[Steven Topham]

Awesome reply and workflow suggestions. Thank you so much!
I have been looking into adding AE into my workflow for a short time now and it looks like I’m due. I’ll see about adding in Resolve once things get going even further.

[Steven Topham]

The engineer behind DragonFrame (the framegrabber) replied to my thread on stopmotionanimation.com https://www.stopmotionanimation.com/forum/topics/4k-stop-motion-with-dragonframe

My questions are answered, but if anyone wants to weigh in on their experience of dynamic range and 4k footage through the mini questions, I’m all ears.

[Steven Topham]

Try restarting the program and your computer.
If it’s not that simple, then it could be an issue with codecs chosen at different stages of your project not agreeing with each other.
More information would be helpful.

[Steven Topham]

Thanks so much Robin!
I also found this to study up on for anyone else who may stumble on this thread: https://documentation.apple.com/en/finalcutpro/professionalformatsandworkflows/index.html#chapter=10%26section=2%26tasks=true

[Steven Topham]

Thanks for your reply. My codec knowledge is limited, so do you mean that ProRes 4444 and Animation support alpha channels and better allow transparent backgrounds, or that they don’t?
The codec I was using in FCP was the Apple ProRes 422 (LT).
When exporting from motion, to get a transparent background I used the “same as source” option. I’m not sure how to obtain info on the source codec.

[Steven Topham]

I’m running FCP 7 with a ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024 MB on a MacPro. Shouldn’t that handle pretty much all graphics intensive situations still?

[Steven Topham]

It does have an expresscard34 slot…. and this is all new and exciting information for me. It looks like there are a slew of express card uses, so pardon me while I ask one more question:

After hearing from all of you, I told my boss that he will have to wait a little longer on delivery while I compress the files with my home MacPro. I am an animator and the MBP is my animation slave. It is used primarily for interfacing with my camera and running frame grabber software for extended periods of time. So, without doing tons of research into something I know nothing about, do any of you know of a good expresscard option for just helping a laptop run more efficiently for long periods (if something like that exists)?

[Steven Topham]

I don’t have a solution, but I get weird green bars like you’re describing and they turn out to be nothing, just FCP having a hard time with playback.
I get them when lowering the opacity of a clip made in motion when it is ‘fading’ to another clip. I know I’ve seen them in other instances, but this one is the most common. Once I export/compress the clip, the green bars aren’t there and it looks as it should.
If there is a setting to get rid of them, I haven’t found it.

[Steven Topham]

Awesome! Thank YOU!

[Steven Topham]

Completely agreed. I haven’t had to hotkey undo so much until I got one.
And playing Diablo3 with it is impossible!