[Paul Escandon]

Hi everyone

I just wanted to throw in my 2 cents. I found this thread because I was having a similar problem to the original poster’s first problem. I just hooked up a set of high-def hardware scopes to my video output and that’s when I noticed that the parked image was noticably darker in some areas and it was very noticable when reading the hardware vectorscope (FCP’s vectorscope didn’t pick up on this). I’m using 5.1.2, with a G5 and Kona 2 setup..

And in my situation, TURNING OFF the excess range check solved the problem, as one poster has suggested.

Just wanted to let people know that that worked for me.

[Paul Escandon]

Exactly… do an output of the file after stripping the pulldown and conform to your desired rate in Cinema Tools.

—
Paul Escandon

High-Def Editor and Motion Graphics Artist
Outdoor Channel

[Paul Escandon]

You can also use Cinema Tools to have more advanced options of removing pulldown and replacing the pulldown. The Cinema Tools Help, starting at or aroung page 209 provides a lot of details on the process.

Paul
Oremus Productions
http://www.oremusproductions.com

—
Paul Escandon

High-Def Editor and Motion Graphics Artist
Outdoor Channel

[Paul Escandon]

It’s not a bad camera, but I am more partial to the previous model, the HC1. It’s too bad that they dropped the zoom/focus ring on the HC3 and generally dumbed it down. I’m sure it still shoots beautifully though.

— Paul Escandon
High-Def Editor and Motion Graphics Artist
The Outdoor Channel

—
Paul Escandon

High-Def Editor and Motion Graphics Artist
Outdoor Channel

[Paul Escandon]

This usually is an easy fix – you just have to find the right setting in final cut to “unsquish” your footage. I am guessing that in AE you created a square pixel 1920×1080 image? If that is the came, then I have noticed that sometimes final cut tries to make up for this by tweaking a setting when you bring the clip into the timeline… set it always seems to get this wrong.

Do this:

1. put your AE clip in the sequence (looks squished)
2. double click the clip and select the motion tab
3. look at the distort parameter – what does it say? is it 0? if so, tweak it until it looks correct. if its not 0, set it to 0 and see if that helps.

hopefully that tweak in final cut fixes the problem. i guess worse case scenario is you can re-render with changed settings, but i don’t think you should have to. let me know if that helps. peace.

— Paul Escandon
High-Def Editor and Motion Graphics Artist
The Outdoor Channel

[Paul Escandon]

Hi there,

I do a lot of after effects gfx work composited onto 1080/60i HDCAM footage and I always use 1920×1080 square pixel compositions and they match up perfectly. I always render out lossless animation and let the compositing program or final cut do the rendering of the piece. I have yet to use XDCam and I’m not sure what the standard pixel size is for the format. Hopefully it would match up well with HDCam footage and the same setting would suffice…

But I’m actually curious now that you bring this up. I’m wondering if you start editing a project (say… final cut pro) what the sequence setting needs to be for XDCam footage to play natively (no rendering). I wondering if both HDCam and XDCam footage can play on the same timeline without the need to render one or the other into the sequences format of choice. Maybe you can give some thoughts on this once you’ve completed your project.

Well, hope this helps. Peace.

-Paul Escandon
High-Def Editor and Motion Graphics Artist
The Outdoor Channel