[Scott Clements]

Thanks for the tip about the restore. I just used the autosaves the old fashioned way.

Unfortunately, the restore function brought up the error message: ‘This project is unreadable or may be too new for this version of Final Cut’.

I might try adding reel numbers to all my clips.

Film Editor, London UK
http://www.scottclementseditor.com

[Scott Clements]

Thanks for the suggestion, Nick. I’ve never had to do that in the past with autosaves, but I’ll give it a try.

Film Editor, London UK
http://www.scottclementseditor.com

[Scott Clements]

Hi, thanks for the response. I tried that, but in this case it wasn’t the issue. I simply couldn’t make the autosave reconnect to the media. I tried opening an autosave at the same time as the project on the drive, but it gave an error about the project being unreadable or being too new for this version of FCP (which is not the case). What I discovered was that I if copied the main project file to my computer and ejected the external drive that had all the media on it, I could open the autosave and the main project side by side. I then copied and pasted the latest sequence from the autosave into the main project and was able to relink. It was a fix, but obviously not ideal. Something is definitely wrong with my autosaves (this has happened a few times before, but I didn’t have time to investigate it too much) I think the external drive may have problems. Disk Utility said it was fine, but it seems to be the rotten apple here.

Film Editor, London UK
http://www.scottclementseditor.com

[Scott Clements]

Figured it out. I used the warp stabilizer in After Effects. I didn’t think it would smooth the timing, but it did! Amazing!

Film Editor, London UK
http://www.scottclementseditor.com

[Scott Clements]

Hey, Lorne.

I never found a perfect solution to my problem. In my case, I had to recreate a lot of the photoshop work in Nuke. Your case sounds different.

I’m not a regular Photoshop user anymore, but is there a “preserve transparency” button that you can select when you save a .png file, like when you save a .tiff file? If you had the transparency baked into your file, I’m not sure if you could then use an overlay blend mode to get the desired result. I can’t off the top of my head recall how the pixel blending math works for an overlay. I must admit, I don’t really follow your question 100%. The reality is that blend modes work differently in different programs, even though they should in theory work the same in every one. So, I wouldn’t be prepared to have the same results as in Photoshop.

Film Editor, London UK
http://www.scottclementseditor.com

[Scott Clements]

Hey, Shane.

Thanks so much for clearing up all those questions I had. I eagerly await your planned tutorial on this. I think a lot of new Avid converts, using macbook pros will have a lot of the same questions.

-Scott

Film Editor, London UK
http://www.scottclementseditor.com

[Scott Clements]

Thanks for the detailed step by step, Michael. Much appreciated!

-Scott

Film Editor, London UK
http://www.scottclementseditor.com

[Scott Clements]

Thanks, Michael, but I’m curious about Michael Hancock’s method, because the guide track on the DSLR footage is in fact slightly out of sync with the picture. He says this is why he manually syncs in Avid. However, his manual method for syncing is much faster than the one I was using. I was curious though what he did with multi cam material that also needs to be synced. Also, his technique doesn’t seem to allow for different clip lengths amongst all the tracks in the newly created synced sub clips.

Film Editor, London UK
http://www.scottclementseditor.com

[Scott Clements]

Thanks for this tip, Michael. What would you suggest as the fastest workflow for syncing sound to DSLR picture, as well as creating DSLR multi cam clips (from a 2 camera shoot)? When laying the video and audio out on the timeline as you mention above, would you also lay down the 2nd camera angle, or would you “group clips” in the bin later? Any details you could give on your specific workflow would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

-Scott

Film Editor, London UK
http://www.scottclementseditor.com

[Scott Clements]

Thanks, Matt! That’s all great advice. I was applying normalisation gain first, and then compressing, which was making things quite difficult. Hope all’s well in Toronto – my home town!:-)

Film Editor, London UK
http://www.scottclementseditor.com