[Tim Wilde]

Turns out I have two such lenses.

One is attached to a JVC KY27 Betacam, and it is the J8x6B, 6-48mm, pictured here.

Here’s a shot of the mounting hardware on lens and JVC.

The other lens is a J13x9B4, 9-117mm (ah!, there’s an instance of a 4 after the B). It has a 2x extender on it, for what that’s worth. Also engraved on it are the words “Canon Macro TV zoom”, which I presume means it’s got macro focusing capability.

Here’s a shot of its mount.

I’d swear I read somewhere about using a MFT-to-Nikon lens adapter for these Canons, but the bayonet cutouts in my $20 K&F Concept adapter for Nikon G lenses are much shallower than what is required by the Canons. Maybe machining was involved, or maybe I misread.

I welcome all comments about these lenses and the feasibility of using them with a Panasonic GH4 micro-four-thirds camera.

If it is feasible, has anyone found a way to provide power to the zoom? (I realize I can probably find pinouts for the connector by searching, but an existing recipe is always preferable.)

Thank you, again!

[Tim Wilde]

Thank you for suggesting an alternative, Claude. When I shoot a wedding, for example, recording is pretty much continuous. So a single imported FCPX clip (what I refer to as a “master clip”) will contain many segments I want to use in editing. Naming a master clip seems useless to me, thus my use of the Favorites feature to demarcate and annotate each segment within the master clip.

Unless I misunderstand, keywords are just that: a word or two; and only ten keywords are possible.

I’m tempted to explore breaking one of these master clips into individual clips, one for each segment. Then I could type my descriptive text in the clip name field and use keywords for their intended purpose.

Does anyone do this, and if so, what’s the best way?

[Tim Wilde]

Thank you, Jeff! I thought I had tried the tab key and got a different result, but it sure does do what you said. Wonderful!

[Tim Wilde]

Thanks, Brian. Your keyboard shortcut sure beats using the mouse to expand each clip to display Favorites.

I tried your suggestion to enable Show Skimmer Info (View menu) and it shows the clip name but not the annotation for the Favorite selection currently being skimmed over. Since the clip name is already visible in the browser (I had to click on it to display it) I don’t grasp the benefit of Show Skimmer Info.

[Tim Wilde]

Yes? (Frank Miller style)

What’s the shortcut, Brian?

[Tim Wilde]

Thank you for replying, Justin, but I don’t think what I’ve got is a “compound clip” in this case. It’s a fully editable and manipulatable project consisting of multiple clips (and tracks if this were any other editor), transitions, audio tracks, etc. If I “Select All” and then go to the Clip menu, “Break apart clip items” is greyed out because there’s nothing to break apart; all the elements are separate just as they would be in any project.

My problem is that when I exit FCPX and later reopen the project it’s empty. I was told this is because the “project” was built upon a clip in the event browser, so that’s where it’s stored.

I’d like to convert this screwy project-in-a-clip to a real bona fide Project.

Surely I’m not the first person to mistakenly add a clip to the timeline by dragging it there or using “Open in Timeline”. My mistake is easily repeated:

1. create a new project and name it “test”
2. select a clip in the event browser
3. right-click and select “Open in Timeline”
4. cut the clip somewhere and insert a transition there
5. select another clip in the event browser and drag it to the timeline.
6. insert a transition at that cut point
… at this point you have a mini project. You could do a lot more as I did but this will suffice for demonstration purposes.
7. exit FCPX
8. reopen FCPX.
9. find the newly created “test” project in the Project Library. It’ll be a blank gray line.
10. open it and indeed the timeline will be empty
11. look in the event browser for the clip you started with. It may be under a new date.
12. right-click on it and select “Open in Timeline”. Your mini test project will open in the timeline.

THAT’s what I accidentally did. It all seems to hinge on my having used “open in timeline” instead of any other method of moving the first clip of the project to the timeline.

So what I’m wondering is: can I convert this to a “real” project, one that will behave like any other project?

[Tim Wilde]

DOH! Thank you to all.

[Tim Wilde]

Andy,

Thank you again for your help. Spot on.

Some observations for your tutorial:

1. The layers related to the keyframes you want to repeat must be selected in the Layers panel and visible in the Animated view of keyframe editor before selecting and copying the keyframes as a group.
2. As soon as you’ve copied the keyframes to the clipboard move the playhead to the destination where they are to be repeated and Paste.
3. It helps to think of the keyframes to be copied as a “group”, with a start point having a keyframe (yellow diamond with red center) for every layer and an end point also having a keyframe for every layer.
4. When “designing” a group to be copied there’s usually additional keyframing needed, because you must add keyframes to lock in the state of every layer’s adjustments before and after the group of effects. This is hard to explain but it’ll be obvious when you get into it.
5. Saving this group as a Curve Set, which I’ve tried several times for different groups of effects, serves only as a reference for which layers are involved, because you still must manually select all the relevant layers before copying the keyframe group to the clipboard.
6. While having a technique for repeating groups of effects is better than recreating them “manually”, this still feels like a kluge. As a Motion noob I may be showing my ignorance in the following suggestion (because it might already exist!), but here goes: it would be better if, after creating a group of effects like this, you could save it. THEN, when you want to reuse it later in the timeline you could simply open the defined group and all relevant layers would be selected, and the keyframes would be placed on the clipboard, ready for pasting at the playhead. Even better, the length of the group in frames would be visible in the group name so if you want the group effect to end at a specific timecode the playhead’s placement is easily calculated.

I suspect you’re well ahead of me but I wanted to reciprocate in whatever way I can.

Thank you again and good luck with the tutorial.

[Tim Wilde]

Thank you David. An interesting video. It didn’t address my particular issue but I appreciated your attempt to help, and the video is definitely worth noting.

[Tim Wilde]

Andy,

I must be a moron. See the attached very simple example Motion 5 project. Two rectangles move independently. Please use your technique to copy their move — as a group — to frame 100. In my original much more complex project the keyframes all paste but their relative timing is lost. So I created this ultra simple test and the same thing happens. Please tell me where I’m screwing up. Thanks.

6301_testkeyframegroupcopypaste.zip