FCP help for Matthew

[Matthew]

Hi all

i'm stuck here in Aix en Provence with a doco and an FCP 4.5.

I don't have a manual, and the online help is s l o w

There are some little things I just can't find ...

Please can someone tell me:

How do i drag a shot to the right and have the whole damn cut move with it *without* selecting all the edits first? (lighworks=drag in black)

KB shortcuts to mute an audio track?

Can i convert a shot digitised as two MONO audio tracks to STEREO (not in the timeline, but in the SOURCE viewer?

Any way to change the font size in the browser? (dim 12" laptop screen driving me nuts)

Otherwise I'm having a bull ... er ... ball.

Chateauneuf du Pape and Baumes de Venise at $12 a bottle ... can't do much wrong!

Ooh la la

Matthew

[JWRL]

C'mon, Matt. You're not REALLY asking for help, you're just gloating!!!

Seriously, I know that you can do the audio part but not sure about dragging in black. I will check both later for you if no-one can tell you in the mean time.

[Jude]

I'm not too sure what you want - are you trying to extend a shot and need to move all the shots after it down? Try selecting the ripple tool - its in the fourth tool down under a submenu - the fourth tool down is a roll tool, but if you click and hold on this, you will get the submenu from which you can choose the ripple tool.

Make sure that the tool is facing in the right direction when you use it. If you look closely you can see that moving it left or right over the cut point before selecting it either faces left or right. You need the one that faces right - or doesn't have a small x on it.

Now grab the cut point and drag to the right. :)

No font changes in the browser until FCP 5 :( You can use labels though, if you need to highlight something. Right click or control-click to select, then choose a label. This will also highlight all the associated clips in the timeline.

Nick is the guy to ask about audio.

[Jude]

>>Can i convert a shot digitised as two MONO audio tracks to STEREO (not in the timeline, but in the SOURCE viewer?<<

Found this one

Select the clip in the browser. Press Shift-D to Make Offline (or Modify>Make Offline, or right click >Make offline) Make sure to leave it on the disk.

You should get a red slash through the clip to indicate that it is offline.

Now select the clip in the browser, right click (or control-click) to bring up the contextual menu. Choose Item Properties > Format.

In this page, find the Audio line and right click (or control click) on A1+A2 and change this to stereo. Press OK.

Now in the browser select the clip and right click (etc) and choose Reconnect media. Select the correct clip and you're done.

[Daz]

Matthew, as always, has taken the bull by the horns...

[Matthew]

Thanks Jude and John

I discovered the SELECT ALL TRACKS TO END tool. that helps a lot.

One more ... how can you match frame on an audio track, and have the entire original shot with video and all appear in the viewer?

I have a seq where there is a cutaway on the video track, then under it there is audio from a sync take from which the video portion has been deleted from the timeline.

I want to MATCH FRAME to the original shot, video and all, from which the audio was taken.

How do i do this? Even if I hide the video track, "F" picks up the video track, and if I select the audio track "F" only reveals the audio part of the shot, not the original.

Thanks for going to all this truffle ... er ... trouble!

Daz, you coming to visit, or what?

[Matthew]

Also, what does the "Preparing video for display" message mean, and how can I avoid it? Has it anything to do with the blue outline around my sequence in the viewer?

[Daz]

Way too much sun for my Anglicised epidermis, mate

[Jude]

>>Also, what does the "Preparing video for display" message mean, and how can I avoid it? Has it anything to do with the blue outline around my sequence in the viewer?<<

The prepping video alert means your machine is not able to handle whatever it is you are trying to do in real time. So, either your machine is underpowered, or your work is getting very complex (lots of compositing?) or you need to trash your preferences.

The blue outline is your title and action safe area. To turn it off, deselect it in View > Show Title Safe.

What are you working on? A doco on bullfighting?

[Jude]

Here's a good article on using match frame in FCP.

