[Robert Esmonde]

Hello Brett.

I didn’t even know that was a possibility. I’m really fumbling my way around FCPX. I’ll try your suggestion tomorrow.

Thanks for your help.

[Robert Esmonde]

Thanks Jeff.

They sound like very good suggestions especially the one about Motion. I’ll give that a try tomorrow. Unfortunately it’s not a PNG still. It’s some moving images of a TV studio background. I did try just using the PNG file without any chroma key but it didn’t work either. I’m going to check on John’s suggestion too and see if maybe the Alpha option is set incorrectly.

Regards.

[Robert Esmonde]

Thanks very much Noah and John.

Noah, I can’t post the images at the moment for privacy reasons, but I’ll try and clear that or show an equivalent green screen/alpha combo.

John, I tried what you suggested but I’m afraid it didn’t work. Nothing showed through the supposedly alpha channel black area of the virtual TV screen. I wasn’t absolutely sure which of the two clips you meant me to set to ‘Behind’ so I tried both options separately and neither worked. The virtual studio file is imported from the source DVD and is showing as PNG in the Info panel. So I must be missing something. BTW in my project the subject is in the primary storyline and the studio background is below it, but I tried it as you suggested with the virtual studio in the primary storyline without any luck.

But, I did find a workaround which solves my immediate problem. I just shrank the still image into the virtual studio TV screen and created a new background image over which I can green screen the subject.

Clearly I’ve a lot to learn about all this, but thanks again for your help.

[Robert Esmonde]

Hello again John.

I’ve just returned to this thread with another query, but noticed that my last response to you did not appear in the thread, so I’m not sure if this one will.

I followed your advice and ‘Imported’ my old FCP7 .mov files into Media Composer. I’m doing this in groups of four or five files. Everything seemed to go fine at first and I could see the ‘wrapped’ .mxf files appear in my target drive Avid MediaFiles folder and also in the ‘Import Bin’ I had selected.

However, after I’d imported a selection of files, some of which were very large, I decided to call it a day, and put my Mac Pro to sleep. Then I had second thoughts about doing that and ‘woke’ it up again. Shortly afterwards I got the message that ‘Media Composer has quit unexpectedly’.

When I restarted MC I noticed that although all the .mxf files were there, my most recent group of imported files were not in the ”Import Bin’. I had not manually ‘Saved’ the bin, so I’m guessing that MC had not written the info to the database. I’ve continued importing my .mov files and everything seems to be working as it should, apart from the four or five files missing from the bin.

Is there a way I can get the missing files, that are in the ‘Avid MediaFiles/MXF/1’ folder to appear in the ‘Import Bin’ or do I have to re-import them?

Thanks again for your really useful help with this issue.

[Robert Esmonde]

Hello John.

Thanks for taking the trouble to provide such a detailed informative answer.

That’s disappointing about the video/audio sync. I presumed that AMC could deal with FCP7 files that included audio and video. I’m not at my machine right now so don’t know if the audio and video files are the same length – they should be, since they were captured from Beta SP simultaneously. If so then they should be easy to sync. I wonder if there’s a way to ‘Export’ the synced files from FCP7 to Avid using something like ‘Automatic Duck’ without having to place them on the timeline?

Thanks too for your useful real-world advice on the benefits of having Avid MXF media managed files versus AMA linking. Sounds like the way to go.

I have to stick with the Avid option anyway, as this is what the eventual programme editor will be using.

Regards.

[Robert Esmonde]

Hello John.

Do you know if either AMA linking to the FCP7 ProRes files or ‘Importing’ them as Avid MXF media will work with my backup which has Video and Audio in separate folders? Or if I just choose the root folder will Avid automatically find the Video and Audio and import them in sync?

I take your point about poor performance editing with AMA linked files, but I thought that Avid Media Composer now deals with ProRes as ‘native’ media. But, as I said, I’m new to all this so maybe I’m misunderstanding how it works.

Regards and thanks.

[Robert Esmonde]

Thank you very much Bill for all that detailed and sensible advice.

I’ll take a look at your webinar at the Movieola site and check out the keyword strategy too.

You’ve really been extremely generous with your help, and it should save me a ton of time in the edit.

[Robert Esmonde]

Thanks Bill.

I really appreciate you taking the time to spell it out in such detail.

The material is multicam of a 90 minute concert so there’s quite a lot of material. Most was shot on HDV tape, with some extra stuff on my Canon 5D. I do have the time to transcode again if necessary, as you suggested. The concert edit will eventually be cut with interview, archive, and rostrum, but I want to get a concert edit done to begin with.

It’s a labour of love that got left on the shelf, so there’s no great rush now. I want to eventually have a 1080 HD final product, so I was going to set my Project to 1080. Any suggestions on whether to select 1080i or 1080p in this situation?

I’m going to take the option of a Proxy workflow for editing and then switch to full res for the output.

Thanks again.

[Robert Esmonde]

Thanks again, Jeremy.

Didn’t realise that. I presumed ‘Consolidate’ would only allow clips used in the project with ‘handles’. I’ll take a look. My ‘project’ is actually only a Pluraleyes synced combo of Video and H4N audio – No editing of the content has taken place.

I did try quitting FCPX, but it wouldn’t allow me. It told me (correctly) that ‘Background Tasks’ were in progress and that they had to finish first.

I can’t let the ‘Duplicate’ continue, because it will exceed the space available on my hard drive.

Looks like ‘Force Quit’ may be the only way.

Regards,

Robert

[Robert Esmonde]

Thanks Jeremy.

I understand that I can choose to ‘Duplicate Project Only’ and not to duplicate any media.

My problem is that I do want to backup all the media from a project, so I’m choosing “Duplicate Projects and Referenced Events’, but FCPX has decided to do much more than that. It references and begins backing up ALL the media from that Event. I’ve probably done something wrong at some stage, but I can’t figure out what.

To make things worse, once the ‘Duplicate Project’ is underway it seems I can only ‘Pause’ it, but there’s no option to ‘Undo’ or ‘Cancel’ the process I’ve put in train. So my FCPX is currently in ‘Pause’ mode while I work out if it’s safe to ‘Force Quit’ in the Activity Monitor’.

Regards

Robert.