Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with finalcutpro

CaptioningFilter

yellowbinder — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:15:19 -0800

Have a number of videos for display online. Need closed captioning option. How do I go about doing this? So I'm doing a series of videos for the web, almost done, and now we're faced with the task of closed captioning them. I've never done this before.

The best case scenario is that they play online in the player, you click the CC button, and the captions appear. But I haven't seen an online video host with this feature, and I've never made a video with a hidden text track before. Everything is being done on Macs in Final Cut Pro.

Any suggestions, both in terms of how to make the videos, and what online host has these capabilities in their player?

Best way to edit MP4 HD video in FCP?

unSane — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 18:29:19 -0800

Preventing slowdowns when editing HD video in FCP? I am editing some H.264 720p video in FCP6. When I am just laying in the raw footage in insert mode, everything plays back fine, but as soon as I add a transition, playback gets really stuttery, and remains so even if I delete the transition and restart FCP.

I'm on a top end iMac so I know I'm probably pushing things a bit but it's frustrating that it plays fine until I add a transition.

Any clues? Should I transcode into something before editing? Would upgrading to the latest help much?

Useful workspaces now that I have a huge extended desktop?

jtron — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:52:21 -0800

I scored a huge monitor for free! Tips for video editing/motion graphics workspace layout? So I scored one of those 21" CRT monitors that people used to pay thousands of dollars for and are now somewhat devalued. It's got a max res higher than I even use; I keep it around 1600x1200, and it sits next to my laptop.

Does anyone have useful tips on how they arrange windows, timelines, palettes, etc? I use Final Cut Studio and Adobe After Effects and Photoshop the most often.

If there're any other tips for living with a new ginormo-tron on one's desk, I'd appreciate those as well.

If it matters, I'm running OS X 10.5.7 on a first-gen MacBook Pro with 2 gigs of RAM and an octopus tangle of hard drives.

Heavy Disk Management

shmegegge — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:09:17 -0800

The company I work for has just installed a shared media solution for Final Cut Pro. It's basically a RAID array that two to three work stations access via Fiber Channel. We now have to move 10+ terabytes of material to the media server... and organize it. there's the rub. what solutions (commercial, shareware, or other) are available for managing data, so that we can check for dupe files and organize our media and assets efficiently before, during and/or after the move. Basically, I'd love to be able to open an app, tell it to go through the new drive array and say "where are the duplicate files? give me options to delete the dupes." and "where are the quicktime movies? give me an option to move them all to a specific folder."

am I dreaming, or is this something that exists?

oh, and we're talking about OS X.

Final Cut Pro on an iMac

mpls2 — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:00:42 -0800

Generally speaking, how well would Final Cut Studio run on a hypothetical quad core iMac?

How to edit 15fps .avi files in Final Cut Pro?

cg1 — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:36:45 -0800

I have Final Cut Studio 2. I've been asked by my mom to assemble a small edit of all the videos shot on point-and-shoot still cameras during our family vacation this year. When I try bringing the files directly into FCP, it's buggy / i can't edit without problems. I assume there's some conversion I need to do before bringing them in but nothing seems to work. I've tried opening the files in Quicktime and exporting them as .dv and .mov files, then bringing those into FCP. Still, problems persist (audio beeps like unrendered, and when I render, it immediately goes red again - needing render).

There has to be some way of converting these files so I can edit them in something better than iMovie.

It seems a frame rate problem. The camera's 15fps and the timeline is 24. Is there some way of conforming the timeline settings to the footage capture settings, so I'm editing in a 15fps timeline?

What versions of LiveType and Soundtrack can Final Cut Pro 4.5 import?

DreamRider — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 09:45:07 -0800

Can Final Cut Pro 4.5 import LiveType 2 and Soundtrack 1.5 files? I'm considering buying Final Cut Express 3.5 specifically to get these updated programs to replace the LT & Soundtrack 1.2 versions native to FCP 4.5.

A good book for Final Cut Pro 5

philip-random — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:02:51 -0800

What's the best handbook for guiding my Final Cut Pro 5.1 learning curve? I've done a little non-linear editing in the past (Adobe Premiere) but am about to make a more committed leap into the land of Final Cut Pro. An editor friend suggested I pick up a good book to aid me in my learning curve.

Any suggestions? I'm not concerned with editing theory and the like, just the nuts and bolts of actually working with Final Cut Pro 5.1.

