[Stuart Simpson]

I’ll risk getting my neck and say that it doesn’t look good. The ProRes codec looks to be part of the FCP install – if Apple were going to make it cross platform I would expect it to be rolled into Quicktime…

I would love to be wrong about this though!

-Simmie
2 G5 – Kona LH
3 G4s – Cinewave
1 xbox360, 1 PSP, 1 PS2 & a Gamecube
https://www.speak.co.uk

[Stuart Simpson]

Your white level might be to high. Try dropping a broadcast safe filter on the effect and choose the highest level of conservatism…

-Simmie
2 G5 – Kona LH
3 G4s – Cinewave
1 xbox360, 1 PSP, 1 PS2 & a Gamecube
https://www.speak.co.uk

[Stuart Simpson]

Yeah it definately seems to be a problem with the 2-pass option, happens to us every time. Like Tom says, stick to 1-pass encodes and you should be fine.

-Simmie
2 G5 – Kona LH
3 G4s – Cinewave
1 xbox360, 1 PSP, 1 PS2 & a Gamecube
https://www.speak.co.uk

[Stuart Simpson]

[walter biscardi] “Our G5 Dual 2.0 is running an ATI x800XT card and it runs the current Final Touch HD (which is now Color) and in fact I delivered 6 HD episodes off of that machine.”

That’s good to hear. However the Apple website seems to say that to run Color on a G5 you will need one of the following:

ATI Radeon X1600
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT, 7600 GT, 7300 GT, 6800 Ultra DDL, 6800 GT DDL, 6600, or Quadro FX 4500

https://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/specs.html

Think they’ve changed the requirements?

-Simmie
2 G5 – Kona LH
3 G4s – Cinewave
1 xbox360, 1 PSP, 1 PS2 & a Gamecube
https://www.speak.co.uk

[Stuart Simpson]

[Timecode Multimedia] “We have been running FinalTouch on a G5 PCI-X with an ATI X800XT.
I believe it will still run the new “Color” with it….”

Thanks – good to know. Looks like Apple have changed the spec slightly on their website, guess I’ll have to wait till Studio starts shipping to see what does and doesn’t work…

-Simmie
2 G5 – Kona LH
3 G4s – Cinewave
1 xbox360, 1 PSP, 1 PS2 & a Gamecube
https://www.speak.co.uk

[Stuart Simpson]

[David Roth Weiss] “If your machines are PCIx then there’s hope, as there may be some PCIx cards capable of running Color.”

Our machines are indeed PCI-X – but the graphics card is definately still on an AGP bus. As far as I know you can’t get/put a PCI-X GFX card in a mac with AGP. Or am I wrong about this?

-Simmie
2 G5 – Kona LH
3 G4s – Cinewave
1 xbox360, 1 PSP, 1 PS2 & a Gamecube
https://www.speak.co.uk

[Stuart Simpson]

What’s the import tax sting at the moment?

-Simmie
2 G5 – Kona LH
3 G4s – Cinewave
1 xbox360, 1 PSP, 1 PS2 & a Gamecube
https://www.speak.co.uk

[Stuart Simpson]

I find this section of the PDF interesting:

“Rendering
Although native editing of HDV and XDCAM HD formats with Final Cut Pro is popular
and has many advantages, ProRes 422 can still bring signifi cant benefits to the render-
ing process. Because long GOP formats are complex and highly compressed, rendering
tends to be slow and may reduce the quality headroom present in the stream. Through
a new user preference in Final Cut Pro 6.0, the editor can choose to render effects in
HDV and XDCAM HD using ProRes 422. This will result in faster rendering time and a
higher-quality 4:2:2 composite. For projects that are mastering to HD-SDI, ProRes 422
is the perfect rendering choice.”

Sounds like FCP using the mixed formats timeline capability in an interesting way… I wonder if this setting is global? Could I work on a 10 bit timeline, but render in ProRes?

-Simmie
2 G5 – Kona LH
3 G4s – Cinewave
1 xbox360, 1 PSP, 1 PS2 & a Gamecube
https://www.speak.co.uk

[Stuart Simpson]

Download the Perian quicktime plugin:

https://www.perian.org/

Then use Compressor or MPEG Streamclip to convert to whatever you want to work in:

https://www.squared5.com/

It’s our workflow for this situation and it works fine. Theoretically the perian plugin will let you import straight into FCP, but converting first will save the extra rendering.

-Simmie
2 G5 – Kona LH
3 G4s – Cinewave
1 xbox360, 1 PSP, 1 PS2 & a Gamecube
https://www.speak.co.uk

[Stuart Simpson]

Great news as far as we’re concerned. Our big beef with HDV (and XDCAM flavours of HDV) isn’t the quality – for many of our clients it’s as good as they need – it’s he huge render times. And don’t get me started on the conform render…

-Simmie
2 G5 – Kona LH
3 G4s – Cinewave
1 xbox360, 1 PSP, 1 PS2 & a Gamecube
https://www.speak.co.uk