[Tj Shank]

Here are the settings I use on our HDW-F500.

Push the TC button on the front panel. On the bottom of the display, under “TCG Source”, I select “Int-V”. When I start a stripe, the “TCG Mode” is set to “Prst”, after the stripe is done BE SURE to set it back to “Regen”. On the right is a setting for “VITC” – make sure it is set to “TCG”.

One way to check if your stripe is good is to watch the TC display on the VTR as you go from “Play” to “Shuttle” to “Fast Forward”. The display should be showing a constant TC rather than one that changes from, say, 1 hour TC to 0 hour TC.

HTH,

tjs

[Tj Shank]

SDorsey,

My guess would be the Time Code settings on the VTR. It sounds like you have LTC time code on your blacked tape, but not VITC. The machine looks at one when it is in FF or RW, and the other when it is in play. If you set the machine correctly and restripe the tape, you should be OK.

tjs

[Tj Shank]

I spent a half hour talking to some of the Motion guys in the booth about this.
There seems to be some of the tools, but no raster paint and no cloning. You could do simple roto masks, for example, but they flat-out said that the tools for wire-removal, dirt fixes, and that sort of thing aren’t part of Motion.
The tool referred to as ‘Vector Paint’ seems to be mostly a write-on or particle distribution tool (write your name in pixie dust, etc.). Very cool effects, but if photo-realistic fixes are what you need, AE (or Silhouette) would be the way to go.
Maybe a third party would like to build a plug? Should be doable, and the tracker in Motion is from Shake and is first rate.

tjs

[Tj Shank]

We use Edit To Tape every day, with digiBeta, BetaSP, HDCam, DVCam (basically any and all edit-capable Sony decks). Works just fine. The previous post is correct. Stripe some black at the head of the tape with the TC you need. Stripe PAST the edit in point. Then, make sure your deck is in TC Regenerate mode, back up to the blacked part of the tape, enter an in point, and assemble edit.

tjs

[Tj Shank]

I don’t want a full multi-track mixer – but I’d kill for a Normalize filter in FCP so I don’t have to keep exporting every clip from a given tape to SoundTrack Pro because field audio was recorded low…

tjs

[Tj Shank]

Todd,

This happens when your FCP preferences are corrupt. This seems to happen to us when we switch from one easy setup to another with a project open, but can happen at other times, too.

What John is suggesting with the link to FCP Rescue is that you trash your preferences and rebuild them (a bit painful if you’ve got a lot of custom window layouts and the like), then use Rescue to record a ‘clean’ version. The next time your preferences get corrupted, FCP Rescue will replace them with the clean version at the click of the mouse. We use it often.

tjs

[Tj Shank]

Hi Rob,

We use a setup much like you are describing (6 FCP stations, XServes running XSAN, shared XRaid storage), and we also moved from Avid. One of the reasons we moved to FCP was to gain the ability to do HD along with SD for a good price.
My biggest recommendation to you would be to find a good (read EXPERIENCED) reseller/installer. HD has a lot more “technical details” that have to be set up just right than SD does. That said, once set up we have been able to work with HD in much the same manner that we work with SD.
We also dedicate one entire storage pool to HD and one to SD, which gives us the bandwidth we need to work without problems.
Our capture card of choice is the AJA Kona 2, with an AJA IO for analog (SD) ins and outs. I would highly recommend this hardware – everything works as advertised and the tech support is very good.
Others on this forum use Huge Systems disk arrays for storage and seem to like them. They would cost less than the XRaids. Whatever storage you choose, the faster the connection between workstation and storage the better. Fiber channel connections are what I would do.

Hope this helps,

tjs

[Tj Shank]

From Wikipedia:

Alan Smithee, Allen Smithee, and Adam Smithee are pseudonyms used between 1968 and 1999 by Hollywood film directors who wanted to be dissociated from a film for which they no longer wanted credit. It was used when the director could prove to the satisfaction of a panel of members of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) and Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers that the film had been wrested from his or her creative control. The director is also required to keep the reason for the disavowal a secret. The pseudonym cannot be used to hide a director’s failures.

The first movie to use it was Death of a Gunfighter. During its filming, Richard Widmark was unhappy with director Robert Totten. He arranged to have Totten replaced by Don Siegel. When the film was finished, neither Totten nor Siegel wanted to be credited with the result. At first it was decided that the credit should go to Al Smith, but the DGA said there had already been a director by that name. The DGA decided the film could carry the pseudonym “Allen Smithee”. Smithee’s work was praised by film critics.

…slow day here…

tjs

[Tj Shank]

I’m looking in the Capture Presets window at the Kona 2 capture settings available right now. They’re all 8 bit…

tjs