[Tom Matthies]

Try using Apple’s Keynote. It has a nifty Quicktime export feature and it works pretty well for making QT movies out of PPT presentations.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Hi Chris.
I shoot with a Firestore FS3 and it does allow me to record to tape at the same time as recording to the hard drive. Each clip on the HD has the same timecode as the clips on the tape. Roll the tape and the FS3 automatically goes into the capture mode. I normally record to tape as a backup and use the clips from the FS3 HD for editing. I’ve been doing it this way for over two years now never had a problem. It’s a great timesaver! I would assume that the FS100 operates in a similar manner.

Matt at Focus Enhancements is a good source of info. You might want to contact him directly. He is often lurking around these forums.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

It’s designed to be used as a transition between two clips. If you use it between two full screen clips, it will go all the way to the edges of the TV raster. If you use it between two clips that are not full screen, say two titles, it should only go slightly outside of the graphics themselves. Is there a problen with the transition going all of the way to the edges of the rester? I guess I’m not sure just why you would want to constrain the effect inside of the safe borders.
Can you explain your situation a little better?
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

I’ve been doing spot production for more years than I care to talk about and I must say that the “standards” have changed a bit over the years.
Not many years ago, in the Chicago market, the BIG agencys had a very definite standard for their spots. 15 frame fade in/fade out. Bars/tone a slate and an academy leader complete with a 2-pop and then 1:28 of black before the spot started. We even put noise test standards as well as channel and phase information on the tone under the bars. all in all a very specific standard that was used ALWAYS-no exceptions. These were all national quality spots-not the local stuff.
These days, with the advent of digital servers, it seems that just about anything goes. I see about an even amount of spots that fade up from black and those that cut in and out. With the digital servers that most spots are play from, it’s very easy to set the in and out point that the spots will start at with an accuracy of +/- one frame. This simply wasn’t possible in the past with tape based spot players, hence the fade in/out pad on the spots. While many “cart” type players were very accurate at cueing up the tapes, they still relied on an operator to set those cues while dubbing the spots onto the carts.
These days (and here comes the “old” guy lament portion of the show) it seems that just about anything goes. Local spots are the worst by far. I can’t believe the garbage that I see in the air these days. Truely bad. Even on the national level, things are a lot looser than in the past. There is something to be said for us a “classic” editors that grew up in this business actually setting levels and standards for spots. As much as I hate to actually say this, many in our business have no idea of how to produce a spot with “correct” standards. Many have no idea how to read a waveform monitor or a vector scope. I would guess that many production facilities (of the smaller variety) don’t even own a scope. The built-in software based scopes are useful, but you still can’t beat looking at a good old fashioned CRT based instrument. Or at least a rasterizer-type scope. Hell, anything would be an improvement over guessing levels by how they look on an uncalibrated monitor.
Even though the “standards” vary, my usual commercial spot arrangement is 30 sec. bars/tone, 5 sec slate, 5 sec. academy leader with a 2-pop followed by black until the start of the spot. I still use a fade up from black although the duration can vary. Depending on the content of the spot, I have used a cut in/out format as well. It just depends. Finally, I put at least 10 seconds of black on the tail.
It depends, to a large degree still, on the operator at the station to correctly place the cues on the digital files in the correct places. This will tell the computer just where to start the spot and just where to end it and switch to the next file in the sequence. Humans are still involved. Humans can still make mistakes at times. Another quick rant here: the technical expertise of these operators can vary greatly. The old days where TV station employed trained engineering-type folks may be largely behind us. With video production getting so much easier and more reliable, it’s felt that those people are no longer needed. Budget cuts, management styles, and attrition have cut deeply into this pool of technicians. Hence the “anything goes” attitudes.
This is not to say that standards are out the window everywhere. Folks like PBS and many of the cable outlets are still very strict on what they will accept for programming. The commercial work is another animal. When $$$’s speak, everything is just fine. Sure, we’ll put it on the air.

OK, I went a little off track here. In my experience, the practice of putting still frames on the end of program segments in the US simply isn’t done. I guess my attitude is that the master control people should have a certain degree of expertise and It should not be the content providers responsibility to cover for their mistakes. If programming is times out correctly, freeze frames aren’t necessary. As for as freeze frames on the end of spots-never seen this. Ever. Just keep the commercial content under 30 seconds, give them correct levels for audio and video, test signals (bars) to set up the tape and a reasonable way to cue the spots and you should be good to go. Of course then, this applies to tape. I’m not even going to go into the problems involved with the electronic transfer of files that are starting to be requested these days. A whole new can of worms.Yikes!

OK, off of my soap box now…
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Might try to delete your rendered files and rerender your project, especially if you’ve rendered the audio effects. Maybe FCP is somehow loosing the correct links to the render files.
Worth a try?
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Or…
Harken back to the Golden Years of analog video and produce the end of the show using Super Black and have the on-air guys do a lum key on the show? We used to do this on sports events back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

It can be done and isn’t all that difficult. I’m running two FCP systems and a G4 running DVDSP in an otherwise all PC environment. The FCP systems share the editing duties with a pair of aging Avid Symphonys and all of our graphics are produced on 5 PC workstations. We regularly export from FCP to graphics and then reimport finished clips into both the Avids and FCP with little difficulty. Just watch out for little got ‘chas like exporting DV50 material for use on a PC. We usually just export graphics using the animation codec. Both systems handle it well and it’s high quality to boot. All the systems are tied together through a Dell server and play well together. Each editing system has it’s own local drives for storage.
Here the editors are divided into Avid and FCP camps with little overlap. I’m the only one here that can really use either system interchangeably. The Avid guys are a little intimidated by the FCP system. There is a steep “perceived” learning curve to get into FCP, but I feel that anyone with a good understanding of Avid’s systems or non-linear editing systems in general can slip into FCP without too much trouble.And vice versa as well.
It takes a bit on relearning and some cooperation between everyone, but it can work just fine. Just try to find a way to transition into the change gradually. Don’t push the crew off of the diving board in the deep end of the pool and hope that everyone can swim.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Select each sequence in the browser and render from there. It will render each sequence, one after the other.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

FWIW, my Shine plug is broken in 5.1 as well.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

I just built a small 2 disk SATA raid using Hitachi Deskstar 500Gb drives in a Firmtek enclosure. Raid 0 gives me a little under 1Tb of drive space for about $700. Very good results so far and a three year warranty on the drives.
Tom