[Nick Price]

thanks shane, I should have said that this is just theoretical. Unlimited funds are not available unfortunately.

I know that everyone has their workflows, and i am not looking to profit from someone elses work. It is more just knowing what is out there.

I dont remember this being covered on this forum (i will of course be proved wrong) and i think people would like to have some idea of high end .

I also make a living sharing my experience, and I have offered and taken help from this forum for 5 years. We have all been given help down the years and I cant believe that sharing your “secret workflows” will put you out of business.

best wishes
NIck

[Nick Price]

I would agree with Brett, it seems a little crazy saving your project, autosave projects and media all on the same drive. If it dies, you lose everything!

If you keep your projects and media on separate drives, then when one goes you can at least either drag the media into a new project and you have all of your logging (and your timelines via the autosave folder), or if your media drive goes you can just recapture using your project.

I partition my main drive into a system partition and a projects partition. Any project file of any sort is on that drive, organised by software/client/job.

Of course the beauty of FCP is that you can do what you like, there is always another way.
best wishes
Nick

[Nick Price]

Do you have any other hardware, like video cards or a firewire video box. Blackmagic cards are know to slow down systems periodically.

Also if your timeline isnt rendering, you might not have the render settings enabled properly. Go to sequence menu, and make sure the right colours are ticked for what you want to render.

Having lots of sequences open will slow you down, but of course you might have very good reasons to have so many open. I often need 5 or more open if i am copy/pasting between them. It is one of my favourite features of FCP over Avid

best wishes
nick

[Nick Price]

Hi Rafael,
To get the right aspect ratio, the shot needs to have the distort/aspect set at 33.33, and needs to be scaled to 133, of course that will crop off the top and bottom. Whether FCP does this or not, that is what needs to happen. If you know another magic way to stretch the picture without the people in it looking short and fat please let me know
regards
nick

[Nick Price]

Thanks for your thoughts Andy.

Rafael, thanks for your tips, although i would have to disagree with your cropping suggestion. That would make a 16:9 letterbox rather than 16:9 anamorphic version, sorry i probably should have stated that i wanted it all anamorphic. I will have a look at Lanczos (great name!), and try the 32bit motion version.
thanks guys
nick

[Nick Price]

Hi Dave,
not wishing to be cynical, but I imagine those apple folks thought they would sell more products with 2 apps rather than one, even if they did the same thing. Or course motion has lots of features that FCP doesnt have, but i bet a lot of the processing is based on the same code.

Basically i would like to know if someone has seen a difference. I have tried here but dont have a decent monitor to check. For what is worth i think FCP does a better job…..

I hope it’s not a case of the emperors new clothes.

thanks
NIck
Mac Pro
FCP 6.0.5
AJA IO
London, UK

[Nick Price]

Hi Doug,
I agree, ToD TCode is really annoying. If you are hiring 2 decks i would create an entirely new digital master with continuous timecode, and use that for the rest of the project, no more TC breaks…..although only if you have 1 or 2 tapes…..any more and you might go a little mad.
best wishes
nick

[Nick Price]

HI Sacha,
that seems pretty sensible. An edl should work fine if you havent got too many effect, just cuts. Or yu can use Automatic Duck if you have a more complicated sequence.

YOu could online in FCP of course…

best wishes
NIck

[Nick Price]

Hi Elijah,
Obviously something a little strange going on here.

Firstly the shift fields: DV is lower field, HDV is upper, so an HDV clip in a DV timeline must have the filter on. If FCP isnt putting the filter on, for whatever reason, then you must. You might not see a difference on very shot, it is more noticeable with images with movement in, and it must be on an external monitor. Viewing through your camera onto a TV should show the difference, but as it is HDV not sure how the camera would handle it.

I agree with Lee that exporting an HDV film and using compressor is a better option than using FCP to downscale, but with a mixed media timeline that might become awkward, but it still could still could be achieved. Or you can go onto render settings on your timeline (apple+0) and change render to ProRes. That will be the best quality. Export that (it will be a big file) and then use compressor to convert to DV.

I would also open a brand new DV sequence, import an HDV clip into and see what FCP is doing to it. It might be that your current sequence has some glitches and is applying the wrong settings. That way when you know what each clip ‘should’ be you can copy and paste those onto the rest of your HDV clips.

For what its worth, here in the UK when I drag an HDV clip (1440×1080, PAL) onto a DV timeline (720×576) the changes are:
Filters: Shift Fields (+1)
Motion Tab/Scale: 53.33
Distort/Aspect Ratio: 6.67
But these might not apply to you. I would try and get one clip working fine and apply that to all the others, although check in the browser that they have been captured the same way!

Also check:
that you are viewing the image the correct size in the canvas, press Shift+z to fit to window
that what you are looking is rendered, light blue line above the timeline, not green/red/orange

hope you can fix it
best wishes
Nick Price

[Nick Price]

Hi there,
we used to use lacies, but the ones without the fans fried themselves, so we changed to Graid. Bix expensive though, so now I am using 6 iomega ultramax, 640gb & 1tb versions. They are Rock solid with constant use. i did die but Iomega offered an instant replacement, good customers service!

best
nick