editing New to FCP

2001 Productions

2001 Productions

I'm gearing up to edit my feature, shot 24F HDV on the Canon A1, and need to purchase an editing system. I've read the minimum hardware specs on the FCP site, but wondered if those of you with FCP experience have any additional recommendations. For example, I'm looking at a used G5 with a single core processor, but wondered if it's preferable to have a dual or quad-core machine for a project like this.

BTW, I'm not particularly computer-savvy. All my previous editing experience has been cutting actual film or using the Applied Magic ScreenPlay, so please don't hit me with too much high-tech jargon.

Any suggestions are much appreciated!
 
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Success! I messed around with the system at about 11:00 last night, adjusted some settings on the camera as directed by some of the others who've had the same problem - I didn't realize you had to disconnect the camera from Firewire in order for the settings to take effect - started a brand new project on FCP and set the capture protocol for 24f HDV...voila! Just like it's supposed to work!

knightly, your Google search link did the trick. I'll keep your number handy for down the road, if that's okay.

Thanks, guys, for helping keep me sane.
 
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Okay, next question...

The first few scenes I shot for my movie made use of a ProMist filter I bought with my camera. I then spoke to a couple of FCP users who advised me to shoot my raw footage without the filter and just add the ProMist look in post, so that is what I did.

Now that I have FCP, I can't seem to find a video effect setting that applies the ProMist look, so I'm guessing it must be a third party plug-in, yes? That being the case, does anyone have a recommendation for the best software to create the "diffused highlights" look that a ProMist filter gives you?

p.s. - I just did a search and found out Tiffen actually makes an FCP plug-in that does it...nearly $600 on Amazon! Holy crap! I sure hope someone has a more economically rational suggestion!
 
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duplicate the footage to two tracks above the original... on the middle track, apply a color corrrector 3 way so you can tweak the image to get the contrast to show just the whites (mids and blacks down). To set it as a luma mask, on the top track, select luma mask in the composite mode and run a light gaussian blur on it. This will blur the whole top track, but only show you the parts that are let show through the luma mask track (the white bits). If the edges are too harsh on that, you can apply a light blur to the middle track, or adjust the opacity of the top/middle tracks to suit your taste. White in the middle track will let the top show through, black will block it, gray will let it through in graduated amounts based on the lightness or darkness of the pixel.

Here's the luma key technique attached to other useful tidbits: http://www.digitaljuice.com/djtv/segment_detail.asp?sid=211&searchid=65668
 
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Got another one...

I'm seeing orange blotching on the actors' faces in my footage. It's difficult to describe, but appears to be some sort of digital artifacting. It follows the contours of the faces - mainly on the nose, cheek, and neck areas - and seems to occur where there is a slight shift in color contrast. It may be occurring in other parts of the image as well, but I mainly notice it on the faces since that's where the camera is focused and where the most subtle image gradations are. I see it when I'm capturing, as well as during playback in both preview and on the timeline. It is visible in the small windows as well as during full screen playback.

I can tell you what it's not: It definitely isn't whites clipping as the images are professionally lit and properly exposed. It isn't on the original footage because it's not visible on the camera's LCD. It isn't my monitor because I plugged the camera directly into the monitor - bypassing the computer - and the images were perfect. I tried applying the Broadcast Safe video filter to the footage and it made no difference.

Other than the blotches, the footage looks fabulous. Is this sort of artifacting typical and does it go away on its own at some point, or do I have something set incorrectly?

knightly, I'm making tea and trying not to panic. :)
 
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hehe ... FCP will dumb down footage for display to keep the frame rate up as you go. There's a pull down menu somewhere that will have stuff about RT and RTExtreme. You can change the settings in there (always write down the existing settings before you change them so you can panic back to them if you screw something up ;) ) and see if it goes away. It sounds like posterizing, I see it every once in a while too. Try exporting the footage as a full quality Quicktime file and see if it has the same problems when playing it from either the finder preview (select file, hit spacebar) or from Quicktime Player (applications folder).

If it persists, it may be a clipping problem in a single color channel (bring up the Tools > video scopes and look at the RGB parade readout to see if the reds might be clipping out). I'm still just a phone call away, but we seem to be hitting your problems away in one response shots so far... let's see if we can keep the trend going :)
 
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In computers, 99.999% of the problems encountered are easy to fix if you've already had the problem and resolved it before. The rest is knowing where to look for the answers... never about knowing the answers.
 
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Hey, I'm back, but without a problem this time, merely an observation.

I imported about 4 hours of footage into FCP as 24p HDV files, then began reading about the Apple Codec format. Just for kicks, I reimported some of the same footage using the Apple Codec settings, then compared the two.

What a difference! As I played back a close-up of one of my actors in HDV, it seemed like her eyes would go in and out of focus for fractions of a second in a rhythmic pattern. I scanned through the clip frame-by-frame and, sure enough, in one frame I could count her individual eyelash hairs, next frame they'd be blurred; few frames later, sharp again. I'm guessing that's an artifact of frame interpolation required for MPEG 2 compression(?).

Then I went frame-by-frame through the Apple Codec footage. Every frame was razor sharp. Maybe the average viewer wouldn't have noticed, but the difference was as clear as day to me.

I wiped clean my scratch drive and started over, reimporting everything via the Apple Codec. There's a big difference in hard drive capacity -- 15 hours of footage have filled my 1TB internal so I purchased another 1TB Firewire 800 external -- but hard drives are so cheap now that the difference in image quality is more than worth it.

Has anyone else experimented with this, and have I created any unforeseen problems for myself down the road by going this route?
 
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2001, I'm not sure if you are still having this problem or not but I have an A1 and I use it on both a PC with Premiere Pro CS3 and FCP on my Mac at work. I shot some HDV footage in 24F and hooked it up and was having the same problem. What ended up working for me was to make sure I not only changed the video setting to HDV 24p but also to change the firewire setting from regular DV to HDV. If you forget to change your firewire setting it will mostly likely not recognize any HDV footage, unless of course you have your camera set up to down-convert.

Hope this helps. Perhaps you have already fixed your problem.

--Swanpond

WHOOPS. I'm sorry. I somehow missed the next two pages of discussion. My apologies.
 
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