[Nick Meyers]

“I still don´t understand how to be sure if my footage is Ntsc or Pal. How could I do that?”

your footage is not PAL, it is not NTSC.
they are Standard Def, your footage is HD

“in FInal Cut´s Easy Setup now I have it on Ntsc and I am not sure if Is correct, and in case if not, if it could affect the footage.”

yes, well that could happen.
the easy set up is not the real issue, it’s the sequence settings.
you could wind up putting your HD footage into an NTSC sequence, and losing quality

under the Final Cut Pro Menu, click on Audio Video settings
when they open, go to the sequence presets tab.
you need to pick one that matches your clip.

right click on one of your clips, and chose item properties
look at your clip’s properties, and make suer they match.

when you select a sequence, you have to click to the right of the name,
it has to be ticked, or it isn’t selected.

now, you could not do this, and just edit one clip into a new sequence,
you will get a window asking if you want your sequence to match your clip.
on the whole this method works
BUT
down the track, if you copy and paste an edit from one sequence into another,
it could happen that you DONT get that window, and you’ll wind up pasting into a wrong sequence, and losing quality.

if you always rememberer to put just one clip into a new sequence first, and saying “yes” you want them to match it’l be ok.
or you could do it right, and chose the correct sequence preset.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

“Does the fact that my settings say the aspect ratio is HDTV 1080i mean that my video is interlaced?”

no, Field Dominance = Upper tells you that your SEQUENCE is interlaced
Field Dominance not set to “None” would be progressive

“I used a Canon DSLR camera to shoot my video, which I believe is progressive”

look at the the properties of your clips,
or look in the browser for the Field Dominance column.

you could have a progressive clip in an interlaced sequence,
for the most part it would not be noticeable, BUT any motion effects or transitions would give it away.
their motion would be interlaced, which would look odd when viewed on a (Progressive) computer screen.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

“1) open Render Manager
2) delete all renders in your project
3) re-render the entire sequence”

sounds like overkill to me.
simply re-rendering that effect would give the same result.

at least copy and paste that section into a new sequence before you do a total re-render.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

Field Dominance = Upper

yep interlaced.
an interlaced slide transition will not look good when viewed on a computer screen.
although what you describe sounds weirder than field combing.
hard to say without seeing what you’re seeing.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

it’s anamorphic.
in the log & capture window there’s a button for it somewhere (been a long time since i used SD tape)
this tells the footage how to behave in FCP, and it will display in correctly in the viewer.
if you’ve captured it already, you need to find the anamorphic column in the browser.
select the clips, and right click in the anamorphic column and chose “yes”
doing it in the Log & Capture window is better
you need to choose one of the anamorphic sequence pre-sets, too, then your canvas will display correctly.

BUT
while the clips will now look right in FCP, the files will still look squished in the finder,
and you will need to set your external monitor to the correct zoom settings.
exports can also apear squished.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

my guess your sequence is interlaced.

[Nick Meyers]

“The problem is I can’t actually select the color range with the eyedropper because FCP automatically unchecks the chroma box”

thats different behaviour to what i get,
for me FCP selects a completely different colour to what i pick
just now i got a pure red, clicking on a blue sky!
maybe it;s always red, i cant remember other than it doesn’t work

“Is the key icon the, uh, “key” to solving this? Is that what you’re saying?”

no the key button is useful when you manually find the colour
using the colour controls, plus luma and sat controls in the limit effect area.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

well there you go…

selecting colours manually it can help to switch the view to just the key
that’s a key icon on the right of the limit effect area.
it’s got 3 modes:
final view
key
no effect (i think)

nck

[Nick Meyers]

im having similar issues.

im runing FCP7 on Yosemite, and i’m pretty sure it;s because of that.
never had this behaviour before.

i just have to find the colour myself!

nick

[Nick Meyers]

those sequence settings are correct, so you shouldn’t be having any weirdness when you export,
maybe you did something odd with your previous export?

try a simple test export or a second or so of the timeline (use in and out points)
with your export DONT change any of the settings,
leave it at the default “same strings” or “Current settings” (Cant remember which one it is)

see how it looks.

how does it look in the canvas, by the way?
the same as the viewer?

nick