[Steve Yu]

It has been a big disappointment that Apple would decide to sell the full version again, but ignore the needs of existing FCP6 users by not offering the upgrade.

I have been watching for the FCP Studio upgrade on Amazon for the last couple of months and occasionally it will pop up at the regular price, sold by Amazon as opposed to 3rd party sellers (for $500+). Today by chance, I checked the page and Amazon was selling it for $295 – I jumped on it and bought a copy, sent an email to a friend about it, and then checked again and it was gone. Price back up to $500

We’ll see if it ships — Amazon is typically very good at this, so I am hopeful. So if you are looking for the upgrade, I’d suggest checking Amazon routinely to see if it pops back up. I’m not sure how they’re even getting additional inventory of the upgrade version, but I may have lucked out today.

Good luck!

[Steve Yu]

There are pros and cons to all of these DSLRs. They all have capabilities to produce incredible picture quality.

If clip length is a primary concern, you definitely should be looking at a GH1 or GH2. It is a non-issue. I have been shooting documentary footage for a year and some interviews are around an hour in length. I haven’t hit a max clip length yet.

The GH2 is ideal but if you’re on a T2i budget you might consider the GH1 (find a used hackable version if you can, as the newer ones prevent the bitrate hack from being used). I didn’t like taking stills with my GH1 and the 14-140mm kit lens but I absolutely love taking stills with the 20mm f/1.7 lens.

[Steve Yu]

Dear FCP,

I can’t believe I’ve been editing for 2 years with you and just now I realized that all these extra tracks you’re creating when I use the VO tool are because I’m not setting in and out points on my main timeline to prevent the recording from overwriting something else in the A2 track.

Now if I can just find a good way to delete the 40 some extra tracks quicker I would be happy.

Happy Thanksgiving.

-S

[Steve Yu]

I’m not sure my input helped, but I’m glad you got it working!

FCP is a bit picky with the HV20/HV30 – the camera may think it’s in DV playback mode if you’ve played some DV footage in it the last time you powered on, so Log and Capture won’t like it if it’s expecting HDV, and vice versa.

After a while you’ll get a hang of the quirks!

I’ve had a bunch of similar issues with the Voice Over tool and my INSPIRE pre-amp. I’ve found that if I switch the payback frequency between 44khz and 48khz the mic sometimes comes on magically. (just a random note)

Have fun!

[Steve Yu]

Is iMovie launching automatically when the HV30 is plugged in? If so maybe you need to disable this option so that iMovie isn’t reserving the firewire input.

If this isn’t the case, you might try the following:

1) Connect the HV30 to your Mac Pro
2) Press play on the camera (with a tape with timecode) to ensure the playback mode is HD, then stop the tape
3) Go to Easy Setup and select your input device settings — I would choose HDV.
4) Press Command 8 (or choose Log and Capture).

It should work, so I’m not sure why it isn’t showing up for you… (I have 4 HV20s and have used them as decks on two different Mac Pros.

Good luck!

[Steve Yu]

Thanks for your response Tom – sorry not to provide more detail in my original question.

I am using the G TV Lines effect from Nattress Box of Tricks (in the TV Effects category).

The one thing I did notice, is that the filter works fine with a normal text overlay…it’s the text overlays that I’ve added motion keyframes to that make the filter’s effects disappear. I have a few instances where I have the year in the middle of the screen scaling up over time, and when this is going on, the TV Lines effect is lost.

The other odd thing I just tested…was that it seems to happen with the TV Lines effect, but not the others. Even other Nattress filters work with the text layer over it (Although it looks like something subtle might shift after the text animation is done). The TV Lines effect just disappears when the text is animating on top of it.

Any thoughts?

If not, I suppose I’ll try rendering the text animations in Motion, and recompositing them over the filtered video…

Thanks!
Steve