<http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/matchframe_balis.html>

For audio, try this

"Match Frame and Audio
To Match Frame back to an audio clip, then Auto Select must be turned off for all video tracks, as FCP will Match Frame from video first, then to audio second. Then Match Frame follows the same Auto Select rules as Match Frame for video, but in the opposite direction. FCP will Match Frame to the top-most audio track with auto select turned on, A1 by default.

Tip: a shortcut to turn off or on Auto Select for all video tracks: press Command/zero. For this to work, use the zero key found on the right side of the keyboard, in the number pad section. "

[rachelw]

wow this is a big serve of info, how's it going with all that Matthew??

[evelyncronk]

Mathew, if that bag in the photo really is full of truffles, andf the bag belongs to you or yours, give up editing immediately and make a career change!

Hope you are enjoying Aix.

Cheers

Evelyn C.

[Matthew]

I am cutting a doco, but not on bulls or truffles.

The truffles were real, that's my daughter (one of them), they were the product of a morning in the mountains (the truffles, not the daughters) ... but they were not mine. We did eat a sizeable quantity, though.

I am cutting on a powerbook laptop with a lacie drive and external screen, but no printer. No external keyboard.

wish I knew more about this software. not doing anything too complicated, but its driving me nuts. Suspect the computer IS underpowered for this.

mt

[rachelw]

I work at home on a G4 powerbook all the time in fcp. I don't really find that an external keyboard is very much a requirement. I do, however, find my wacom tablet very very handy. I am a shortcut key editor, so my left hand is on the powebook and my right is on my big ol' tablet, and I find it extremely fast. I'd reccommend getting used to the shortcuts - I am pretty sure that in 4.5 you can map your keyboard, so if you are more familiar with a different layout you can change the existing to suit your needs. As far as the grunt of your system goes, I guess the minimum these ship with is not enough, I got only a gig on mine and it functions even with a full hour's length doco on a lacie - it's very stable.

If you are not a tablet person I think you may want to get one and give it a try - but not smaller than an 8x10 active area (which I think is 10x16 tablet), as it's too hard to do anything precise. The idea of the tablet is that the surface is mapped to your screen surface, so it's very organic and fast to get around. It saves me heaps of time and it's better for your wrist.

Print out the shortcuts and refer to them as you need. Also the toolbox is pretty good and tinkering with these will quickly give you an idea of what is in there. I think if you hover over the tool you will get the shortcut to come up also.

Good luck with it, and please send some truffles :)

r

[Matthew]

What RAM has your G4 got in it? mines got 768M and os 1.1GHz. Enough?

Truffles don't keep for mailing ...

[Matthew]

Thank you for your help, this thread has been useful to me. I've memorised quite a few of my most used keyboard shortcuts and am now quite comfortable with the software. The rendering rules/settings are quite confusing. I've been importing stills from TIFFS but this seems to be slowing the thing down, and although they can resize nicely there's no way to give them a black BG, well one that's not transparent anyway.

I'm wanting to keep all the stills on the top V2 video track while i move them around without having to recut the sync video i/vs, but the V1 picture shows through at the edges, and the thing tries to rerender each time I move or trim a shot. And when the system plays, the lovely sharp still goes all soft. Grrrr.

So instead, I made a great little photoshop batch script that resizes all the stills at a standard offline PAL anamorphic size (320x288) and saves as targas in another folder, adding black at the edges when necessary, and I'll worry about the moves later... stagetools, motion control or whatever. Works well, the processor can handle the two video tracks better now.

Anyone got any other favourite ways/tips for working with scanned stills?

[Jude]

There's a good (but quite old) article here <http://www.lafcpug.org/tutorials/basic_ps.html> on prepping PS documents for FCP.

Some stuff to make it easier, though, -

Reduce your dpi to 72 where possible. If you need to zoom or pan the picture, make these bigger - but in general stick with native 72 dpi.

If you have alpha channels you will always need to rerender when something is shifted. No alpha channels no rerender. If you can see any part of V1 through V2 you will need to rerender.

