[Richard Johnson]

Simon, I don’t think you understood my post. I agree with you that they have certain similarities in the GUI and in certain functions. Some may find these functions helpful, others will not.

I think you missed the “fundamental” point of my post which was: the ecosystem of the entire Final Cut STUDIO is what I am most interested in. I may or may not use some of the new features in Final Cut ProX itself but if it utilizes all 8 cores of my Mac Pro and accesses all 24 gigs of ram and utilizes my 5770 GPU I’m happy. I’m sure I’ll be able to figure out how to edit well on it. What’s more interesting to me is the fate of the other Apps in the suite, most notably Color, Soundtrack Pro, Motion, and Compressor. If these “Pro” apps are updated as well as FCPX I’ll gladly pay $299 for each application. If they are abandoned, I’ll be moving to Premiere.

[Richard Johnson]

All this talk of FCP-X being “I-MoviePro” or “Final Cut Lite” is funny stuff. They really do seem to have their similarities. That being said, all I really need my NLE to do is allow me to edit. The less I have to think about how to do what I want the better. In this regard, simply having background rendering while I get to keep working is going to be a timesaver.

In terms of it not being “Pro” anymore, which is the sentiment I’ve heard from a lot of people, I just don’t get it. I think, for the most part I COULD edit about just as well in Imovie. Editing, for the most part, is about having an eye for how to tell a story. The technical work I do that the average thirteen year old who owns Imovie can’t do is in the other applications in the Final Cut Studio suite. Does I’movie have Final Touch aka “Color”. That program ran about $25,000 before Apple bought Silicon Color and included the software in the Final Cut Studio suite. Soundtrack pro is actually pretty efficient when you memorize the keyboard shortcuts. I prefer After Effects and Cinema4D for motion graphics work but Motion is pretty nifty if you want to pump something out quickly.

I’m just as anxious as the next person about the future of FCP but to me it has a lot more to do with the rest of the applications in the Final Cut Pro ecosystem. If they are kept around, integrated well, updated to 64 bit and utilize my MacPro as I wish they had for the last 3 years, I’ll be a happy camper. So Final Cut Pro’s graphical user interface resembles Imovie. Big deal.

[Richard Johnson]

Thank you very much Mark. That was exactly what I was looking for. Have you used something to that effect before or was that off the top of your head? Thanks again. Cheers. -Richard

[Richard Johnson]

Gary to the rescue!!! I had tried copying sequences over to a new timeline (even copy and pasting from the timeline) but what ended up working is very close to exactly what you recommended. What I did was open up a FCP project file from about a month ago (lets call it project file A), when everything was working fine. Then I opened up my most recent project file that had all the work I’ve done up to this point(Lets call it project file X). Then I copy pasted sequences from out of the timelines from my latest project(X) to the old project(A). The bugs were still there….until I then quit final cut pro and started it back up opening only the project file A. Now I have all my work and nothing is acting up (knock on wood). It seems the bugs were indeed being brought into final cut pro from the Final Cut Pro Project Files and would actually affect all projects open if one Project file had the bugs. Now, none of the previous bugs are present, I have not lost any of my work, and I can once again see the light at the end of the tunnel for finishing the show. Thanks to all. -Richard

[Richard Johnson]

Shane. Yeah, I agree, it seemed pretty bizarre to just do an overwrite installation which is why I ended up starting from a blank hard drive and doing a ground up installation of OSX and FCP. I’ve never done this before when I was in the middle of working on a big project but it seemed like it would be a good thing to try. Also, I figured it would be nice to have just the OS and FCP and not install my Adobe CS5 creative suite or any Plugins or Cinema 4D etc… Just have the operating system and Final Cut Pro.

Rafael. Thanks for your input. You say you would not recommend trying a ground up reinstall of OSX and FCP? I’m curious as to why, could you see this as posing new problems or just taking too much time? Would your recommendation of Disk Warrior or Tech Tools be for my boot drive, or more for my scratch disk/raid? I have been thinking the re-install of OS and FCP on a blank drive would help me eliminate that drive as having problems in my search to troubleshoot the source of these bugs.

David, I’d be pretty mad if it was something as simple as me forgetting to run “all” the software updates. Yes, I have made sure “all the software is up to date”. Thanks, though. I actually keep hoping these problems are all from something simple I have overlooked.

It is confusing that the sequence I had created on a new project was fine when I opened FCP for the first time having done the total reinstall. I could create new sequences, freeze frames, send to Soundtrack Pro multitrack project. All the problems I was having seemed to have been fixed. This sequence had been pieced together with footage copy/pasted directly from sequences in my main project. Then I opened my main, large, FCP project file and was getting all the same bugs. Now when I go back to the project that was just working fine, it once again has the problems itself.