Give me my old Final Cut Express!

pzarquon — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 02:13:23 -0800

How do I get Final Cut Express to export straightforward 1280x720 HD videos from my Sanyo Xacti HD700... like it used to? I have a Sanyo Xacti HD700. It gives me 1280x720 MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 files, which my Mac just loves. I used to be able to quickly edit the clips together in Final Cut Express, export using complementary QuickTime settings (specifically, those recommended by Vimeo for HD playback), and get beautiful MP4 files, relatively quickly.

Then, one day, a friend needed me to edit a quick video using a DV camcorder. It was confusing as heck getting the footage into FCE, and not particularly elegant getting it out. But, the project was done overnight, I washed my hands of it, and wanted to get back to making beautiful MP4 files again, relatively quickly.

Except I can't! Now, for one, encoding takes hours. Hours! My source videos and export videos are very similar, yet I sit and watch as the estimate for completion actually goes up for an hour before slowly coming back down.

And frankly, that would be fine, except now my exported videos are the wrong size. They include letterboxes, and the video itself is squished, stretched. So I wait four times as long for a ghastly video. The best I could do is use the Quicktime export settings to "crop off" the letterboxing, but there's still some black bars and it's just not the same.

Here's how my videos used to look. Here's how an exported video looks now. What happened? Out of the box, everything worked perfectly. Now, tainted with actual tape, Final Cut Express seems like it's running my videos through six extra wringers and giving me clips worse than I'd get just cut-and-paste editing the Xacti files in QuickTime Pro!

I Googled my brains out, and all I've learned is, if I had Final Cut Pro, "Project Settings" would have all the switches I need. Well, I don't have FCP, just FCE.

Somewhere, something was set that I want to unset. Can anyone help? Do I have to delete every trace of FCE and just reinstall?

Is there a DVD player that CAN be controlled by Final Cut Pro? Or is that just like an editing snuffalufagus?

rileyray3000 — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:47:43 -0800

FINALCUTPROFILTER: Is there such a thing as a firewire DVD player that is controllable by final cut pro? I just just took an FCP class this weekend so if my understanding or terminology is wrong, please forgive me. Basically I watched the whole lesson on how to use FCP with firewire to log in and out points on a tape and then, magically, it batch imports them all and you got a clip bin.

I asked if there was anyway to do the same thing with a DVD player. The instructor said you had to rip the whole DVD, put it into the system, then do the same process. Why? Because it's a non-controllable device.

And I was wondering: is it always?

Does SOMEONE sell a CONTROLLABLE firewire DVD player that works with FCP for just this purpose? Or is that just crazy talk?

To upgrade or not to upgrade?

Awkward Philip — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 10:57:20 -0800

Should I upgrade to Final Cut Pro 6.0.2? I'm currently running Final Cut Pro 6.0, and I've recently been having some weird render problems. (Sequences will routinely lose all their render files; also, some titles that appear in the sequence to be fully rendered are revealed to be unrendered on playback.) From what I've read online, it seems that upgrading to 6.0.2 might fix some or all of these problems.

However, I've also read a lot of things that suggest that 6.0.2 might have various issues/bugs that could cause me problems. Can anyone comment on the pros & cons of upgrading?

If it matters, I'm running Tiger on a G5 (PowerPC).

Emergency with an HVX200. Need help immediately!

tweebiscuit — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 10:52:57 -0800

Anyone here work on the Panasonic HVX200 camera? We're having a footage emergency and need advice immediately -- seriously, epic karma points to the piler who can help us out. Details inside. Last night we did a music video shoot on a friend's HVX. We shot on P2 cards, at 720p, and shot at two different variable frame rates -- 30p and 60p, so that we could get two different levels of slo-mo. When we imported the footage into Final Cut, though, the 30p footage (and only the 30p footage) won't play back properly -- it stutters, loses audio sync (in that the audio finished halfway before the video does), and seems to be missing large chunks of the clip. However, the footage in question play back fine in-camera. We have another shoot today, and need to figure out what's going on ASAP so we can safely wipe the footage off the card. Any thoughts?

How do I efficiently export my FCP HD file into a Quicktime 7 file for the web?

Lillitatiana — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 03:17:48 -0800

How do I efficiently export my FCP HD file into a Quicktime 7 file for the web? I need to convert a 900mb Final Cut Pro HD file to a Quicktime file of less than 400mb. The file needs to be uploaded to the web and enabled for download. What is the most efficient way of doing this? I've tried everything from exporting using Quicktime conversion and exporting using Compressor, but the files are always either A) too big or B) 4:3 - which looks like shite coming from 16:9 HD. Any helpful offerings? Thanks so much....