I'm not sure if you need this tip, but if you want to add black under the stills and over the i/v on V1 you can drop a black colour matte into V2 and move your still up to V3.

Or you could blade and delete the vision from V1 (unlink the audio first) and just drop your still onto V1 instead. Black in the background will show up as black on the screen.

The picture goes fuzzy on the computer screen when rendered because it has been prepped for a broadcast screen - it should be ok on an external broadcast monitor.

HTH

[Daz]

Matthew in Madrid...this is better than a soap opera. Wasn't there once a groovy graphics app called Matador? That would be cool: Matthew the Master Matador in Madrid!

[Matthew]

Que?

never been to madrid, Monsieur. Its AIX, pronounced EGGS IN PROVENCE.

The bullfight was in Arles, south of france, not far from here. All the benefits of Spain without having to learn spanish.

[Daz]

Excuse em moire, monsiuer. Do you have frogs legs? Then hop into the kitchen and get me a steak!

[Matthew]

Thanks jude - no, no alpha channels.

all my graphics are now anamorphic 640x480 targas with simple black borders where necessary.

I'm using the offlineRT setting for the DV video which has a framesize of 320x240, so I just doubled that for my stills, gives me a little repo leeway.

Square Pixel or non-square? The preset for OfflineRT is square, but the manual says that anything coming from DV PAL will be non-square.

Will that setting make a difference to the ability of FCP to play this stuff without prepping for output all the time? And what about RGB vs YUV rendering. I am using RGB cos that's what the preset said and I'm assuming that RGB is easier for the machine to cope with. But maybe not.

thnx

[Jude]

Are your stills less than , say, 150 dpi though? The size and the dpi are different. Going over 150 dpi can be painful. 72 dpi is native video.

Uh, I never work in offlineRT - so I can't really help you twith that. PAL is definitely non-square - that's about the extent of my knowledge there..

I think your prepping for output thing is related to your stills.

For the other stuff you might want to check out the LAFCPUG forum - one of the best in the world - working 24hrs a day and full of helpful gurus. :)

You can find it here <http://www.lafcpug.org/phorum/list.php?f=1>

[Matthew]

following a few leads from the forum, I cut and paste the whole seq into a new sequence. So far no PVFO messages. But i learnt to set the sequence settings up FIRST ...mt

[JWRL]

Matt, FYI, artwork prepared for PAL use should be prepared square as 768x576 pixels. It can be converted to the correct non-square 720x576 ratio for import into FCP as a final operation before saving. And if you're working 16x9 the ratio for preparation is 1024x576.

I don't know whether FCP by default uses the dpi field in artwork, but it shouldn't. The only time that it should become important is if you're using text. Then the dpi settings will affect the point size of any text layer that you build into your artwork.

[Jude]

FCP definitely cares about the dpi of stills. It gets very sluggish quickly when you use multiple large stills.

[JWRL]

But a 720x576 72 dpi graphic is exactly the same size on screen as a 720x576 1200 dpi graphic. Avid certainly doesn't care about dpi, neither does Premiere, nor Liquid Edition, so as I said I'm very surprised that FCP apparently does.

[rachelw]

apart from caring about the resolution of stills, fcp seems to get a bit blurry when you're just popping stuff out on a laptop...I had a project that I was attempting to master at home, and the photos (mostly 72dpi) were soft in some instances. I took the project to work, where I have a G5 with a Flex Card and it played nice and clean - however I also have noticed in many places that dissolves into and out of photos can result in a slight vision shift - sort of a field shift. Pisshes me orf.

If you want to have alpha masking on you images you can always work on the images in photoshop and import your project. FCP will bring in all layers with an alpha channel...but sometimes it gets a bit crummy looking, you may need to boost your dpi if it comes in and looks a bit 'hard'

As for FCP caring about dpi and such, I sure wish it didn't. I have to use this stuff all day long and it's been a bit fiddly to figure out. Have just upgraded to FCP 5 - I haven't pushed it too hard yet, not sure if it is going to be the same old story. Once i've had a good long road test of it I'll let you know how I go.

