[Walter Soyka]

[klaus] “is FCP still able to discern (like scenalyser) where your cuts are, and to start a new clip?”

You can use DV Start/Stop detection to do this. It relies on the date/time information embedded in the DV stream, not a timecode break. Note that some cameras require you to set the date and time before you shoot for this to work properly.

DV Start/Stop detection will not create a new clip, but it will make markers at the beginning of every new scene. You can convert them to subclips to get the behavior you’re looking for.

Regards,
Walter Soyka

[Walter Soyka]

You get a QuickTime Player Pro name & serial number when you buy FCP. Look for it in your box. Enter it under QuickTime Player -> Preferences -> Registration.

Once you do that, open up your media file in QuickTime. Edit -> Enable Tracks. Find the text track, and click the ON button — it’ll turn to OFF. Click the Ok button, save the file, and you should be all set. The chapter markers are still there, but they won’t appear in your video.

Regards,
Walter Soyka

[Walter Soyka]

For room tone, try Bias’s Sound Soap. It’s really the quickest and easiest way to remove regular noise like room tone from audio.

If you really need to stay in FCP, you can use a stack of Parametric EQ filters, but it’ll take you some time to get them all right.

When trying to remove noise with parametric EQ, you should actually try to make the noise louder first, to help you isolate it so you don’t EQ out any frequencies you actually want. Here’s how:

In a parametric EQ filter, boost the gain, then play around with the center frequency and Q (how much on either side of the frequence you’ve selected to use for the EQ) to try to boost the level of only the noise, and not the interview. Once you’ve found some noise, and only noise, drop the gain. You’ll almost certainly need more than one EQ filter with different settings.

You can also use parametric EQ to adjust frequencies within the vocal range of your interview to make it sound richer.

To basically address your other question, compression squishes the dynamic range of the audio, kind of like a levels filter can squish the latitude in an image. It makes softer parts (above a certain level) louder, and leaves the already loud parts loud. Limitation keeps high levels from getting too high and clipping.

For better information and clearer explanations, check out some of Jay Rose’s columns from DV magazine. Here’s a list from his website, or go to dv.com (registration required) and search.

https://www.dplay.com/tutorial/column.html

Regards,
Walter Soyka

[Walter Soyka]

I agree — sounds like the marker track.

You can open the media file in QuickTime Player Pro and disable the text track. The markers will still be accessible via Quicktime, but they won’t be visible in your video anymore.

Regards,
Walter Soyka

[Walter Soyka]

Eli —

Your 24PA footage doesn’t have to be a problem. If I were you, I’d cut the project in 24P to protect for the DVD, then simply insert a pulldown for the 29.97 DV tape playout. See my post in the previous 24P thread — I referred the poster to p. 1443 in the online help on pulldown insertion.

As for capture, here’s what the Cow’s Noah Kadner has had to say:

https://www.larryjordan.biz/articles/lj_dvx_capture.html

Any other questions about this could probably be best answered in the Panasonic DVX100 forum.

Regards,
Walter Soyka

[Walter Soyka]

Check out the section of the manual on pulldown insertion (p. 1443 in the online help). It’ll keep your footage in 24p, but add a pulldown pattern on playback so you can review it on an NTSC monitor.

I’d be wary about doing color correction on your LCD, though. A good CRT monitor that you can calibrate will be much more accurate.

Regards,
Walter Soyka

[Walter Soyka]

If you haven’t noticed that things look wrong, you’re fine.

DV is always lower field first.

If your field dominance is reversed, moving objects will appear jittery.

Regards,
Walter Soyka

[Walter Soyka]

Duplicate the edited sequence, and then change the new sequence’s settings to anamorphic. Select all the video clips, then right-click -> Remove Attributes. Remove the “Distort.”

Regards,
Walter Soyka

[Walter Soyka]

Open up the QuickTime Player. Then go to the menus: QuickTime Player -> Preferences -> Registration. Enter the registered to name and serial number from your FCP packaging. Voila! QuickTime Player Pro.

Now with QuickTime Player, you can File -> Open Image Sequence, and then File -> Export. Make sure you export a movie with the same compression settings as you plan on using in your FCP sequence. Import the resulting movie file into FCP, and you’re off and running.

Regards,
Walter Soyka

[Walter Soyka]

To reply to my own post…

Using Batch Export as I outlined above will preserve timecode, as long as you use QuickTime. However, if you just output a DV stream, timecode will be lost, and you won’t be able to reconnect for online like you want to.

Will your offline editor be able to handle QuickTime media?

Regards,
Walter Soyka