[Paul Escandon]

Yes – it is normal – especially if you’re analyzing a clip that is long in legth. Optical flow analysis takes an incredible amount of disk space at times – and you really need to have a lot to even be able to think about doing optical flow retiming.

Optical flow does blow away time remapping in Final Cut – so if you can do it, don’t mind waiting, and have the disk space then it definitely is worth it. The workflow is pretty simple – from final cut right click a clip and send to motion – from there you can set the optical flow parameters and I’m sure you’re familiar with them since you’ve already done them…

BTW, you can set the cache directory that motion uses to store optical flow data in the motion 3 preferences. It’s possible you may have large files there that you don’t need and can delete. Again, these take up a lot of space.

* * *
Paul Escandon
Producer | Director | Editor
Apple Certified Trainer – Final Cut Pro
Oremus Productions
http://www.oremusproductions.com
– –
Adjunct Professor of Media
John Paul the Great Catholic University

[Paul Escandon]

I did a quick google for the capture card that you used and found this on an old Apple Mailing list:

https://lists.apple.com/archives/quicktime-talk/2001/Feb/msg00482.html

While that is old – it does sound like the AVI that was created might be dependent on the card that captured it or at least on a system with similar drivers installed. You may have no luck no matter what you do – especially since you’ve already tried Perian.

* * *
Paul Escandon
Producer | Director | Editor
Apple Certified Trainer – Final Cut Pro
Oremus Productions
http://www.oremusproductions.com
– –
Adjunct Professor of Media
John Paul the Great Catholic University

[Paul Escandon]

So..

When you drop the file in the native 1080i timeline, does it want to render the clip? It should play with no rendering necessary right? Is the render bar gray? Or is it something else like a light green?

Also, can you get the image to fill the frame with tweaking the aspect ratio slider? Or is it not possible to get it to cleanly fill the frame? Also, you did say the scale is 100% right?

This is a weird issue and I’m not sure exactly what’s going on here.

* * *
Paul Escandon
Producer | Director | Editor
Apple Certified Trainer – Final Cut Pro
Oremus Productions
http://www.oremusproductions.com
– –
Adjunct Professor of Media
John Paul the Great Catholic University

[Paul Escandon]

So are you positive that there is no letterboxing that was somehow baked into the frame on acquisition? I don’t know enough about that camera specifically to know if that’s even possible when shooting HD.

Final Cut should not automatically adjust parameters of the clip if the sequence matches the settings of the clip (or in the case where it auto conforms the timeline when you place the first clip in it).

Double click the clip on the timeline that has the letterboxing problem and check the motion tab. Has final cut adjusted the scale of the clip (something other than 100) or the distort or crop parameters at all? Let me know what you see there.

* * *
Paul Escandon
Producer | Director | Editor
Apple Certified Trainer – Final Cut Pro
Oremus Productions
http://www.oremusproductions.com
– –
Adjunct Professor of Media
John Paul the Great Catholic University

[Paul Escandon]

Okay – your sequence settings sound right…

What is the frame size that Final Cut is showing in the browser for the HVX200 clips in question? Does it match exactly that same frame size that the sequence setting was set to?

* * *
Paul Escandon
Producer | Director | Editor
Apple Certified Trainer – Final Cut Pro
Oremus Productions
http://www.oremusproductions.com
– –
Adjunct Professor of Media
John Paul the Great Catholic University

[Paul Escandon]

So are you applying the quicktime flip script that I provided before starting the compressor pulldown removal workflow for your HV20 clips and when compressor is finished the ProRes422 files are right-side-up? That’s great if so – I didn’t even think about doing it first, then compressor last.

If it takes longer I guess that is the only draw back… how much longer are we talking?

Peace!

* * *
Paul Escandon
Producer | Director | Editor
Apple Certified Trainer – Final Cut Pro
Oremus Productions
http://www.oremusproductions.com
– –
Adjunct Professor of Media
John Paul the Great Catholic University

[Paul Escandon]

Can you post exactly what your sequence settings are so that we can see if the problem is there? Are you using the easy setups for DVCPRO HD 1080i?

* * *
Paul Escandon
Producer | Director | Editor
Apple Certified Trainer – Final Cut Pro
Oremus Productions
http://www.oremusproductions.com
– –
Adjunct Professor of Media
John Paul the Great Catholic University

[Paul Escandon]

It only is a matter of time before they put a next generation optical drive in their computers… now seems to be as good as time as any. They’re already readily available on the secondary market. So, why not? If this turns out to not be true I won’t be losing any sleep over it. In fact, I’d almost rather they not update the Mac Pro as I just bought one last month. :]

* * *
Paul Escandon
Producer | Director | Editor
Apple Certified Trainer – Final Cut Pro
Oremus Productions
http://www.oremusproductions.com
– –
Adjunct Professor of Media
John Paul the Great Catholic University

[Paul Escandon]

Wow – I finally was able to load it and noticed something – I used JUSTICE too for the background music for my new demo reel (www.oremusproductions.com). Their music is so perfectly fitting for cutting end demo reels.

Oh, and I think the work is solid. I like how the vignette wipes on during the wide shot for the gun battle.

* * *
Paul Escandon
Producer | Director | Editor
Apple Certified Trainer – Final Cut Pro
Oremus Productions
http://www.oremusproductions.com
– –
Adjunct Professor of Media
John Paul the Great Catholic University

[Paul Escandon]

Maybe they’ll take the time to announce that they’re finally going to start looking into the media manager bugs that have been documented and complained about for years that have never been addressed…

Wait, let me stop dreaming…

* * *
Paul Escandon
Producer | Director | Editor
Apple Certified Trainer – Final Cut Pro
Oremus Productions
http://www.oremusproductions.com
– –
Adjunct Professor of Media
John Paul the Great Catholic University