Glad to hear that you're getting ofay with fcp over there in eggs en provence. Please send us some truffles. Yum!!

[Matthew]

Originally posted by JWRL
Matt, FYI, artwork prepared for PAL use should be prepared square as 768x576 pixels. It can be converted to the correct non-square 720x576 ratio for import into FCP as a final operation before saving.

This is still confusing me a little.

Why should one prepare artworks for square 768x576 if the correct PAL ratio is otherwise?
The video digitized from the DV camera is therefore what? In my case, (offlineRT) it looks like 320x240.

What difference will it make in the end? Is it just a matter of getting it to display accurately on the computer screen as opposed to a telly?


And if you're working 16x9 the ratio for preparation is 1024x576.


is the difference between using square and non-square pixels the same in the end as if I take a 16x9 image and squash it back into 4x3 space for import into FCP, then tell the system its actually anamorphic?

So ... am I Arthur, or Martha?

[JWRL]

The PAL frame in DV (and D1) based systems does not use square pixels. Both 16x9 and 4x3 frames use 720 by 576 pixels, corresponding to pixel aspect ratios of 1.07:1 and 1.42:1 respectively.

Photoshop and other art packages work with square pixels. If you want to maintain correct aspect ratios for artwork you must prepare it square, and then squeeze it horizontally either during save or during import. FCP can certainly do this for you, but I have found that the resize resampling built into Photoshop usually delivers better results.

If you take a 16x9 image (square pixel), squash it to 4x3 (square pixel), then import into FCP as anamorphic you're doing a needless resample and will degrade your image more than you need to.

Also Rachel the oversharp edges on alpha channel graphics are often not due to FCP problems but due to the premultiply done by the art package to produce the alpha channel. There is a methodolgy that fixes this that I've read about somewhere but I can't immediately put my hand on the reference. Anyone else reading this able to help?

[rachelw]

I usually work at 1024 x 576 for 16.9 and 768 x 576 for 4.3 in programs like after effects, photoshop and illustrator so that I can do a layout that is as I want it, and this will go into FCP just dandy. It's just the difference between a square pixel and a golden mean rectangular pixel - as computer monitors and such display in square pixels and work in square pixel space, you are just making up the difference. It goes into your edit fine and dandy without need for resize. Some software actually allows you to interpret your footage as being video footage (DV, D1, etc) and thus changes the aspect ratio to suit, but this is a resize or resample of the image and thus can result in a minor loss of resolution that nobody will probably notice, unless you are panning across an image at a fair pace. Then it's time to cry. Or maybe not. Just depends.



Hey my render's done....back to work I go :)

[JWRL]

Pretty much what I said, Rachel. But it's got absolutely nothing to do with whether computer monitors deal with square pixels or not.

FCP works internally at the resolution required for your output format. If you're dealing with DV or D1 format then your graphic will be resized to 720x576 at the appropriate pixel aspect ratio when you import it. My approach is to control the distortion this entails by changing the aspect ratio of my art before I export it. I may be kidding myself, but I feel that I get better results that way.

And the resize should have nothing to do with effects that occur when panning at a fair pace. That's more usually due to the fact that your artwork is effectively 25p (non-interlaced) being imported into a 25i project.

[E_Tedeschi]

Originally posted by JWRL
But a 720x576 72 dpi graphic is exactly the same size on screen as a 720x576 1200 dpi graphic. Avid certainly doesn't care about dpi, neither does Premiere, nor Liquid Edition, so as I said I'm very surprised that FCP apparently does.

OK, I'll try and explain this clearly, but I'm a bit fuzzy this early in the morning...

JWRL, there is a difference between how FCP and Avid handle GFX imports. I'll illustrate with an example:

Just yesterday, doing a magazine plug for a show, and the mag cover was supplied as a hi-res jpg (x000 by x000, and 300 dpi, about 8Mb worth of file).

