[Quentin Block]

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately it did not work in this case (although it is useful to know).
Any other ideas?
I’m really struggling with this… 🙁

[Quentin Block]

maybe my new 24″ iMac with iMovie HD is equipped with the card that I need?
It seems to imply that I can capture HD…

[Quentin Block]

I am routing it through a canopus ADVC110. Do you think this is the problem?
Thing is that the firewire ports on the back of the HD box seem to be disabled (that’s what the cable company rep said…).
Otherwise would a direct firewier connection avoid this problem?

[Quentin Block]

Filip,
Thanks very much for your explanation and your time.
I wll try out all of this.
Cheers!

[Quentin Block]

Thank you. This makes sense.
I’m not sure how to create the expressions for opacity, or time remapping that toggles between frame 0 and 1.
Any suggestions?
Once I go to the pulldown menu and add an expression (on opacity for a particular layer), it just says “opacity” on the layer. I don’t know what to do after that…
I’d like to learn how to create some of these simple expressions but I don’t know the language yet…
Can you possibly give me a sample script or pointers how to do this?
Thanks so much!

[Quentin Block]

Thanks, Mylenium
I am grateful that you are out there in cyberland!
I think I need to continuously rasterize because I am eventually playing the movies at 200 percent size on 24

[Quentin Block]

Hi Ben,
RE: “just ‘export using compressor’ straight from the timeline in FCP – saving an unnecessary export step with no benefit to quality.”
When I tried this before, I got all kinds of field issues (horizontal lines as if field render was screwed up). Not sure why…

The DVD player (it’s an 8″ tablet portable DVD player, all self-contained like you use in a car…) automatically defaults on widescreen setting when you turn it on and stretches the 4×3 video horizontally to fit.
There does not seem to be any way to re-set this except to manually press the ‘WIDE’ button on the player (which toggles between 4:3 and wide). I can set the player from the setup menu – TV display – to 16:9 or 3:4LB or PS, but any 4:3 footage is always stretched (?!). The only way I’ve found to ‘cheat’ it is to export from FCP as an anamorphic comp with black bars on the sides (makes a 720×480 movie).
Then compress it to mpeg2 within Compressor or DVDSP which gives me a very squished looking 640×480 movie with bars on the sides. When I make this into a DVD (via DVDSP) and play it in the player set at 16:9, it seems to look OK.
Question: Am I losing image quality by squishing my anamorphic movie (720 width) into 640 width, then re-stretching it in the DVD player? Does DVDSP always put out its assets as 640×480 format?
It just doesn’t seem quite right…

I tried compressing the anamorphic movie (from FCP) in Compressor as MPEG2 60 min FastEncode Widescreen, and got a 720×404 m2v movie. Not sure what that was all about…
Should I try working with that in DVDSP?
You can see I’m challenged by this. Any more insight would be appreciated.
Thanks and regards!

[Quentin Block]

Thanks, Emma.
RE:

[Quentin Block]

Thanks again, Shane!

[Quentin Block]

Thanks, Shane. I am so glad that you responded to my post. After 5 days I had just about given up hope.
I’ll try your suggestion.
BTW, Is there any way to copy keyframes from one track to another, so I can duplicate the work that I’ve already done (on one track)?
Cheers!