[Zak Mussig]

I use HDV, but I work on a MacPro. I love my 12″ G4 PB (a.k.a. the best notebook ever made), but I wouldn’t try to edit HDV on it. Zrb123 is right, you’re just going to have to sit and let it conform. And exporting to a self-contained QT file if a must. I don’t trust my Mac Pro to play back an HDV sequence to tape, let alone a G4.

Good luck. Patience… she is a virtue.

Zak

[Zak Mussig]

Are you exporting directly from within Motion or using the “Export using Compressor” option? I would imagine going the Compressor route would use all of your processors, assuming your machine is set up with multiple instances of Compressor.

If it isn’t, check page 49 of the “Distributed Processing Setup” doc, which can be found under Compressor’s Help menu.

Hope that hels,
Zak

[Zak Mussig]

Bret,
Yes and No. Soundtrack Pro 2 shares a graphical style with Motion and DVDSP, but the big difference is window management. Soundtrack pro has panes and sets of tabs within in 1 container window. They can be ripped out, but the default is one window. I think Motion and DVDSP will keep their separate inspector windows, but both FCP and Color could benefit from this type of window environment.

I should have specified, but that’s how I differentiate the STP2 interface from Motion and DVDSP4.

Zak

[Zak Mussig]

Hey Ed,

The purists on the forum probably won’t like this… and they’re right, but have you looked into just getting a 20″ LCD TV and trying to find one with a DVI input. Failing that, maybe you could get a DVI to HDMI cable and use that to connect your MXO.

Dell’s 24″ is the only “monitor” I’ve seen with component in. I would just go with a second of those. If you’re so cramped for space that the difference between a 20″ and a 24″ display kicks you into claustrophobia, then it may be time to find a new work environment.

Zak

[Zak Mussig]

I think we’ll see interface updates to FCP and Color alongside (or shortly after) Leopard. It’s easy to understand why they wouldn’t want to update, and do QA for an interface they’d replace in a few months anyway. As far as the development teams knew (depending on how long internal Apple developers knew about the delay before the public did) Leopard was going to ship by June.

As far as I’m concerned, Soundtrack Pro 2 is the new gold-standard for an Apple Pro-App interface.

Just my thoughts,
Zak

[Zak Mussig]

You may be able to save a few second here and there with some quick cuts, but the smoothcam filter in FCP 6 can’t compensate for motion blur. A little shakiness is not the same as an involuntary whip pan.

If you have FCP 6 you should just give it a try and see what comes out. Since scaling is less of an issue with HD footage in an SD sequence, you may be surprised… or it may suck. It really all comes down to what is happening in your footage from frame to frame. Depending on the shot, viewers may be put off by totally stable footage. They know they bounce around a bit on an airplane.

Just my thoughts, but I hope that helps.

Zak

[Zak Mussig]

The good way to do what you want, within the documented limitations of FCP to Motion round tripping, is to remap the timing of the clip rather that dissolving to a still.
Change the timing to to variable and add and tweak some keyframes so that the clip plays at 100% speed until the frame you want to freeze. From that fram on make it flat line and you have yourself a still. You can even set the keyframe to smooth, which will add a handle and let you “soften” the transition.
Send that to Motion, and you’ll see that you’ve kept everything, and that you can now render it with Apple rockin’ optical flow technology.

Like Shane said, you just need some more time to get comfortable with how FCP and Motion actually work instead of how you think they should. I never really learned Avid because FCP made sense to me and I found Avid counterintuitive… different strokes. We’ve all had “It should work this way” moments. The only thing that matters is ho it does work.

Zak

[Zak Mussig]

You should use Compressor and DVDSP as mentioned, but if you HVE to use iDVD then here’s how to do what you’re looking for.

If you switch to outline view, or whatever it’s called when you can see little tiles for each part of your DVD, there’s a topmost tile that says something like “drag files here to play when the DVD starts”. Try that, and arrange any other content accordingly.

Zak

[Zak Mussig]

They wouldn’t need a 32 bit version. It would piss some people off, but it seems plenty of folks are already up in arms over FCS 2 performance on older machines. All you need is Leopard and a G5 or higher. I actually think that the mini wouldn’t be supported by a 64 bit app, but that’s already unsupported because of it’s graphics processor.

Zak

[Zak Mussig]

Hey Enge,

“retime value” looks to me to be the frame number. So you’re basically controlling when in your sequence you get to a particular frame in a clip. If your rate is faster than the frame rate of the footage it will be faster, if it’s less than your frame rate it will be slower.

I’d say change your clip to variable speed and then switch to the keyframe editor to really get a visual idea of the effect you’re having.

Hope that helps,
Zak