Imported into project - and it's at this crucial stage that there is a difference. The Avid will import the still by converting it into project resolution (in my case, 2:1, 25i, 16:9), and creating actual video media. It therefore gets stretched to 16:9 fullscreen and needs a resize when dropped into timeline to bring it back into kocher aspect.

Bring the same still into an FCP project, and when you see the file in your bin, it is FCP pointing to the original file - no conversion has taken place. FCP will automatically resize it when you drop it into the timeline in order to maintain the aspect of the image (regardless of size, shape or resolution), but it is still using the original file - no new media is created. If you were to delete the file you imported OUTSIDE the project, the file would go offline INSIDE the project. Premiere was still doing the same thing up until 6.5. Not so in the Avid. Because new media is generated, if you delete the original file that was imported, it does not affect the instance of the file in the project.

This has a couple of implications: it means that if you resize the image to bigger than fits on screen in the Avid (ie zoom into a detail), it starts to go soft because it's only video resolution. In FCP, if the imported file is bigger than screen res, you can zoom all you like up until you hit the magic 72dpi equivalent. I hope that makes sense.

Also, for what it's worth, Magic Matador Matthew not in Madrid :), I've experienced worlds of pain using native hi-res tiffs in my FCP projects. Just the other day I had a couple of large tiffs on the timeline, dissolving between, and starting doing some keyframed scaling - FCP disappeared! I get that a lot when working with GFX that haven't been prepped for video res. It's always a good idea to do it before you bring it in to FCP. If I need to do anything more complicated than a simple dissolve between two gfx, I usually jump into After Effects, do whatever moves I need, and then output a video res file to bring into FCP. Works like a charm.

This post is getting long, so, hope it helps.

One last thing - If you are prepping your graphics in Photoshop to Offline res, aren't you going to need to redo them all when you go to tape??!!

[E_Tedeschi]

Originally posted by rachelw
I also have noticed in many places that dissolves into and out of photos can result in a slight vision shift - sort of a field shift. Pisshes me orf.


Rachel,

I get the vision shift as well - if FCP is playing the graphic in reatime, you'll get issues. Particularly, if FCP has only rendered your dissolve and not the entire graphic. Make sure that your entire graphic is rendered (dissolve included), and the pop should disappear.

I have not cut on a single NLE that has handled graphics without some hassles. Even adding a simple waterwark on the MC Adrenalines at Ch9 - unrendered they play fine, rendered they go fuzzy... what's the extension for the Graphics dept again...? :)

e.

[JWRL]

This has become ridiculous. Nothing that has been said since my last posting changes the original comment - that dpi does not matter one iota when you specify the graphic size in pixel dimensions with one exception. Your dpi settings when you are preparing your artwork will affect font scaling. This causes no practical problems but can mean that you are using absurdly low font sizes for high dpi graphics.

I accept that if you then intend scaling the graphic up you will need higher than video (pixel) frame sizes. This will be an issue in FCP and in fact in Avid if you are using Avid Pan and Zoom, which also references the original art. In fact it will be an issue whenever you access art by reference, regardless of the software that you are using.

THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS DPI SETTINGS!!!

Don't take my word for this. Open Photoshop and create a simple graphic at 72 dpi, 768x576. Save it to your hard disc. Now do an image resize. Make sure that "Resample image" is NOT checked and change the dpi settings to 600 dpi. Make no other change to the graphic and save it to your hard disk. Check the sizes of both files. I've just done this myself, and for my graphic both versions of the file are 1.967 Mbytes in size.

All the way through I have attempted to separate references to dpi settings from references to frame sizes. If you're working 4:3 and you choose to set up your frame size to be 10.25" x 8", it will be critical that you specify 72 dpi as well. If you set up your graphic as most of us do by specifying the frame size in pixels, then you set it at 768x576 and forget about the dpi settings.

I edit on both Avid and FCP and am familiar with graphic import issues on both platforms. Maybe I'm lucky. Maybe there is some hidden gremlin that affects other people and not me. But I seriously doubt it.

