[Tom Brooks]

First thing to try is to trash preferences. Use FCP Rescue 6 for that. It’s a free download (donation voluntary).

https://fcprescue.andersholck.com/

[Tom Brooks]

RT settings are on the far left of the timeline, in the track panel. I thought you might have been using unlimited RT or something. But you have everything rendered, so it’s something else.

[Tom Brooks]

It is difficult to guess the problem from the information you give. Are these problem sequences rendered? What color is the bar at the top of the timeline? What are your RT settings?

[Tom Brooks]

Mike,
Well, I’ve just started working with a system upgraded to OS-10.4.11, QT7.3.1, FCP 6.0.2. There is one media file that mysteriously would not reconnect. I’ve located it and am pointing right at it and…nothing. I’ve got several other projects operating no problem. I’m sorry I don’t have any solutions for you. Just corroboration of your problem at this point. I’ll try to see what’s different about that file.
-Tom

Final Cut Studio, FCP 6.0.2, Mac OS-X 10.4.11, Quicktime 7.3.1,After Effects 6.5 Pro, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V5.1, 4.5GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT 256MB, G-RAID 2x1TB FW800, 6TB RAID-5, Panasonic P2.

[Tom Brooks]

Those are some great tips. Going to “Print” directly from the web page doesn’t get you the operating system and browser-supplied parts of the screen, so that is something to consider, but printing to PDF is a brilliant idea.

If you’re using “Grab”, your screen resolution settings might affect how large your page is. On my Dell 24″, the page sizes were bigger than the original post reported, but still not big enough for a really extreme zoom in. For that, I got the best results by printing to PDF and then “placing” that PDF into a large (2000 pixels plus) Photoshop document. The fonts came in as vectors, so they stayed nice and clean. No JPEG mosquito noise!

[Tom Brooks]

Is it that way for any type of compression or just certain types? There are many complications with Flip4Mac that cause compression batches to fail, for example. I can consistently compress MPEG-2, but WMV is problematic with the combination of software versions I have at the moment.

[Tom Brooks]

PowerPoint can scale the video to any size on the slide or play it full screen. The scaling is surprisingly good, but I’d try to stay at the native size of the video or scale it down a bit if necessary. So I’d find out what the projected resolution will be and plan your video around that.

Yes, if you do moves, the pix should be about 2X your sequence size. If your text is static, then rasterize at the sequence size. You may be able to “Place” items from the PDFs into Photoshop. This gives you flexibility in sizing as you place them in the image. PDFs are also good in Motion.

Let me ask you…will you be projecting at 1024×768 and will you place the videos in a window on the slide or will they run full screen?

[Tom Brooks]

Elise,
Producing slide shows is much like working with source material, sequences and playback equipment in Final Cut. The source material should be suited to the sequence and the sequence should be compatible with the playback equipment.

You could produce a show at 640×480 square pixels and set the projector for that mode if it has such a mode. But that’s way below normal slide projection resolution today. It will not scale up nicely. If you do that, the result will be pixelated, jaggy, and mushy. Normal resolution is 1024×768, which is a 4:3 aspect ratio. There are many variations, of course, but that’s probably the most common format.

I agree that Keynote might be a good way to go. If you choose it, you’ll want to bring your sources in at a size equal to or larger than the resolution of your show (1024×768 usually). So your pictures should be twice that size if you plan to do “Ken Burns” moves on them or approximately that size if you don’t. When the show is complete, you have choices–you can play the show straight out of Keynote on a Mac, you can export the show as a Quicktime Movie at 1024×768, or you can export it as PowerPoint and play it on a PC (some effects from Keynote might not translate, however).

If you were to go strictly with Final Cut you could simply work in a regular old DV format and output to DVD at the end. In that case, the projector would switch to the appropriate resolution matching the DVD player connected to it. The quality would be the same as your normal DVD quality–just projected bigger.

Or, you could get fancy and go to an HD sequence. Output from that could either be a Quicktime movie or you could play back from an expensive HD VTR or DVD. It would be good to test the workflow and playback on this before you get too deep into it.

Any way you go, the source pictures need to come in at or above the resolution of your final output.

[Tom Brooks]

I’ve heard the same problem since getting my HVX200. Using a wired lavaliere mic, I was getting a faint pickup on a radio station. By eliminating the XLR mic cable and plugging the mic directly into the HVX input it was fixed. I tried various cables until I found one that was completely free of the radio pickup. It seems to depend on the quality of the shielding on the mic cable.

[Tom Brooks]

I was starting with version 6.0 and going to 6.0.2. I went through a comprehensive upgrade of OS-X, Quicktime, Pro Apps Update, FC Studio and Kona Control Panel to finally end up with OS-10.4.11, the latest updates for FC Studio, QT 7.3.1, and Kona 5.1. That’s the latest that I trust from what I read in various sources. The one thing I did not do was trash FC prefs. I’m not sure if that gets trashed in the upgrade process for a “dot-x version” anyway. Besides, I shouldn’t have to do that. Properly designed software and installers should take care of it or at least instruct you to do that in the release notes.

The new control panel seems to look for things with different names than before. For example, AJA Kona Control Panel instead of AJA Control Panel. And, in spite of the error messages in the Info panel, the control panel seemed to function fine. So, it had what it needed, but it SAID it didn’t have what it needed.

I was going from version 4.0 to version 5.1, by the way. The correct version for my OS, Kona card, and FC version. I got it working without the errors in a few minutes, but it’s possible there’s something slightly amiss with either the installer or the release notes.