[Tom Matthies]

Great timing since I have a demo of the Sony camera scheduled for next week.
Thanks!
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Actually DV50 isn’t limited to just Panasonic equipment. It’s simply another codec available within FCP. I don’t know if you can “capture”to DV50 from a DV25 Firewire setup (never tried it), but I capture from Beta SP and Digibeta all of the time to the DV50 codec. Its a good compromise between good quality and a reasonable data rate. I use DV50 when cutting local TV spots or programming that has a limited on-air run and save the uncompressed or HD formats for higher end work or content that will have a lot of graphic treatments.
If the user has access to a capture card, it is a very reasonable way to capture footage at good quality and lower data rates. I normally capture DV25 footage (DVCam, DVCPro & MiniDV) from a Sony DSR1500A via SDI through an Aja Io.
Works flawlessly.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Anything that I build to go out to the analog world is a complete timeline including bars & Tone, slate & academy. The program is built complete with all necessary elements. At that point a simple edit to tape will get the job done.
When I lay out to Beta SP, I run the program through an Aja IO. The default audio levels on FCP bars are set to -12db. When outputting through the IO I set the reference tone on the bars to -20db and the audio will hit the Beta deck dead on every time. I will mix the time line audio lower when I know that the finished show will be going to analog for broadcast. It’s just kind of a necessary evil when going from digital to analog. You could fudge your timeline by setting the tone to a higher level and then adjusting the Beta deck record levels down to a lower level, but It’s a little trickier to reproduce the right levels if you ever need to go back in and make changes to the timeline. By mixing for analog and setting your tone to the proper level, you eliminate another variable in your work flow.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

I almost never filter the camera (for diffusion anyway) these days. It’s so easy to do it in post that I don’t run the risk of doing the softening while shooting and having no option to remove the effect.

There are MANY plugs for Final Cut that will do what you need. I often use Joe’s diffuser to soften up that too hard video look. Boris FX has some nice plugs. Eve Tiffen, the filter manufacturer has gotten into the software business with a pretty complete set of plugs that emulate their glass filters. Do a Google search on the subject and you’ll find many plugs that will do what you need.
You can eveh make a do it your self version by duplicating your video layer, adding a blur or defocus filter to the top layer and then using the blend mode in FCP you can get some very nice softening effects for free,
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

I used a plug-in from the Hoe’s filters package called Joe’s Pixelizer for the effect.
The plug from TMTS looks a little different but it will work just fine….and it’s free!
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

I use one of the garbage matte selections, depending on the shape of the mask needed and add it to the top layer with the matrix filter added. The garbage matte is easily key-frameable so you can set it to track the moving hand if necessary.
Just did this exact effect on a video last week. No one is on their best behavior this week, I guess.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

It sounds possibly like your drive(s) are not fast enough to keep up with the type of video you are trying to play back. What kind of external drives are you running on your machine? You’re not running your media from your system drive, right?
Depending on the type of video you are attempting to playback, you may need to use faster disks (Firewire 800’s) or a RAID made up of several disks all working together. These could be anything from stripped Firewire disks, to SATA disks and up to SCSI or fiber channel systems.
The best way to “speed up” your drives is to use several of them at the same time, working together to play out your video.
You might also try to do a “mixdown” on your audio tracks before playing it back to tape. This will often solve the dropped frames problem on some systems.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Also DO NOT render your timeline. Make sure it is unrendered before exporting it, use animation millions+ using Export via Quicktime Conversion and it should work for you.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Thanks Pat.
That’s actually how I’ve been duplicating my tracks-Option/Shift + Drag to the new tracks.
I guess it works so I’ll just keep doing things the same way. Just thought there might be a more elegant way to do it.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

For what it’s worth, If you sequence is DV50 your frame size should be 720×480 and not 720×486. Changing this will possibly size you some problems later in your project. It should save you a lot of render time as well.
As for the file problems, what program was used to create the animation files. Is it possible that it saves the files in a proprietary format that Quicktime can’t recognize?
Tom