[Steve Eisen]

Do you have a Blu ray burner?

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Steve Eisen]

[Matt M, PA] “My issue is jerky playback”

[Matt M, PA] “I’ve tried many different compressions, the one that seems to work best is 1920×1080, h.264.”

Convert your original footage to ProRes and tell us how it plays back.

Follow David’s advice for FW 800 drives.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Steve Eisen]

Text fonts that look decent to the eye in photoshop on a computer screen compared to certain fonts in video can look not so attractive. Try using a different font to see if that makes a difference. Try it on 1 image first.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Steve Eisen]

Are you using the latest drivers from Matrox? Should be 2.2.3 for Snow Leopard.

Trashing your preferences can’t hurt. Use Digital Rebellion’s Preference Manager.

One more thing overlooked is your window layout. Hit Control U to reset and Shift Z in you Canvas and Viewer.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Steve Eisen]

[Mark Trifunovic] “I am wondering if there is a way I can use the existing edit – in and out points, fades, transitions, etc. – but apply it to the new converted footage, without having to go through each individual clip again.”

Learn from your mistakes. You will have to re-edit.

Here is a tapeless workflow for FCP:
https://library.creativecow.net/ross_shane/tapeless-workflow_fcp-7/1

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Steve Eisen]

Best advise. Create a partition for each app and OS.

here is a great tutorial from David Roth Weiss.
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/FCP-10-MAC-Lion/1

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Steve Eisen]

Capture i/o devices from Matrox, AJA and Black Magic are so affordable these days. Everyone should have them. You can even monitor your timeline via inexpensive LCD TV’s.

External units you can use on both the Mac Pro and Mac Book Pro (firewire 800 or Express 34) and PCIe units just for the Mac Pro.

With Thunderbolt units, you can connect to MBP and iMac.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Steve Eisen]

Delete the Final Cut Studio System ID and relaunch FCP.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Steve Eisen]

Mac HD/Library/Application Support/ProApps/Final Cut Pro System ID

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Steve Eisen]

You are doing everything right.

[Bijoyini Chatterjee] “Is there a step I am missing? SD DVDs that are professionally made look fine on my laptop (Mac OSX 10.6.8) and what Compressor is outputting is so far from the professional quality DVDs”

There is a huge difference in the way professional discs are made compared to those made with Compressor and DVDSP. The cost of the authoring software and hardware used is far beyond what the average person could afford. That’s why it’s called Professional. Also viewing dvds on a laptop or any computer compared to viewing them on a standard tv set via dvd player is also very different.

If you have a Blu-ray burner, you may want to try and create a Blu Ray version to compare. You may see a difference between sd and hd.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group