[Nick Meyers]

you can cheat the colour in.

make sure you have all your subtitles text generators on one track
on a track above that lay some colour.
right click on the colour, and change it;s composite mode to Travel Matte – Luma.

if you need drop shadow, then you need to create a duplicate layer of the text generator.

so in the basic form you’d have:
V1= image
V2 = text (will keep hte drop shadow)
V3 = text (will lose drop shadow, but adopt colour from V4)
V4 = colour

of course you can use the wireframe to alter the size of the subs, but if you make them too large they’ll go a bit soft.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

you cant batch modify text generators in FCP

there is an app you can use: Title Exchange Pro

or you can do a find & replace in the XML file for the attributes for colour & size.

create one subtitle the way you like it, place it in a new timeline and export an XML.
open that XML in text edit, or similar and find the appropriate attributes. (size = xx for instance)

then open the original XML in text edit, and do a find / replace. (size = xx to size = yy)

should work!

nick

[Nick Meyers]

“Or am I going about this all wrong?”

yeah, kinda… 🙂

multiclips dont hold effects through switching.
you have to add the motion effect to a clip the viewer,
or in the timeline, then copy / paste it into the browser (a new bin is useful)
then make the multiclip out of the effected clip.

then to not get a red render line, you need to switch FCP to “unlimited” RT playback.
you can do that in the small pull-down menu top left of the timeline, and in your user prefs.

you can’t ad sequences to multiclips

nick

[Nick Meyers]

Proxy really isn’t good nough for a finished product
Use LT or 422,
The more post work you want to do the more you’ll get out of the hight data rate

Btw, I’ve used neat video noise reduction plugin in FCP to clean up VHS source quite nicely.

Nick

[Nick Meyers]

no i haven’t seen that.
so are you trimming the media?

nick

[Nick Meyers]

FCPs Media Manage is not smart that way.
you would have to start over.

if you are only making a straight COPY of the media without trimming it you would be better off without using Media Mananger,
just copy it manually.

Nick

[Nick Meyers]

hi Donny.
hard to say what’s going on, it works for me.

generally when i get that in FCP, it’s a RAM issue, and i close all other sequences,
and often have to re-start FCP, sometimes the computer.

another possible problem could be if your footage is non i-frame:
what format is your footage?
when you made thew new sequence, does it match? (the fit to fill edit wont give you a prompt to match sequence to footage)

nick

[Nick Meyers]

there’s a few ways, here’s one”

export your current edit
(is your show rendered? then export a reference movie, it;s faster, and ok for what you need to do)

bring it back in,
and cut it into a timeline, but instead of a normal edit, use FIT TO FILL.

mark in & outs around the usable content of the show in the viewer,
in a new timeline, ad an in point at the beginning,
right click on the duration field of teh canvas and set it to frames,
and type 1000 into the duration,

then do a fit-to fill edit,
so you get a fairly even representation of your show in 1000 frames,

then export the timeline as an image sequence.
(export using quicktime conversion)

nick

[Nick Meyers]

well what format are yo working with, and with what sequence settings?

in general you export as self contained, using the default “same settings”
this is a clean export, not messing with the footage in any way
then you do what you need with that file.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

Tote exchange does work, and can do exactly what you need it to,
But it can take a bit of getting used to,just follow the instructions closely

Or toucan do what it does manually by ending an XML file in a text editor.
That seems trickier to me!

Nick