[Robert A. jonas]

Thanks Ivan, My filmmaker friend is also on a Mac, and also using Premier Pro CS6, latest version. We’re going to experiment with your suggestions in the next couple of days. Thanks!

[Robert A. jonas]

Ivan, Good question. I can’t remember. I think that I tried that, but can’t be sure. I’ll ask my film editor/partner to bring the HD here again to test your idea. Thanks. Meantime, do you, or does anyone else have an idea of what to do if I can’t open the PP project file from the HD?
thanks!

[Robert A. jonas]

Thanks Felicia,

Robert

[Robert A. jonas]

Thanks for your comment. I figured it out. Turns out that I did my re-installs in the wrong order. After my Erase and Install I had re-installed FCP X from the App store. Then, later, I tried to re-install FCP7 and found that the Final Cut Pro software was greyed out on the Installer. Why? It’s because FCP7 won’t install on a machine that already has a more advanced version on it. So, I trashed FCP X, and then bingo, the FCP7 Installer showed Final Cut Pro as a download choice. After installing FCP7 again I then went back to the App Store and re-installed FCP X, and now I can use both softwares.
One interesting follow-up notice is that when I put the FCP7 icon in the dock, it overwrote the FCP X icon in the dock, representing it as a FCP7 icon. And visa versa. Strange. So I went into Applications and added the 7 and the X to the respective App icons. Now I can see both separate FCP’s in the dock. Whew!

[Robert A. jonas]

Oh my, I’m having the same problem. I’m on an 8-core MacPro, running Premier Pro on the latest Lion, 10.7.3. I’m connected to a MaxxDigital RAID5 tower via an R380 ATTO card. My scratch disks have been on the RAID5 tower. About a week ago I used some CoreMelt plug-ins on PP and experienced a crash. Then another and another. Couldn’t fix it and finally had to do a complete Erase and Install. Call it horrible or call it Spring Cleaning to the Max, from the Maxx. (Be careful of CoreMelt!). I’m finally up and running but every time I open a PP project I get this message, “scratch disk write protected or unavailable.” I’ve checked to see that the RAID5 is Read and Write and I don’t use dashes, underlines or slashes in my titles. What’s going on? I’m in the middle of a project. Help!

[Robert A. jonas]

Elijah, Thanks for sharing your frustration with Primatte plug-in for FCP. Yes, they need an upgrade. Their tech folks don’t really know what to say about my problem.

Jeremy, Thanks for asking for more details. I realize that I’ve been a bit sloppy about codecs and framerates, and that that may be part of the problem with the slow render times for Primatte Keyer. Some of the footage in this project is from a Panasonic dvx100B, in NTSC 24p; part is from the HMC150 in PR422, 24p;and the new green-screened footage is in PR422,1080, 30p. The Sequence which appears to be handling these varied formats is 24p, NTSC 480. But maybe it’s not able to handle it. So now I wonder if I should downrez the HiDef green screen footage first, to 480, and then bring it into the timeline (how would I do that?). I’m assuming that the 24p, NTSC 480 timeline can handle the 30p footage, but maybe that’s one source of the huge rendering time. If all this sounds right, how would you bring the varied codecs and frame-rates to some common ground? By the way, I have found through direct experience that exporting the Primatted 1080, 30p footage in PR444 and then re-importing DOES retain the Alpha channel of the key, but the downside is that this re-imported file does not retain the Primatte Alpha key controls.
thanks

[Robert A. jonas]

Jeremy, Thanks. So, I get two ideas from you. First, even though I have 10 tracks, I can locate the new lip-syched Primatted track only and specifically above the track that I want to use for background. And second, I can cut up the new lip-syched Primatted track and only render the subclips that I want to include in the final project. So, here’s another question: If I don’t yet know which of the original ten tracks that I want to use as background for the new lip-syched Primatted track 11, it seems I have to put it above all of them. If I render the new Primatted track 11 first, then I can see through it to the possible background clips beneath it, and make a judgement about where are the best locations for track 11 subclips to stay put. BUT, as soon as I cut track 11 into subclips, I have to re-render everything. What would you do about that? One idea I thought of is to NOT use Primatte Keyer on track 11, but rather to just bring the opacity down, and to make the judgements about subclip placement in this way (so that I can see through it to the lower layers). And then, once I’ve decided on placement, to Primatte key only those track 11 subclips that I want to keep. Have you tried that?
thanks,
Robert

[Robert A. jonas]

I just upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard and my QT Pro software went missing. I’ve heard that the Snow Leopard version of QT isn’t as good as the older QT Pro. Does anyone know more about the difference?

[Robert A. jonas]

Red Giant’s Primatte Keyer Pro is fantastic, and they have a nice video tutorial online. It’s pricey, but worth it.