[Smoked Meat]

Boy don’t I feel like an idiot! Thanks Todd. 🙂

Splice Heist Inc.
Toronto, ON

[Smoked Meat]

Thanks for your feedback, Todd. Unfortunately, you can’t apply beziers to the position or “center” keyframes. You can use beziers with just about everything else. I’ll never understand why a solution to something this simple has eluded FCP’s design team for so long – it’s incredibly frustrating.

Splice Heist Inc.
Toronto, ON

[Smoked Meat]

Luke,

It is NOT a Deck issue. We swapped out our D-Beta deck for another, exact same model. Same issue.

I then sent a 2-minute test (which I’d attempted to output here with dodgy results) in Apple’s uncompressed 10-bit format to an outside facility running an older G5, FCP 4.5, and AJA box (not sure which) and a SCSI array. This test was successfully laid back to D-Beta (using one of my two weekend rental decks) no less than 5 or 6 times. Stock was the exact item I’d been attempting these outputs with all weekend.

I’m now forced to suspect the problem resides either with my 2 FW800 G-RAIDs or the Decklink Extreme card. Tomorrow I will take the drives to this outside facility and attempt to output my entire 3 hour show (in two 90 minute sections) on their system. Whatever the result, I should be able to decisively identify the culprit then.

Will keep you updated. In the meantime, how can I get that single-frame capture sample to you? What’s your email?

Thanks.

[Smoked Meat]

I’ve got a frame for you, Luke. New to this forum – how do I post it? Or should I just email it directly to you?

[Smoked Meat]

Mr. DRW,

Yes and possibly yes. I find it extremely odd, but I’ve been on FCP 4.5 until very recently so I can’t say for sure. Another oddity is that yesterday I couldn’t drag and drop any kind of FCP sequence or clip into the Edit to Tape window. But as I say, I’m just getting up on FCP5. Others on this board are likely to be far more capable with this question that I.

Mr. Meat

[Smoked Meat]

Coincidentally, I encountered the same error message – just earlier today. Unlike you, I was working in BM 10-bit uncompressed NTSC. As a temporary workaround, I exported a Quicktime reference movie,k dropped it into Blackmagic Deck Control, and put it to tape from there,

But I really wish FCP’s Edit to tape worked – I really need to do a few precise inserts within the completed output…

[Smoked Meat]

Thanks again Luke.

Just to be crystal clear: you’re saying I can capture my 29.97 fps interlaced D-Beta as 23.98 fps progressive video, then reinstate the 3:2 pulldown and lay it back to D-Beta as 29.97 interlaced. And the sharpness and quality of my final layback will be precisely the same as the original D-Beta source?

[Smoked Meat]

Yes, Paul, you’re correct. And that’s the way it should be for proper cadence.

My goal is to produce a new 29.97 master. Of the material I’m *not* deleting, I cannot afford to lose video frames in order to make the cut point look “good.” I must keep every frame within the shots I am keeping.

Again, perhaps there’s a simple answer to this. I’m very experienced with cutting features in the 24/23.98 fps realm. But onlining and this intra-frame stuff has eluded my experience somewhat.

[Smoked Meat]

Luke,

Thanks for your quick reply.

Let me be clearer: the project I’ll be working on involves reducing an already-complete four-hour film down to a three-hour film. The D-Betas are sourced from film transfers done at 24fps. The sound mix for the 3 hour version already exists. In cutting the three-hour version picture, I am concerned about not being able to make smooth picture cuts between shots without chopping off ends of those shots in order to avoid a situation where, for example, the final frame of a given shot might be displayed in FCP as “OK” but in fact be composed of the final field of the ouitgoing shot and the first field of the incoming one.

I guess the other question would be: since the material is film-sourced and the 3:2 pulldown is intact, could I simply digitize and cut at 24fps (eliminating the pulldown) and then reinstate the 3:2 on output back to D-Beta with full online quality? Quality is the primary issue here as this is not an offline situation.

Thanks again in advance!