[Neil Sadwelkar]

I’m in PAL land too and I’ve seen sparkles and drops.

But I don’t use a Kona3 not yet. I’m glad your problem is solved by by-passing the HD-link. But I don’t think its your HD-link. Nor is it anything to do with ref. Though I’m glad all this made you get one, which is really what you should have always had.

Also, you should have tried all this with an NTSC project and an NTSC movie before surmising the ‘only-PAL’ thing.

Anyway, I’ve seen sparkles and drops in plenty of LCDs (never on CRTs) connected via DVI-D. Its a DVI-D thing. It happens with…

1. bad cables of short length.
2. average cables but of long length.
3. bad cables of long length.
4. bad connectors on LCDs.

And I’ve seen this problem on LCDs connected to…
FCP
Avid Media Composer
Discreet smoke/flame (linux and Irix)
Quantel eQ/iQ

I’ve even seen an issue where we saw sparkles only when working on a movie in Shake but that same movie lookes fine in QT player outside Shake.

It almost always goes away with either cable change, LCD change, length change, and in our case, extender change.

I saw this post only now else I’d have warned you to focus on the LCD and things near it first before changing your MacPro, Kona3, maybe even your house and car if Bob hadn’t come along.

Incidentally I work in a facility with almost a hundred Macs – FCP, Avid, Shake, PixelFarm…like quantity of PCs – Avid, 3DsMax, smoke, flame, lustre, Quantel eQ, iQ. And I’ve seen a ton of sparkles. Happens all the time.

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Just capture a small section of tape which has some definite sync – a door slamming shut, something falling etc.

See the picture and waveform in FCP and observe if they are in sync.
Preferably take a screenshot.
Go to another known good sync system. Any system even non-AJA-FCP will do,
Capture the same there and see waveform.
Preferably take a screenshot.

Compare the two. If the offset in waveform and picture is the same in both systems, then your system is good. If not, you need to forward this to AJA with details.

I’ve spent a lot many hours troubleshooting a system with ‘sync issues’ only to find that the client’s tape had dodgy sync through really bad ADR/Foley.

Alternately you can create a ‘sync test’ tape with a few minutes of black with a 1 frame pop every second or so. But don’t use your system to make this tape unless you’ve sorted your sync issues.

Neil Sadwelkar

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

You have all the clips in FCP in their native quality. What stops you from CCing them in FCP? Use Colorista, use Color, and between them there’s not much you can’t do in FCP that you can in smoke.

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I spent a month shoting the Shopping Festival in 2000. And some other events later like the Summer Surprises. Shot on DVCam. Edited at a friends place on a ‘new editing software’ the Apple dealer gave me – FCP 1.2

I’ve shot at about every mall, amusement park, and other places there. Know the city well. Can talk to Indian and Pakistani cabbies in their language.

Write me at neil@sadwelkar.com

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Maybe your best bet (within an FCP system) is to make a DVD project and build a DVD. Then with the Video_TS, you can create (maybe) a multiplexed MPEG stream.

Or, you need something like Cleaner or Episode Pro or Squeeze.

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Compressor (even in FCS 1.0) has an option to make multiplexed MPEG2 transport stream files with audio as MP2. Maybe this will work for you.

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

OK this isn’t a workaround, just a precaution.

We once had to lay-off entire film reels (22 mins or so) to tape at specific timecodes. And we need to sometimes insert from in between.
Its very vexing to lay-off a whole reel and then find one is 1 frame late and you find out only after the dump.

So what we did.

Connected the deck out (with super) to a broadcast monitor so I could see the deck TC burn-in.
Do an ETT.
Shoot the broadcast monitor screen with a handycam.

Then while the lay-off continues, we rewind the DV tape in the handycam and play it back frame by frame to check if the insert was ‘on time’.
If is was, we let it continue.
If not, cancel ETT and repeat.

This way we know within a minute or so if we are off. You can even use a MacBook Pro with its iSight.

Again, this ain’t a workaround, just means to lessen frustration.

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Open Cinema Tools. Don’t open any database.
Do a File > Open and open the file that you want to conform back to 25.
In the movie window click on the conform button.
Select 25 for the speed.
You’re done.

And yes. Make sure FCP isn’t running else the file will be in use and Cinema Tools will fail.

Neil

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I think Chris, Tom and me are agreed that PhotoShop layered files when opened in FCP 5.1.4…

1. Show up as a seq with different video tracks for layers with layer names intact
2. Change layer names to Photoshop filename if ‘Photoshop sequence’ layer clips dragged to browser.
3. Change sequence name to Photoshop filename if ‘Photoshop sequence’ layer clips double-click opened in Viewer and then edited into that new sequence.
4. Change sequence name to Photoshop filename if copied ‘Photoshop sequence’ layer clips are copied and pasted into that new sequence.

This last #4 behaviour has been fixed in FCP 6. The other two #2 #3 are still not fixed.

I’m waiting for my copy of FCS2 to check.

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

[walter biscardi] “And actually why the copy and paste at all? I keep my Photoshop Sequence open at all times, double click the layer I need into the Viewer, then edit that into my main sequence.”

Just checked. That doesn’t work in 5.1.4

Took a 4 layer PShop document. Opened it. It shows up as a timeline with 4 layers names intact.

I doubleclick a layer, (as you’d suggested) it opens in the Viewer. Viewer heading shows layer name.
I edit that into a seq called ‘test’. I get a clip called the layer name. Cool so far. And just as you’ve mentioned.

I open another layer in the viewer (by double-clicking it in the PShop sequence timeline as before and as you’d suggested). I mark in and out ad edit that into the earlier seq called ‘test’.

Now this clip takes the name of the PShop file. And further the seq name changes from ‘test’ to the PShop file name.

That is how I’m seeing it in 5.1.4. From other posts this seems to be fixed in FCP 6 but it was broken in 5.1.4.

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.