[Shawn Marshall]

Hi:

Thanks for your reply. There are no Safe or Unlimited RT options available for the sequence. I assume that RT options are limited to certain codecs.

The problem seems to be limited to FCP 5 projects that I’m opening up in FCP 6. I made a new project from scratch and created a 720×480 sequence (D1 pixels, progressive, Animation codec) and dropped one of the problematic clips into it. The clip plays fine in the sequence with a dark grey “no rendering required” bar displayed above it.

On the old edits I’m having problems with I found that if I set RT to “Play Base Layer Only” the sequence will play without rendering, although it still displays a red “rendering required” bar over the whole clip.

Here’s a screen grab of the clip properties and Sequence settings. As far as I can see they match exactly, and they worked fine in FCP 5.

Here’s some additional weirdness. I open my old FCP 5 project in FCP 6 and the old sequences show that they have to be rendered. If I make a new sequence with the settings exactly matching my clips and then edit those clips into the sequence, it shows that all the clips require rendering.

Now if I create a new project on another tab, create a new sequence with the correct settings and drop the same clips into that sequence, the clips play fine, no rendering required. The exact same clips will play fine in a new project but not in the old project. Saving the FCP 5 project under another name and reopening it doesn’t help.

There’s something going on with the FCP 5 files that’s screwing things up.

Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[Shawn Marshall]

Hi Paul:

Excellent! That seems to do the trick. Thanks for taking the time to reply and thanks for the tip.

Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[Shawn Marshall]

Hi Greg:

So you’re still using a 2 monitor setup with the 23″ Cinema display as your primary monitor. What are you using for your second monitor?

I’ve grown accustomed to having the comp and project window on my 19″ main monitor and having the timeline on my 17″ menu monitor to the left. I haven’t decided whether I want to have everything on one bigger monitor, or combine a bigger widescreen monitor with a smaller LCD menu monitor.

Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[Shawn Marshall]

Hi:

Thanks for the offer to encode a sample with ProRes, but would I be able to view the result if I don’t have the ProRes codec on my system because I don’t have Final Cut Studio 2?

Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[Shawn Marshall]

Hi:

I like the quality of the Photo JPEG codec very much, but it would be nice if it had RT capabilities at NTSC size.

Right now I have a bunch of upper field first clips compressed with MJPEG-A through the Aurora Igniter card which won’t work in an Intel Mac. All my existing edits use that codec and field order. My plan is to recompress those Quicktimes into a codec that will work with the Io (lower field first) and preferably be RT.

I didn’t have RT functionality with the Igniter clips, so I can live without that, but if I have to change over it’d be nice to change to something that supports RT but doesn’t produce huge files. DVC Pro 50 is a possibility, though it exhibits some banding on gradients.

I could upgrade to FCP 6/Final Cut Studio 2 to get ProRes 422. My concern would be that once I spend $500 to get the codec I’ll find out it doesn’t do a very good job with our animations.

Thanks.

Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[Shawn Marshall]

Hi:

Thanks for the reply.

A reply on the FCP board said the ProRes codec might work well, though I’d have to upgrade to FCP 6. Can the Io work with the ProRes codec? I’m not clear on what’s handled by the software and what’s handled by the hardware.

Thanks.

Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[Shawn Marshall]

Hi:

Thanks for your replies. I guess I’ll have to change my approach or upgrade to FCP 6.

Does the Pro Res codec work well graphics and gradients and such?

Thanks.

Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[Shawn Marshall]

Danny:

YOU DA MAN! Thanks for the reply. I don’t know why the client wanted an AVI, but that’s clients for you.

I downloaded and installed ffmpegx and it worked like a charm. I was able to quickly create an AVI exactly in the format they wanted. I thought for sure I’d have to get some software on the Windows side. And you can’t beat the price (I’ll definitely pay them the $15 registration.)

Thanks again.

Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[Shawn Marshall]

Hi:

Thanks for all your replies. As a further test I compressed the Quicktime with the DV codec and tried playing that back. It played fine in the viewer and the canvas. I then looked at the 8-bit uncompressed version again and that played fine in both the viewer and the canvas, no stuttering on the NTSC monitor. I thought it was having problems playing back yesterday, but now it seems to be okay.

The Photo-JPEG version still stutters on the NTSC output on the viewer side. Also, on playback, the image on both the viewer and canvas is frozen while the Photo JPEG video plays on my NTSC monitor. The only way that I can get the Photo JPEG video to play on the desktop is to set Video Playback to None.

For both the DV and 8-bit UC versions the video on the desktop viewer and canvas plays along with the NTSC output.

So maybe it’s just a Photo JPEG compression thing, since it’s not “native” to the Io.

Shawn Marshall
Portland, Oregon

[Shawn Marshall]

Hi:

Thanks for the reply.

Before I posted, just to be sure, I reinstalled the latest Io drivers, 3.0, and the control panel, 1.2. As far as I know all that is up to date.

The control panel says Processor Firmware 24 and Xilinx Firmware 28, no conflicting Quicktime files found.

I am not getting any dropped frames warnings from FCP. These brief, stuttering freezes are only visible on my NTSC monitor and not on the desktop, and only happen when playing a clip in the viewer, not when I’m playing the same clip in a sequence on the canvas side.

Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics