[Zak Mussig]

I’ll second (or third) Screenflow. I’ve played with the demo, but haven’t had a real need for the app yet. It is by far the best in class screen capture app on the Mac. Depending on what you’re doing, you may not even need to bring the capture into FCP as SF has some basic but capable editing tools.

Zak

[Zak Mussig]

This was our experience with DVDIt Pro HD. Horrible program. We went with it rather than Encore because it claimed it could output an image for replication whereas Encore could only build (and even then you have to burn with Toast). Fell apart on the build every time. It’s a shame because with that many pixels you can do some really cool stuff with subpictures (e.g. anti-aliasing, render effects). You could do them in SD, but they’re just so pretty and crisp at 1080. Anyway, we had to shelve the project because it isn’t big enough to be worth buying scenarist or paying Sony for authoring.

Some day…

Zak

“You can’t fix coverage in post.”

[Zak Mussig]

Steven,

I agree with Arnie that you’re going with a really good solution for your particular needs. I’m a big fan of MPEG 4 where it’s applicable.

I had assumed that this was for use in some kind of training capacity rather than review by your industrial engineers… which hugely impacts the workflow.

Bonus points if you can make the video accessible on everyone’s workstation @ the same time with shared annotations. Is their viewer software based, or is this all one integrated piece of hardware/software? I suppose you could use a shared Google spreadsheet to keep a pool of notes if all else failed.

Zak

“You can’t fix coverage in post.”

[Zak Mussig]

Andrew,

I’ll reiterate the advice you’ve gotten about nesting the intact BPAV folder within another folder rather than renaming it or modifying it. This is the key part of the EX workflow.

To avoid confusion and frustration, it should be emphasized that there are two pieces of software that deal with footage from the EX1. The clip browser, which it sounds as if you’re using, is just playback software. The XDCAM Transfer app, which everyone is referring to, is the one you want to use. You can find it here.

Add the folder you put a BPAV folder inside of (adding the BPAV folder itself doesn’t work). Now mark your clips and/or subclips and transfer them.

Does anyone know if they fixed the bug whereby clips are duplicated in the FCP browser if you have to software add them vs importing them into FCP yourself? That may determine which you want to do.

Hope that helps,

Zak

“You can’t fix coverage in post.”

[Zak Mussig]

Thanks for the comments, guys. Kevin and Walter, you’re both right that this doesn’t show how I edit. I have a couple editing samples uploaded to Vimeo as well, and links to them pop up at the end of the currently embedded reel.

I guess I’m not quite sure how to put together an editing reel since a lot of the source footage I get handed isn’t terribly high quality (being kind), and a few cuts seem to lose meaning outside of the context of the whole. I guess all of that to say “back to the drawing board”. I’m just not quite sure to get from where I am to where I want to go professionally… which I’m hoping is just par for the course in your early 20’s.

Thanks again for taking the time to watch and comment,

Zak

“You can’t fix coverage in post.”

[Zak Mussig]

Rob,

I, like David, came for the title and stayed for the thread…

I would try both uninstalling the new RAM as well as using Compressor to make the h.264 files something more FCP friendly (maybe match on of your other two codecs). You’d obviously want to do these one at a time; otherwise you wouldn’t know which was the fix.

I get the sense that the RAM may have been damaged from being installing incorrectly. How long was the machine running like that? Even if it’s reporting for duty, it may be a little hung over.

FCP hates h.264 in the timeline… on par with .m2v files. This may be causing some QuickTime issue which is leading to crashes.

Those are kinda shots in the dark, but I hope it helps.

Zak

“You can’t fix coverage in post.”

[Zak Mussig]

Steven,

I don’t have a lot of personal experience with setups like this, but no one had replied yet, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

That’s a massive amount of footage you’re dealing with. I would personally be very wary of trying to do that whole project without tape backups. Even if you can spring for that much storage, with tapeless formats you need to have your footage protected. I would suggest renting 4 HDV camera that support timecode in. Just change tapes in a waterfall pattern over the course of a couple minutes so someone is always rolling. The odds of you absolutely needing the shot from any of the camera in that minute or so are pretty slim when you’re dealing with that much footage. Even you want to do some sort of time-lapse, I really doubt you’d notice those gaps.

This give you tapes to pull from rather that trying to keep an insane amount of data around. Unless some part of the process happens at super high speed, HDV should suit your needs just fine.

Of course all of this is from knowing how long and with how many camera you want to shoot. Knowing what you want to do with the footage and the goal of the final product might impact some of these decisions.

Zak

“You can’t fix coverage in post.”

[Zak Mussig]

Sloane,

The advice I would give is to avoid re-compressing your footage 3 or 4 times. You should be able to import your captured DV clip into AE rather than exporting (re-compressing) the footage with lossy DV compression. Obviously, you’d want to replace the clip and tweak vs. redoing the project. I would also export from AE as something other than DV, as this adds another round of compression. Even if you can’t play back uncompressed, you can still stick it in your timeline and export to MPEG2. You don’t need real-time playback unless you’re going to tape. Just make sure you change your sequence to uncompressed (or Pro Res, etc.) or you’ll just end up compressing to DV again.

There’s a lot of fine detail around the eyes and that information would be easily lost after 3-4 rounds of DV compression. Which could account for what you’re seeing.

I’d also play around with your MPEG2 settings as these can also destroy any quality gains you make by using uncompressed footage.

Hope that helps,
Zak

“You can’t fix coverage in post.”

[Zak Mussig]

Gloria,

I answered your questions very thoroughly, but I must have accidentally typed a COW no-no word, so my post is being reviewed. 🙁

I just wanted to let you know you haven’t been forgotten, and hopefully the post will be posted shortly.

Zak

[Zak Mussig]

Shane,

Sounds like you have an interesting situation with the mixed formats. I’d love to hear how the online goes when all is said and done. I’m just a small fry, and I’d never thought about issues stemming from using an EX1 as a B-camera along something higher-end.

Did you just transfer the EX footage as usual and recompress those files to DV? I imagine those would be relatively easy to reconnect. Maybe maybe label all of the EX originated files and separate them onto a different track, or sequence, before dealing with the HD-CAM…?

Zak