[Richard Sanchez]

A G5 is a pretty old computer at this point. I would highly recommend you purchase an Intel Mac. Especially since the new OS Snow Leopard will be Intel Mac only. 512 megs is far below the minimum that you should be using. Up it to at least 2 GB, preferably 4.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Richard Sanchez]

This is because Final Cut is automatically resizing your image to fit within the canvas. If you check out the motion tab with the clip selected, you’ll see exactly how much it’s scaling down your photo. You can scale it back up to fit the canvas if you want. Be careful with using large stills though, they tend to bog down Final Cut.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Richard Sanchez]

Mini DV is absolutely not uncompressed, and if your source is DVCPRO HD, then Mini DV is not the way to archive it. Since you shot DVCPRO HD, you could put it out to DVCPRO HD, though for archival purposes D5 or HDCAM SR are the highest quality tape formats you could use. The deck rentals will cost you a bit, but will be the highest quality masters for archiving.

For your DV program, depending on if you used a lot of graphics or not, I’d recommend laying that back to Beta SP or Digibeta, and as for the DVCPRO HD, you could lay that one back to DVCPRO HD and probably be fine, though for HD masters D5 or HDCAM SR are going to the top formats.

If you’re in Southern California, you could look into using the Digital Service Station over at Alpha Dogs in Burbank, they’re great and very helpful.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Richard Sanchez]

I’ve been eyeballing the Kona LHi lately, which supports analog component as well as HD capture. The Matrox MXO2 is also a great product, that I know Shane loves. I would say those will be your best bet as far as allowing analog capture, as well as leaving the HD option open to you for future expansion.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Richard Sanchez]

This is a scary thing, and it’s happened to me before. Trash your preferences.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Richard Sanchez]

I’ve had that issue lately too. I find when I include chapter markers for DVD studio pro it tends to screw up the Quicktime Timecode track. When I don’t include markers it tends to be fine.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Richard Sanchez]

You can adjust your in and out points in the preview windows. How do you adjust the timecode?

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Richard Sanchez]

I believe the Avid MPEG IMX 50 codec is part of the Avid Codecs PE package which only comes with the commercial license of Media Composer and higher Avid products. I would contact whomever gave you that file and see if they can convert it to a file that you can use.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Richard Sanchez]

I don’t believe FCP 4.5 will work with XDCAM EX. You should consider upgrading.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks

[Richard Sanchez]

Open all sequences, and turn on auto render. It defaults to being so, so you can set the auto render to render after 1 minute, and then walk away.

Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks