Todd Terry
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COW Coin
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Thank you for that helpful comment.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Sorry about that, Alexander… although I still definitely would recommend doing that exporting step.
Now, I’m completely talking out of my ear here… which I usually wouldn’t do… but the Canon forum doesn’t get much traffic and you don’t seem to be getting any other help so I’ll venture out anyway…
Keeping in mind that I’m a veteran Premiere user and have never even once touched FCP in any incarnation whatsoever… are you sure that FCP (and specifically your version of it) can actually handle/import .MXF files?
Seems to me now that I remember hearing the woes of Apple users who could not natively use .MXF files, and had to convert them to other formats prior to attempting to import them into Final Cut. I would assume this was fixed in later versions of FC… but I really have no idea since, as I said, I’m not an Apple guy at all.
I’d say you definitely need to confirm that you should be able to import the native .MXF files directly. If you can, good, then keep working to track down your problem. If not… then you’re spinning your wheels trying to get something done that will never happen no matter what you do… and you’ll have to do file conversion externally outside of FCP first.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Keeping in mind that I’m not a FCP user but a Premiere user…
Reading your list of things you did with the footage and the XF utility, I see where you backed up the footage (a good thing), but unless I missed it I didn’t see anywhere that you actually exported the footage to get it ready to edit.
In the Canon XF utility, select either the camera card or your backup in the far left column so that you can see all the clips in the big window… then select one, several, or all of the clips… then go EDIT >> “Export To MXF” where you can export the actual MXF file(s) to the location of your choice, name them, number them, etc. Then after you export them to the location of your choice you should be able to import them into your editing program.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Appreciated, Steve… but see… that’s just it…
[Steve Kownacki] “I think many of your best assets you already work with every day.”
…agreed, and we’re all tapped out. The Genius Switch has finally found its off position.
[Steve Kownacki] ” take your crews out for dinner and tap them for ideas.”
Good idea, if there were any crews. The creative team is me and my biz partner. That’s it. Aside from bringing my editor with us to crew on location, the three of us are it. There is no other “crew.” We run very lean.
I’d gladly pay for ideas… but finding a genius pool of creative types is darn hard.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I don’t know, the numbers aren’t labeled… to keep things interesting.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Mark, you know I already have you on speed dial.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Oh I’ve gone to the Suszko well a number of times before… he’s a good source for sure, but it’s hard to continually ask for long-distance favors.
I can’t put him on the payroll because I can’t compete with fatcat government dollars, nor give him a schedule with enough flexible free time to write 3,483,321-word posts on the COW every day (kidding, Mark… you’re a treasure).
As to the others who responded, thanks for the thoughts.
Yes, we realize business is changing… and we do produce a fair number of web videos, pieces for social media, industrials, things like that. But our bread and butter is still broadcast commercials, and we manage to stay more or less fully booked doing those, fortunately in our market there is plenty of need for that.
As I’ve said we’ve thought about media buying, but it’s not really our thing. Half our clients are already ad agencies who obviously do that themselves. And our biggest non-agency clients do their own buying directly, and they are large enough that they already get agency rates from media outlets, so there’s no money to be made there. That only leaves the small fish, probably not enough to bother with. We are occasionally asked if we can place media and we say “Sure!,” but we really just funnel that job to another one-man agency we work with often, we don’t even ask for a cut.
We’re not really looking to drive more work in (although we wouldn’t turn it down), but to better take care of the clients we have… most have been with us for years and years and have come to expect great ideas… and sadly the idea sponge has dried up.
It’s almost funny that clients think things the shooting, directing, editing, casting, producing and all the various accoutrements that come with production is the hard part. That part is child’s play, I can do it in my sleep. They don’t give a second thought to generating the IDEAS though, and that’s the really tough part.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Here in the US the range is pretty wide for the production costs of network programming.
For reality-type shows, production budgets usually range $50,000-$150,000 USD per half hour. Something near the lower $50K range are definitely going to be the cheaper and more simple shows you might see on a cable channel. A broadcast network reality show might be significantly more than that.
On the upper end, a prime-time network drama (Law & Order, Hannibal, NCIS, etc.), production costs are going to be in the $2-3 million range for an hour.
And everything in between.
I have to confess that I’ve never heard of Black Mirror so I’m not sure what type of show that is or where it falls in the production-value food chain.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Osama Ommey] “I know many women similar to the one you mentioned , but the difference is : They don’t have other work to concentrate on !”
Wow… if this weren’t such a predominantly-male forum I’d say that someone just kicked a hornet’s nest. Hard.
Just glad it wasn’t me. 🙂
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Josh Figatner] ” that we should always use dual-slot record when we can with the C300 and I think that’s BS.”
Sorry to disagree, but calling using dual slots BS is, well, simply BS. It doesn’t matter that you have a 14-grand camera (which is remarkably cheap, for what you get), it’s the cheapo media that’s the issue. I mean, even if you buy the most expensive cards out there, that’s one tiny tiny drop in the bucket of the cost of a typical shoot. Unless you are shooting a long event where you need to relay long takes between card slots, there’s absolutely no reason not to dual-slot shoot. Not doing so, when it takes about two seconds to stick another card in the other slot, is just foolish (imho).
I always shoot dual slot. I shot 35mm for years, and I guarantee you that if I had been able somehow to stick a second backup magazine full of filmstock on top of the camera, I’d have done that in a heartbeat… at a cost significantly more than the throwaway price of a reusable CF card. And yes, I’ve had a card fail a time or two… no fault of my C300PL, it was a card issue. And the backup saved me.
Ok, with that part of the rant over… yes, as Josh suggested, DO use the XF utility, and I bet it will eliminate your problem. There’s no compelling reason NOT to use the XF utility either… that’s what it’s there for. It makes viewing your clips (and selecting/merging/exporting) only the ones you need a breeze, and it makes fast backups. Yes, you CAN just drag all the card contents to your computer, but then depending on how many times you hit the camera trigger there may be nests of dozens (potentially even hundreds) of nested folders to wade through to get the .MXF files. With the XF utility, doing that is about two mouse clicks. It’s what the software is made for, it’s free, and it works like a charm.
If you still have the original camera cards and they play back fine (with no glitches) in your C300 viewfinder, then use the XF utility to export/merge the .MXF files and I’m betting the problem will be gone. If you do NOT still have the original camera cards, you can try this… reformat (in computer, not camera) a blank card and put your backup footage back on it. You’ll need everything, the complete folder/file structure, everything except possibly the TOP folder (depending on how you made your backup). You’ll want to start with the folder called CONTENTS and drag that one back to the card. THEN use the XF utility to make a backup of the card to your hard drive, then use the XF utility to extract/merge the .MXF files from the backup. You could do it just from the card instead, but I always do it from the backup.
Good luck!
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
