[Tom Matthies]

I send out lots of .wmv’s, H264 & even some Sorenson 3 files yet. Just depends on the client and what he has on his end and what he’s comfortable with.
Tom

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.–Ferris Bueller

[Tom Matthies]

I just added that plug to my MacPro running Leopard & Studio 2. I found it right on Apple’s support site, believe it or not. It works and prevents the error message when using an older Panasonic deck, but I’m not sure if it is fully compatible with my system since it gives me a message about a non-standard plug-in when launching Final Cut. I just click “OK” and it starts up normally. It does work, however.
Tom

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.–Ferris Bueller

[Tom Matthies]

A crazy Idea…
If you have SDI output from your Final Cut system and your Avids have SDI in to them…just play the clips out from the FCP system and capture directly into the Avid inputs. You will probably need to use AES/EBU audio into the Avid rather than embedded SDI audio, but it should work without having to do to Digibeta as an intermediate step. The only problem is you will not get matching time code on the clips, but you wouldn’t get it by going to tape first either.
Just a thought…
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Although…
Even though there aren’t layers” on a Digibeta tape, scan through the tape and make sure that your client hasn’t put graphics elements AND the alpha channel elements somewhere on the tape as well. In that case, you CAN use the clips as mattes to pull a key from the material on the tape.
Maybe this is what meant, but just didn’t explain it very well.
Just a thought.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Plus Motion can take advantage of the processing power on the graphics display card as well.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

I’m using an HPX-300 right now and have had good luck bringing files into FCP. Flawless, actually. I have been using a small USB bus powered drive to offload the cards to an external drive right from the camera. I copy to the drive, verify the files and then reuse the card. I then use this drive in the log & transfer process in FCP. I’ve brought in both DVCPro and AVC Intra 50 clips without any problems. I converted the AVC Intra to ProRes when ingesting. I used the transfer feature built into the camera to offload the cards to the USB drive. You have to make sure that you get ALL of the folders from the card when you copy it. The only thing I needed to do with the AVC Intra clips was to go to Panasonic and download/install the Codecs for Quicktime.
It does work…

[Tom Matthies]

The easiest way is to open up Log & capture. Highlight the clips you want to recapture in your logging bin. Enable only the audio in the second tab. When you go to Batch Capture it will ask you if you want to use the logged clip settings. Uncheck the box to answer no. It should now capture only the audio tracks you have selected and not capture the video.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

The trick to exporting from FCP with an alpha channel is export as animation millions+ and DO NOT RENDER YOUR CLIP. Export it unrendered. It should work.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Priceless!

[Tom Matthies]

I just spent a couple of hours doing a demo of the camera today and over all I was pretty happy with it however I did notice that the shadows looked pretty noisy. I was shooting DVCProHD 1920 x1080 24P with pulldown. Anyone else notice this or care to comment on what they’ve seen over all?
Tom