[Simon Hustings]

Hey Andy,

The refurbed MBP will be fine for your needs if you can handle working on a relatively small screen all of the time. I would suggest getting an external monitor if you are looking to do any major colour corrections or intricate effects.
As your final output is DVD PAL or NTSC, a MBP will handle the whole workflow without much of a problem. Render times for standard definition video are more than acceptable on a MBP.
I have an Intel 2.4Ghz MBP with 4GB RAM and have cut endless PAL and DVCPro HD projects without much fuss at all. Even the render times on graded and effected DVCProHD were better than I hoped for.
You will need a third party piece of kit for your MBP to be able to ingest the HD footage; a device such as the AJA I/O HD or a P2 store etc, depending on the HD flavor. If you are only considering HDV, the only extra kit required is an HDV Camera/Deck connected via Firewire.

However, if you have money to buy a Quadcore Mac Pro, your options open up a great deal. MBPs you can upgrade a little, MacPros can be upgraded a lot and therefore have a much longer shelf life.

All the best,
Simon

Is it me or do I spend half my life watching little grey bars turn into little blue bars??

[Simon Hustings]

No worries Chaz.
I’m in PAL land too. Was UK, now Cyprus. NTSC doesn’t crop up in my neck of the woods too often (Thankfully). Just the odd ENG Client or corporate job from the US.
Glad it all worked out for you.

All the best,
Simon

[Simon Hustings]

Chaz,

I had a similar experience when working with some 24bit audio that drifted over the 95min show that i was cutting. It started off well, but by the end, there was a good 14 second drift. The sound guys were at a loss as to what they had done to the audio during post and seeing as I was up against a deadline, I added a time remap to the audio. After a bit of trial and error, I think I slowed it down to about 99.63% and then everything synced up perfectly.

If all else fails you could do that, just slow down/speed up the entire audio clip as you see fit to make it fit the video. Not an ideal solution cos you’re having to effect the audio for no obvious reason, but it worked for me. And ultimately the viewer will not know the difference.

All the best,
Simon

[Simon Hustings]

Joe,
The fact that you have to instruct FCP to look at all files not just Audio/Video files tell me there may be a problem with the rescued files even if they do play in QT.
Have you tried opening one of the shorter files in QT, exporting it using current settings and importing that new file into FCP? Not an ideal solution, but it may be a half decent workaround. (depending on the quantity of footage)
If all else fails, can you not batch capture the footage from source again?

All the best,
Simon.

[Simon Hustings]

Aldo,

Sounds like a system issue to me. Have you repaired disk permissions lately? (Either using Disk Utility or Disk Warrior etc) If some system permissions are incorrectly mapped, this can cause no end of stress even on high spec systems.

[Simon Hustings]

If you export from FCP using QT and leave the setting to “Current Settings” you will have the exact same quality as your original material (assuming you haven’t changed any sequence settings)
Seeing as your footage is interlaced, this may look a little goofy when playing back in QT because you will be seeing the interlaced fields on a progressive computer display. But when this footage is laid back to tape or broadcast, it will look fine.
There is no point trying to uprez the DV footage, because there is no extra colour information to be had.
Depending on how you’ve affected the footage (grading, titles etc) the only thing I might suggest is to convert your footage to 8bit uncompressed before grading it. That may help a little but will take up a lot more disk space.
All the best,
Simon

[Simon Hustings]

David,
Was Chris able to sort you out? If not, a colleague of mine might be able to help.
Simon

[Simon Hustings]

Check out Lynda.com as well, they have a few video tutorials explaining video fundamentals and terminology.
Cheers,
Simon

[Simon Hustings]

The only way I can suggest is to add it to the letterbox within FCP before outputting using QT or Compressor. That way you have full control over the copy.
Cheers,
Simon

[Simon Hustings]

I agree with Holly, MpegStreamClip is definitely the way to go. Works very well.