[Ron Craig]

Thanks Chris. I’ll do that. I already do regular trashing of the prefs and it’s time for me to repair permissions. But I’m afraid that I’m not informed about cleaning the cache. I thought I knew most of this stuff! And that sounds pretty elementary. What is that?

Thanks.

[Ron Craig]

Let me agree strongly with Dave on this.

I have done EXACTLY what you are trying to do. And, like you, I started out working in FCP/Motion. It was a very disappointed experience. I then took the project into After Effects (where I should have started) and the results were spectacular.

Want to put a big smile on your face? Forget about Final Cut for this job. Do it in After Effects and then bring it into FCP.

Trust us on this.

[Ron Craig]

I have never used the tools in FCP or Motion for keying. I’ve always used the KeyLight plugin in After Effects. And I think it’s terrific. But it’s also a round-trip out-and-in to FCP. Have the tools in FCS improved to the quality of KeyLight?

Anyone here know?

[Ron Craig]

All the 35mm SLR lenses. Take your pick.

[Ron Craig]

Yes, it was from Cineform.

Good luck.

[Ron Craig]

I did a little test with some material from a Lumix camera a couple of weeks ago. I’m not going to be very helpful because it was just an informal test with a friend’s camera and I didn’t take notes. But my recollection is that I downloaded a trial version of some software that would convert the AVCHD into QuickTime files. I tried it and it worked. Very sorry that I can’t remember the name of the software I used (duh!) but I found it by just doing a search on the web for a few minutes.

The video opened in FCP (6) and looked great. Love the lenses you can use with that camera.

[Ron Craig]

I’m having a hard time disagreeing with Joel’s point…

[Ron Craig]

Joel,

Like you, I am a one man shop. When I need to buy more licenses I buy more licenses. It’s just the cost of doing business.

– Ron

[Ron Craig]

I suppose I shouldn’t chime in here. Zane and Mark have been remarkably restrained in their responses to Ryan’s question. But it just amazes me that Ryan and others seem to think that stealing software is OK. It’s as if they don’t understand that creating that software took years of work by scores of people with hundreds of years of combined experience, study and research. And some people just decide that stealing the fruits of that labor is OK?

Where does that attitude come from?

Ryan, any time you want to give your work away for free (as I sometimes do), you are welcome to do that. But otherwise, when you have to buy your food, pay your rent, and provide for your family, aren’t you glad that the law doesn’t allow someone to steal the work product that you have decided to create and sell?

[Ron Craig]

By the way, after searching and reading a lot posts here and testing and configuring quite a bit in my edit studio I now have my GV-HD700 Sony clamshell HDV deck integrated with my FCP edit system and Kona 3. My goal was to take in HDV material converted to a format that I like better. I now have deck control with timecode for batch capturing. I log-and-capture the HDV material via component as 720p 59.94 Pro Res. Sweet.

(I hijacked this string only after the original question was resolved! I hadn’t found any posts on the COW about anyone successfully using the HD700 this way so I wanted to post that it was possible.)