[Steve Covello]

I sorry to say, IMO, that FCP’s match frame/find bin is nothing but garbage. Garbage, garbage, garbage. You will never be as satisfied as you once were with Avid’s version of the same functions. You are mostly SOL, so my advice is to establish the location of your clip media in bins, and then NEVER CHANGE them. FCP will lose track. The one thing FCP has added that partially makes up for this is their “can’t find clip, would you like tocreate a new one?’ function, which makes a mess of your media management. Ugh.

Sorry this isn’t much help, but I’ve been pretty dissatisfied with this aspect of FCP that I had to vent.

Now if they would only fix it so that changing the speed of a clip doesn’t ripple your edit!! Errrrr!

steve covello

[Steve Covello]

I agree with not going to SD on this.

Here’s my penny’s worth: If you are satisfied with how HDV looks upconverted to HD 1080 UC via K3, then go with that as your online format in FCP. Do the cross-convert or upres [whichever you call it in this case, semantics be damned] of HDV to HDCam 1080 UC.

Then make a selects layoff reel of your SD DV footage and have it upconverted to same HD 1080 HDCam with the best process you can afford outside of just upconverting it via K3. If you don’t mind a laborious matchback process, you can save some dough by at least consolidating all your SD stuff to one or two layoffs instead of handing them over a few boxes of tapes and an EDL.

Then you can layoff your master to HDCam and do a proper color correct as mentioned previously. Be aware, also, that if your film will be making the rounds to other venues who DO NOT use film as a projection medium, you may need to have an HDCam color corrected master for HD projection, which is a whole nuther set of blacks and luma issues. And if you make a DVD in SD at some point, you will have to consider which of your “masters” will be downconverted — the online FCP version, the film-out version, or the projection screen version.

Definitely ask about this at your facility BEFORE you commit to the room setup that you book for color correct. There may be a compelling reason to do so in a projection environment rather than on an HD CRT. I can’t really say which is the best option, but I’ve at least had to explain to clients why each setup is different, and why their damn vhs screening copy doesn’t look like it should.

This may be another way of saying the same thing as the other guys just said, so pardon my redundancy.

steve covello

[Steve Covello]

While I agree in principle with Jeff’s reply, I respectfully disagree.

None of your current software should be a problem for an Intel mac. the only issues would be that they are not Universal Binary, meaning that they are coded for PCC chip, not Intel, and thus would require ‘translation’ [invisibly] by Rosetta in order to work. This requires nothing on your part to do.

The main thing is that, even by just upgrading to a more contemporary Mac, you will enjoy INSANELY better performance than from a single 467mhz processor.

So don’t sweat the software expense until there is SPECIFIC function of the new software that will make your work permanently improved, such as working with P2 files or ProRes [none of which were mentioned in your post].

steve covello

[Steve Covello]

You need to provide ALL of the details of your setup to expect an answer for this. Please include your OS version and FCP version, and the machine you are using + media drives.

One possibility is that you are missing the font that exists in your FCP titles. Don’t worry about the “” media message. I’ve worked with projects for weeks with that message appearing every time.

The main thing is to get your project open and transferred to another new, clean project.

First, trash prefs by using FCP Rescue [goto versiontracker.com. it’s free]

Then use Tiger Cache Cleaner [goto same place. buy it. it’s worth the money]. goto Caches, choose MEdium Cleaning, and select all levels.

Be sure your Capture Scratch is located in the correct location and NOT to your hard drive Documents/Final Cut Pro Documents, as often occurs after a crash.

If any of this works for you, open a brand new project, set the User and System preferences correctly, choose the Easy Setup, name and save your new empty project. This will establish “known good” preferences upon save/quit. Then re-open it, then try to open your old project. If it opens, then drag/drop everything from the old project to the new one. Save/quit. Then double click on the NEW project file to ONLY open that one project. You should be OK from this point forward.

