[Paul Dickin]

Hi
What’s the news on Son-of-Shake? Isn’t that supposed to ship 2008…

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
In my experience (somewhat limited. thankfully, and not with ProRes) , one cause of this is using source clips with either a dodgy frame rate, or with ‘long’ frames – which cause the frame rate not to be bang on.
The cure in my situation has been to ‘fix’ the frame rate of the affected clips, by conforming them to a stable frame rate, them reimporting them to the project, whereupon the problem has disappeared.

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
I worked with an ex-Avid editor who turned a simple 10MB project into a 200MB unwieldy frankenstein’s monster after a couple of weeks of editing because he didn’t know what he was doing.

FCP can have multiple projects open at the same time, with multiple timeline sequences in each project, so it is never necessary to suffer from project bloat once you understand how to manage your assets in an efficient way.

Having multiple nested sequences recursively intercut into each other was my ex-Avid editor’s downfall – none of that is necessary….

That’s why Shane wrote his project management guide:
https://training.creativecow.net/dvd_store/get_organized_fcp/get_organized_fcp.html

I work with thousands of source clips on my hard drives, but my editing projects are kept simple by managing their complexity, and I then simplify a new final output project, before adding complex layered graphics or Motion/Soundtrack Pro shared round-tripping.

That’s my (very stable and for me, efficient) workflow, but there are probably as many differing workflows as there are FCP editors 😉

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
As another PAL-land UK mainly-DV editor, working full time, sometimes in London, my answer to your stability question is:
Last crash – about a month ago.
Last crash that involved more than just an application reboot (ie some serious file-level troubleshooting) – when I took over someone else’s project in late 2005…
Last crash involving hardware maintenance – 2003 (the Mac’s FireWire channel failled, and a motherboard reset-button had to be actuated).
Last total computer failure – late 1997, on a two year old PowerMac 8100, fixed by a replacement motherboard.

For all the reason’s Walter oultines I don’t run the latest hardware or software revision, so I’m still using a G5 and FCP 5.1.4, because I share projects with other users – and we’re all waiting for an inter-project moment to upgrade…..

But I push my Mac very hard, editing in DV format until the final graphics/colour-grade session at a less compressed format before output to DigiBeta (using an AJA Io).

Currently I have 21 hard drives @ 7.5TB permenantly connected, with 16 of those in removable caddies to swap the drives as my projects require (and to hold backups). There are 15 SATA channels, 6 FW 800, and the rest daisy-chained FW400.
All this massive excressence of hardware purrs along day-in-day-out, for years-at-a-time…. Touch wood, but I don’t run RAID 0, as I’ve been burned by that in the old SCSI days…. 😉

Also, working with DV files, at that low data-rate, the drives can be a lot fuller without there being problems, so some get filled beyong 90% at times without causing problems. I move stuff around later to keep the space up, but it doesn’t ever cause problems.

If I had a Windows computer drive names C:-Z: wouldn’t be enough….. 🙂

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
The newsreel footage is hopefully coming from the original 35mm.
If it has recently telecined, to DigiBeta or Betacam SP tape, then a dub off that is the best possible source.
If it was telecined a long time ago, originally onto 2″ or 1″ videotape, or worst of all 3/4″ U-matic, then you will get a vastly improved results with a new telecine from the archived film, as long as it hasn’t degraded.

Even if it was originally telecined to a high standard, beware taking a copy off the edited master if that was on-line edited on an Avid system in the late 1990s/early 2000s, as I find there to be a significant loss of quality from such masters, and the original telecined Beta SP tape will usually be better.

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Shoot some B-roll BCUs of fancy candles burning, capture into the project and cut a few into the timeline, then white balance the night-shoot footage to the same candle-flame glow. Colour correct the mid-tones of the night-shoot shots to be the same gloden glow…

I cut an hours worth of wedding speeches shot by one of the guests in a restaurant like this – and the client was very happy. 😉

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Which surely then doesn’t follow this advice from that link:
To achieve optimal performance when running Final Cut Studio applications, memory DIMM pairs should be installed evenly on both risers.
Does it make a difference?

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Here’s a plug-in that deals with doing this correctly:
https://www.digital-heaven.co.uk/fcplugins/dh_legaltext.php

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
As I explained my workaround involves using the razor tool rather than the pen tool, which I very rarely use.

But I would think that the Paste Attributes option could be used to paste a whole clips worth of pen-tool keyframes into a new relative position, by temporarily changing the clips in-point before doing the paste, then resetting it..

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Your question doesn’t make immediate sense to me, so is unanswerable ;-(
Since FCP has no facility to ‘tweak’ levels of the timeline audio tracks independently of the clips thereupon, if you slide the clips forward/back in time then the level tweaks remain attached, and slide accordingly.

If you wish to apply an overall level alteration to all the clips on a particular track, you can easily do this by selecting all that track (T on the keyboard) then using Modify Menu>Audio>Gain+

If you mean you want to move a V/O track whilst keeping a music track locked in place, then the easiest way to slide the level dips behind the V/O around is to use the razor tool on the music track, then use Modify>Audio>Gain- to lower the music level behind the V/O. Put a cross dissolve transition at each music track level change.

This is very quick to do, as it can all be done from the keyboard, and the level change cross dissolves can be slid around as required, to remain in sync with the V/O sections.