[Paulo Jan]

Nope. Avid on a PC can import Quicktimes perfectly, and Premiere can also edit Quicktimes. If what you’re digitizing are simple MiniDV tapes, then there shouldn’t be a problem (another thing would be if you had Quicktime files with a codec that wasn’t available on PC, like DVCPRO HD).

[Paulo Jan]

Since this is a laptop, check just in case whether some power-saving/sleep feature is enabled. Also, this sounds silly, since AFAIK Final Cut doesn’t use the GPU for rendering, but perhaps you could check whether it’s using the integrated GeForce graphics chip or the discrete one (the good one, but also the one that sucks more power). These are just shots in the dark, BTW; I don’t know whether they will help, but just in case…

[Paulo Jan]

Thanks a lot for your response. Well, in case anyone cares, I finally had a look at the camera, and everything seemed to work as advertised… but its appearance wasn’t too good. The screen seemed to have most of its protective cover scratched, and the paint was worn in some parts of the body, so the point that you could see the metal beneath it. So we decided to return it and exchange it for a new camera, not so much because it didn’t work, but because the dealer had misrepresented to us the kind of 2nd-hand camera he was selling (this one had clearly more than 3 weeks of use).

One thing I noted: after shooting some stuff in a card and opening it in Final Cut 6, I noted that the “Device model name” column in “Log & Transfer” said “HVX-200E”, despite the fact that the label on the camera said clearly HVX-201. Is this normal?

[Paulo Jan]

Thanks for your advice. The dealer in question looked legitimate, as I said, and they told us that the camera would be used first in a shoot. What we are thinking is that they haven’t told us the full story about the kind of shoot(s) it was.

To be specific, my question is: what kind of tests can we perform to make sure that the camera is okay? The obvious ones I’ve thought of include: checking it for obvious physical damage, taking it out and shoot some stuff to see if focus/iris/zoom controls respond well and whether the autofocus and exposure work correctly, as well as white balance outdoors and indoors. Also, test whether built-in microphones are working, whether the audio input levels are correct, whether the tape mechanism works, whether it can read/write P2 cards correctly, connect it to a computer through the FW port to see if it works…

The above is what I’ve thought of so far. What concerns me are more subtle things, the kind you can’t discover in the tests I’ve already mentioned. What specifically? Well, I don’t know… I don’t have anything special in mind, which is why I posted asking for ideas from people who might know more than I.

[Paulo Jan]

I know I could do it with Levels, or Hue/Saturation, but I’m just looking for a way to avoid having to “eyeball” it. Instead of going around adjusting manually the three channels until it looks right, I’d like to have a tool that allowed me to say “this part of the image is white”, and adjust the rest of the colors (more or less) automatically. Kinda like the eyedropper in FCP’s 3-way corrector.

[Paulo Jan]

You are using QT Player to view the Quicktime file, I presume? Have you tried checking the “High quality” checkbox in QT Player’s preferences? (“Show movie properties” / pick the video track / “Visual adjustments”: there you’ll find the checkbox)*

[*] These names might not be verbatim, I’m on a non-English Mac.

[Paulo Jan]

Okay, here it goes.

I’m trying to do basically the typewriter effect that I mentioned in my post below: the letters in a text layer appear one by one, and when it reaches an end of line, the text scrolls one line upwards. “Animator 1” and “Range Selector 1” are the animators that I’m using to control the visibility of the letters: the “start” property of the range selector increases through the animation, so that more and more letters are visible in each frame, etc., etc.

Now, my problem is that the scrolling doesn’t always happen exactly when an end-of-line is reached; sometimes there’s a delay of 2 or 3 letters until the text scrolls, and the drift gets more pronounced as you advance through the animation. That’s why I’m trying to view the amount of line breaks that the expressions “sees” in a given moment (stored in “contador”), by printing it in a different text layer called “Monitor”… but it doesn’t work.

contador=0;
currentLetter = Math.ceil(text.animator(“Animator 1”).selector(“Range Selector 1”).start);
for (i=0 ; i < currentLetter; i++) { temp2 = text.sourceText.charAt(i); if (temp2 == '\\r') { contador++; } } thisComp.layer("Monitor").text.sourceText=contador; [position[0], position[1] - (48 * contador)]; (BTW, I know that in line 5 I should be comparing the letter with "backslash r"; this forum seems to strip single backslashes, and if I put double backslashes, it prints both of them). Paulo.

[Paulo Jan]

Search in this forum. You need to install a new version of the drivers to mount cards bigger than 8Gb.

[Paulo Jan]

Thanks for your answer. The thing is… none of the effects are promoted to 3D, and promoting them makes no difference.

I know about AE, but the Avid->AE->Avid workflow is kind of a pain, and my friend doesn’t have Automatic Duck.

[Paulo Jan]

We’re delivering a DVCPRO interlaced tape (made, of course, from a progressive source). And yes, wow. I didn’t think I was going to start such a discussion…

I take Walter’s point about requesting the network’s guidelines before starting work, but I don’t know if it would have been helped. After all, they would probably have told us to deliver an interlaced tape (which we already did), but would they have told us also how to shoot? After all, TV channels show progressive material all the time (movies, etc.). Remember, BTW, that this is all in the SD world, not HD.

Thanks to everybody who chimed in.

Paulo.