Again, there may be OS/FCP version issues that pre-emp any o the above advice, so fill s in on that first.

steve covello

[Steve Covello]

Oh man, you really asked for it by upgrading in the middle of an ongoing project. Hate to be that way, what was posted before was soooo true… Anyway:

some real help:

If you have renders [from FCP] in the Renders folder that were created from when you were at the previous version, delete them all and re-render FCP — everything.

Be sure that if there were any additional QuickTime components in the Library folder that required installation other than from an OS install, reinstall them if they are missing.

Your problem may also have nothing to do with your upgrade and could be a coincidence with other disk drive related issues. The usual checklist:

– disk drives formatted in Mac Os Extended, NOT FAT32. If your drives are FAT32, copy everything off to another volume temporarily, re-format your drive to Mac OS Extended [which wipes it clean] and then copy back your media files. Unless you are working with a RAID such as XServe or CalDigit, etc., set the FW drives Journaling on if it isn’t already [in Disk Utility]
– drives NOT filled to capacity — at least 10% free space or more
– media files constrained to only a couple locations at most, if possible, and NOT spread out in scattered Capture Scratch or Renders folders over a bunch of drives. Render files in FCP are not conscious of duplicate filenames if the Render folders are in different locations. FCP can be very confused when this happens.
– NO media on the computer’s hard drive
– known good cabling, preferably FW800
– no additional drives that are not part of the project daisy chained unnecessarily, or even worse, your project drive at the end of a chain of slower drives.
– try not to mix brands of drives. I have also had LOTS of problems with Lacie drives, especially when linked with [better] G-Tech drives.
– no other applications open if possible, no other processor intensive processes running in the BG while playing down FCP
– use FW drives that have internal RAID as opposed to just a single internal drive when possible, especially with 8-bit UC SD and compressed HD. DV resolution doesn’t all that much matter.

other stuff:

– if your renders from AE are in the same codec as your FCP project, then you should have no problem, i.e. no orange or red line on the FCP timeline. But if you are rendering in Animation, then it will not play cleanly unless it is rendered down to the FCP working resolution. Try not to rely on FCP to do this error-free, so render in the proper resolution of the project if you aren’t already doing this.
– use Tiger Cache Cleaner – medium cleaning, all 3 levels, trash prefs
– more obvious stuff, but be sure the Canvas window is set to Fit To Window.

gooooood luck.

steve covello

[Steve Covello]

Are you doing it through an AJA product? SDI or FW? Unless you go in component analog/analog sound, no AJA board or SDI deck will help you.

Not even the DSR-2000 can play LP tapes, and I don’t think any of the popular smaller DV decks i.e. DSR-11-type decks can either, so you are relegated to loading from your camera, through FW. though this is not considered a good policy for the sake of wear and tear on the camera’s heads, you might be SOL.

Should work, though if you will be working in a 48k environment, you will get a redline on your audio or perhaps some rendering, depending on your system. Picture should be normal, though you may encounter more errors than usual due to dense data packing on the tape.

steve covello

[Steve Covello]

My usual pre-amble: Dumb question, but are you outputting via Print to Video or Edit to Tape, or playing off the timeline [a no-no]? Avid editors can’t get used to NOT being able to output from the timeline in FCP, but that’s another subject.

Also, your Control Panel has the correct signal going out to the component line too, I presume.

steve covello

[Steve Covello]

Are your project files on an external drive? if so, move them to your desktop and try it again. I have seen this problem happen on rare ocassion.

steve covello

[Steve Covello]

dumb thing to mention, but just in case…

I assume you are referring to the quality of the picture as seen in a legit TV monitor, NOT according to the Canvas window, which will only display one field no matter what.

steve covello

[Steve Covello]

New demo from scratch:

https://homepage.mac.com/apescience/

I’m communicating with the developer and getting his input on how I did the initial setup, with sensitivity to non-technical types being the user.

I am just getting acquainted with it so I have to see its limitations, so I’m not selling this as the be-all, end-all. but so far it’s damn good!

steve