[Stephen May]

There are some things you have to beware: the sequence settings from the previously edited sequence need to match the sequence that you are currently editing and I assume nesting the former sequence into. I’m pretty sure others can chime in here to resolve this but if not I’ll take a hack at it.

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

Excellent reply, make sure the Canvas is at 100% – good point – very basic yes, but very true!

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

Mitch – the reason that in some cases HD cams are more noisy than SD cams is simply that the sensors for HD cameras are loaded with more resolution than the sensors for SD. In some cases you have a SD camera with 3 CCD’s handling 740 x 480 pixel resolution (or thereabouts) and then you have a camera that has the same size sensors recording 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution!

The new Canon D5 Mark II DSLR camera shoots HD onto a single 36 x 24mm CMOS sensor, and even though it’s only a single sensor, the fact that it’s roughly 1.4 inches x almost an inch (0.9 in.) it is able to capture clean, rich black levels. Compare that size sensor to the Sony PMW EX1 sensors which are 1/2, less than half the size, and add in compression, and the task of rich dark blacks becomes challenging.

I think it is good for the industry that we are always demanding more from the products, but at the same time, I notice we don’t dole out credit where it is due. I’ve seen all these cameras over the years and the tech has gone from VHS which basically sucked, to S-VHS which was considerably better compared to VHS, then to Hi8, Digital8, (I love to skip 3/4 U-Matic simply because it was just a beast in size), and talkiing about beats, the most amazing Sony discovery, spanning all of these cameras; Betacam! Betacam was always pretty nice, but lug a Ikagami Unicam around or any Sony camera docked to a Beta back, and you’ll have to begin to appreciate inventions like the EX1, HVX200, and many more. When the cameras started to record 24p in a tiny lightweight camera, I thought everyone was going to cheer for a week. We didn’t. We got used to the breakthrough, and began demanding more.

I’m not saying I am not looking forward to even better than the EX1, but let’s face it: Tapeless workflow, smaller lighter bodies, progressive recording, larger more sensitive sensors (CMOS instead of CCD), higher resolution, and LOWER PRICES! We spent $10k on our SD Sony DSR370 DVCAM – (which I didn’t mention in the evolution above). My EX1 blows the doors off of my old 370 simply because the DSR 370 is always interlaced. I’m not saying it didn’t get amazing shots on good days, but again, it’s huge, heavy, and expensive, and STILL compressed.

We should continue to expect more, but we should realize how far it has all come, especially in the last three years! I am so grateful that I can go out and shoot great looking video with almost everything I need in a padded backpack! Now, lets get the black levels to look glossy! 🙂

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

Try creating the credit roll by first making a “Text” (static, not scrolling) and then drop it in and make it long enough in duration to use the Motion tab in the viewer to set keyframes for it’s beginning and end so that it moves from bottom to top. If it still doesn’t look smooth, apply a video filter: Flicker filter. This should work and stave off the After Effects learning process for now. Don’t forget about using a font that is most forgiving with the scan lines, like Gill Sans, and make sure it’s either bold or large enough to be greater than a thin line.

I hope this helps you and you get across the finish line before your deadline. -Stephen

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

I’m not sure if this is useful (or useless info) but I’ve not been able to conform 24fps XDCAM footage directly via Cinema tools without first converting the VBR files to CBR files. EX1 is writing variable bit rate files to the SxS cards and in order for them to be conformed in Cinema Tools, I have to first make each clip a constant bit rate. Once you do that, then you can quickly move forward with conforming a frame rate from 60fps to 23.98 (24fps) or what have you.

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

on the otherhand – maybe you should do a RESET to factory settings and also do this:

If you’re outside, and it’s ‘nice’ – another relative description…

Set your ND filter so that you are well out of blooming range. White Balance to white, and shoot a moment with your settings, and then DO shoot going FULL AUTO.

The way I see it, if it’s a nice day and you have engaged the necessary ND filter, and white balanced, then by going FULL AUTO, you should be able to bring back a very good image; at least one that begins to point toward some possibility that there is something wrong with your camera.

You must be sensing that we’re all a little surprised so far at your issue, and without knowing some needed details, the folks here who are very able to help, can not begin to lend a hand. Try what I’ve asked, it doesn’t need to be more than two seconds, and you should be able to post a clip that small for us to see your ‘noise’. From there we can start to see what may be going on. -s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

you’re getting good advice. I’d also mention something you may not know: The default processor setting in Apple Qmaster (System Prefereces) for Compressor (under Services) where it says “Number of Instances” is always set to 1. If you have a Dual Core, or a Core Duo, or a Dual Quad, you can up the number of instances to 2. (utilizing both cores to the maximum capacity.

If you check out the processor activity in Activity Monitor, (Utilities) – you will notice the difference it makes. Either way you go, this information will change the speed your compressions take. You will also notice a jump in processor temperature, so make sure your ventilated well. For that matter you can also throw the three computers (if they’re macs) on a fast switch (hub) via CAT5 and let the jobs share the processors of the other two macs that are sitting there idle. Final Cut Pro and Compressor are scalable, meaning you can add systems together to basically build a render farm.

Rafael or the others can probably explain that better then me, but at least look at Apple Qmaster in System Preferences and bump it to 2 instances instead of 1. hope it starts moving quickly for you. -s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

Natasha – unless it makes a difference what OSX/FCP ver. it still looks like you’re correct. On my Mac Pro: OSX ver.: 10.4.11 (Tiger), FCS2 / FCP ver. 6.0.5, here is the path for plug-ins:

Macintosh HD > Application Support > Final Cut Pro System Support > Plugins > (Boris, Noise Industries, etc.)

I’ve thought about upgrading to Leopard, at least for the benefit of Compressor, etc. but there are things on Tiger like the way you can preview in the finder; play / stop / move the scrubber, etc. and in Leopard it sucks to have to get the play arrow in the icon of the file you might want to preview, but unable to move forward or backward – plus there’s a lot more too.

I’m on Leopard on my macbook pro that I use at home, and it is nice to have it on that since it’s only a Core Duo – etc. I hope I haven’t misinformed you. good luck. -s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

Andy – thank you for explaining the procedure for clearing my prefs – and for the link to the program that does it. I really appreciate your help. -s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

I knew about preparing any audio, especially sound tracks/music beds to 48k 16 bit .aif files, so that they’re the same as the sequence audio settings, but this is what it turned out was the issue:

In this particular sequence I had a short .ipr I made in Livetype. It was set to 29.98fps whereas my sequence is 23.98fps (720p24) – so I changed that, but still had issues, however where the sound cut out on the tracks moved slightly further down in the sequence after the new render.

I went back to the .ipr in Livetype, and I exported (render movie) and imported it into my fcp project, and dropped it into the sequence, and my audio plays back again.

Technically, I think I should still be able to simply save and use the .ipr, but at this point in my schedule, I’ll take what works. The parting advice from Apple was to use Motion instead. Good advice. In project properties in Livetype, XDCAM isn’t an option but I can type into the fields the resolution and frame rate I want. When ‘rendered’ to a .mov it comes into the fcp browser as a animation compression and somehow that worked out better for the XDCAM sequence settings.

-s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer