibly one combination of OS and QT updates or the order of installing a QT version before/after FCS that breaks MPEG Streamclip’s ability to open MPEG-2.

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

[Neil Sadwelkar]

In some FCP systems, FCP 6.0.x with QT 7.6.x, I’ve noticed MPEGStreamclip doesn’t open VOB or MPEG files saying the MPEG-2 component needs updating. The link given takes you to Apple store to buy the MPEG component for $ 20. The link it takes you to is
https://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/faq.html

This doesn’t happen on all systems.

Does anyone have a workaround to this – other than buying the component? And, after buying the component, does MPEGStreamclip work?

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

[Neil Sadwelkar]

AVCHD’s biggest problem is after encoding it becomes huge. Like 100 Gb AVCHD could be anything between 600 Gb to 1 Tb after Log and transfer.

What I’d do is slightly longer but could save space.

Do a log and transfer.
Take the ProRes captures into Compressor
Compress them into HDV

Use that for edit.

Not sure what it does to the quality, but you could try a small clip and check.

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