[E_Tedeschi]

Sorry JWRL, didn't mean to offend.

Due to the fact that I am invariably bringing in higher res images (i.e. scaling down to video), I leave my resampling on. Hence going from 300 to 72 dpi is a drastic filesize change.

If you turn resampling off, then you can't specify a pixel dimension, and changing the dpi doesn't affect filesize - you are spot on.

I'll edit my earlier post to try and avoid confusion.

e.

[JWRL]

I wasn't offended, but I WAS getting frustrated. As much as anything I was frustrated because I suspect that if this had been a face-to-face discussion it wouldn't even have become an issue. The internet is a wonderful thing, but sometimes.....

[Matthew]

Originally posted by E_Tedeschi

One last thing - If you are prepping your graphics in Photoshop to Offline res, aren't you going to need to redo them all when you go to tape??!!

Yes. However i inherited this project digitised at offline resolution. Therefore my sequence settings must be (I thought) offline resolution, no? Are you saying that I could edit in a final res sequence and my renders will be at ouput quality?

I would have thought it harder for this lil laptop to cope with broadcast res. Already it's been struggling, and the render button is nearly worn out.

When I tried to do final quality graphics work, the difference in quality in the cut was very obvious and is even more annoying than just looking at crummy old offline resolution. Anyway, at this stage it might all get thrown out the window anyway.

So I think I'm resigned to doing it all offline.

But could you convince me otherwise?

[E_Tedeschi]

It's hard to say without knowing the strength of the laptop...

If you use broadcast res graphics, you won't have to rebuild them all if and when you online. But if the computer can't cope with it there is no point. Does it struggle playing back, or do you just get an "unrendered" message?

Your sequence settings should match your media, but if you use the final graphics they will render down to offline. But when you make your hi-res sequence, you will be able to cut your graphics in from your offline sequence and they will re-render appropriately in your broadcast quality sequence.

At the ens of it all, if it bothers you to see the difference as it plays, then leave well enough alone!

[Matthew]

thanks for your help everyone

its an ibook 1.07Gz (the .07 is important!) with 768Mb Ram, USB2 Lacie 250 drive and external 17" screen.

I get the "unrendered" message.

I still get the "prepping video" message every now and then, i guess that's unavoidable. Using targas helped a lot.

struggling a bit with the FCP motion controls but i'm getting used to the way they work.

Any way to change the "curve" of an audio ramp in the timeline? they's all log curves, sometimes i need flat.

What I AM curious about is whether, in fact, the machine has to work harder to play offline res than native DV? FCP was designed for DV, so maybe offline res is asking, in fact, more of the processors?? Hmmm.

mt

[Jude]

With Macs, the white ones are the low end machines - the silver ones are the 'pro' machines. An iBook is a lot less of a computer than a powerbook and helps to explain why you are having trouble.

You can put another point in the curve with the pen to contol the angle of fade.

I doubt if offline would be harder work than dv - since offline is designed for just such low capability setups.

It might help to work with the external screen turned off until you really need it.

[E_Tedeschi]

Originally posted by Matthew
I get the "unrendered" message.

Matthew, I'm pretty sure your "unrendered" screen is due to mixed resolutions on your timeline. For example, if you put an uncompressed quicktime onto a DV timeline, it wants to render to DV before playing out. If you change the sequence settings to uncompressed quicktime, then all of a sudden your "unrendered" screen disappears.

And I think Final Cut Express was also designed with lower spec iBooks in mind. I'm cutting two shorts at the moment in DV, with a Firewire 800 external drive hanging off a Powerbook, and it's making a meal of them. The size of the screen (or lack thereof!) drives me up the wall, though...

[Jude]

FCE isn't that different from FCP really though. It's just missing some features like the three way colour corrector, the ability to keyframe filters and the ability to work outside dv. Oh, and timecode .. and... that's about all I think.

I was very surprised how many features were still intact given the price.