[Richard Johnson]

I currently have a HMC-150 and I rent other cameras when necessary. It’s nice for me to have a good “all rounder” for pretty much any shoot but then be able to rent additional cameras(which is surprisingly cheap). It is convenient to own a camera so I would recommend you buy one…but I might wait and rent till after the holidays-new models released, old models at reduced prices etc.

I recently have been shooting multi-cam shoots with canon DSLR’s and the HMC-150. I’ve used the 5dmii, 7d and t2i’s. I think the t2i is a phenomenal value, but if I could only buy one camera, it would be the HMC-150. I do really like the footage from DSLR’s, especially as b-cams. I may end up buying a panasonic GH2. I’ll rent one eventually and be able to analyze footage for myself. I did this with a HMC-150 and a HPX-170 before I bought the 150. Very similar footage.

Most likely what I see myself doing is picking up an Atomos Ninja HDMI capture device and a Panasonic GH2. Then I can use the Ninja on the 150 for green screen work or hook it up to the GH-2 for multi camera shoots. I edit in FCP so capturing directly into Pro-Res sounds like a boost to quality and efficiency.
Alf: I get the T2i and the HMC-150 to match pretty well in post. Especially if I have time to send them to Color. I have a saved setting to match the cameras. It’s tougher for me in FCP and from what I can tell FCP and Color don’t play together with multicam edits as it views them as nested clips. (i have studio 2) But yeah, they can be matched pretty well from my experience.

[Richard Johnson]

Just wanted to finish the forum by explaining my solution. First off, thank you Michael for your advice. It seems that was definitely one of my issues. Not having modified the Canon Plug-In was probably the reason log and transfer wouldn’t recognize the files straight from the card reader. Secondly, I had not paid enough attention to Shane’s tutorial or I would have known not to rename any folder. Because I had multiple canon cameras I wanted to name them for organization. I should have created a new folder that I could name and put the full file from the cards into that folder. Hindsight is 20 20 right. Next time I’ll take notes when Shane makes a tutorial.

My reason for desperately wanting to use Log and Tranfer was that it had taken several hours for compressor to convert 1 clip from canon .mov to prores 422 High Quality. I had 3 cameras worth of footage with about 60 gigs from each camera to be transcoded. I got it done by dropping pro-res 422 high quality and going with regular pro-res 422. From what I read when you’re starting with a fairly compressed format (like the canon files) there is no real advantage to the High Quality setting. I also noticed my cpu usage was only working at about 10% so I enabled Q-master for 7 instances on my 8 core early 2008 (no hyperthreading) mac pro. With this my processor usage went up to fluctuating between 94 and 96 percent!!! I put about 20 clips at a time into compressor and from 10:00 last night to 5:00 this morning all the footage was transcoded. Thanks Shane and Michael for your input. Hopefully next time I’ll be able to just use Log and Transfer. Cheers -Richard

[Richard Johnson]

Joseph, I believe the tests I did were in 1080 but I cant be sure. I did it over a year ago and it was just for my personal judgement when making my own decision about which cameras to purchase (I was upgrading from panasonic dvx’s). Most of the shooting I do is in 720p60 and that works well cutting with the canon footage that can record 720p60 as well. I generally don’t like the slow frame rates and the canon cameras I’ve used can’t do 60p in 1080. They can in 720 though so it cuts well with the HMC.

My recommendation to you is to kind of do what I did. If you can, get a hold of an HMC in your area and shoot some footage, (doesn’t have to be fancy just similar to the type of shoots you most employ) then bring the footage into your computer, edit with it, color grade it, key it, whatever you do. See if you fall in love with the footage or if it leaves you wanting more. That will be better than anyone else’s opinion. Even if you have to just bring your own (class 4 or higher) sd card into a camera shop and record some footage in their store and in their parking lot it will be really helpful and only take up an afternoons time. That’s my advice anyway. Cheers and good luck.

[Richard Johnson]

I have used a Z7U and was impressed with the quality. I had heard bad things about HDV but was freelancing on a shoot and thought it was great. We did a couple indoor interviews in natural light and it seemed to perform very well. I think that’s always a good test for cameras. That being said, my HMC-150 performs very well in low light. I was worried about the AVCHD codec but shot some side by side footage with an HPX-170 and shot a green screen test. I could not discern the difference from the two Panasonics on a large HD screen and the green screen keyed well enough in After Effects for my liking. I also agree with the previous poster about using the money saved going the HMC route and picking up a VDSLR. A second camera can often come in handy. I shot a cooking show this weekend using two borrowed Canons (T2i models) and the footage cuts nicely with my HMC-150. The 3 year warranty on the HMC-150 is a nice assurance as well. Cheers, it sounds like you have good options whatever route you take.

[Richard Johnson]

I am interested in this as well. Additionally, if Nikon does supply firmware updates of that importance, might it be possible to get a 60 fps video mode in either the d5000 or d7000? Right now I’m recording secondary audio into a Marantz PMD 661 and have been really pleased with it. Might be something to consider if you want to record higher fidelity audio in the meantime. Cheers.