Export HD Final Cut timeline to MiniDV?

idledebonair — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 11:45:00 -0800

FinalCutProFilter: What is the best method of converting footage captured on a HVX P2 and edited in Final Cut as an HD timeline onto a MiniDV for festival usage?

How to I boost the audio within a qmt file?

Izzmeister — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 23:34:34 -0800

How would I boost audio from within qt or wmv files that i've rendered already from final cut pro?
i want to boost audio from within qt or wmv files that i've rendered already from final cut pro.

i don't want to render them again (they're due at 9am gmt)

i've been on the phone with apple qt pro tech support for hours trying to figure out why that app doesn't do what it says it can do. they're as mystified as i.

so, can anyone point me toward an application that will allow me to change the audio level within a wmv or qt composite video file without having to re-render it from within final cut pro or premiere?

Basically, I ned a solution wherein i can edit audio properties within a qt or wmv file to make it louder.

Thanks!

. What's the best workflow for moving between Final Cut Pro and After Effects?

tweebiscuit — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 14:55:10 -0800

Digital video workflow question: I'm editing a greenscreened music video, and wish to do a rough cut in Final Cut, then move the project into After Effects to do compositing. However, the only automated means of conversion the project is Automatic Duck's plugin, the price of which exceeds my budget. What's the best workflow for moving a sequence between the two applications under these conditions? The rough cut will consist of the clips that I want, sequenced and timed properly but without any effects added. The three options I can think of are

1) to export the entire rough cut as a Quicktime and bring it into AE. This is probably the worst option, for obvious reasons.
2) to work clip-by-clip, roundtripping each clip by exporting from After Effects and replacing them individually in my FCP timeline.
3) to recreate my FCP rough cut in an AE composition manually.

Option 2 seems like a lot of work during the editing process (especially if I change something later and end up having to alter and re-export/import 20 AE compositions back into FCP), whereas option 3 seems like an enormous task at the beginning of my AE project, considering how clumsy it is to use AE as a non-linear editor. (Not to mention that the clips will be carefully timed to music.)

If anyone who's worked on a similar project has an advice about the best way to organize this workflow, I would much appreciate it! (The same goes for general tips and tricks in this department.)

How do I become a great video freelancer in NYC?

prophetsearcher — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 13:07:24 -0800

How do I become a great video freelancer in NYC? I graduated from college last year with a degree in filmmaking. I know how to make videos - I've used decent cameras (vx2100, pd150) and I know my Final Cut Pro. Through personal connections, I was recently approached by two non-profit organizations asking me to submit proposals to do their promotional videos. I did and I am waiting to hear back. In the meantime, I'm freaking out that I may be in over my head. Any Advice? I'd love practical tips and broader-picture advice. For example, where should I go to rent equipment, or should I buy a camera, etc. ? (It seems that 2 weeks of rental = 1 used camera and B&H). I'm working on my Powerbook with external drives, and I am dreading the crashes and spinning pinwheels of death -- is there anything I can do to help this?

Basically, I've made videos, and even won my share of awards, but I'm scared about having to please others with my work and working on an assigned time-frame. I understand that this all goes hand-in-hand with the "real world" - but I'm still nervous about how to navigate these operations.

I hope someday to work in feature films, and this is a great opportunity to keep up my practice and earn some rent-money at the same time, while building a portfolio.

(I've been planning to post this question for weeks now, but I kept thinking I'd have a more urgent question I'd need to ask. Watch - I'll have such a question tomorrow... :) )

How do I need to change my workflow and FCP configuration to work with 24p DV footage?

tweebiscuit — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 16:49:14 -0800

DV / Final Cut Pro question: We just upgraded cameras to a Panasonic DVX100B, largely for the ability to shoot in 24P. However, imported footage still appears interlaced in FCP, and it's unclear to me what our new configuration should be. How will we need to change our workflow in order to edit in 24P? (More specific inside.) On an unrelated note, we just imported a tape which appears to be corrupted. Can it be salvaged? (More details inside.) Regarding the progressive setup, I basically just need some stronger working knowledge about what we can and can't do working with 24P footage. Some specifics:

1) Do we need separate capture settings? "DV NTSC - 24" is a sequence preset, but not a capture preset -- there is, however, a capture setting called "DV NTSC 48 kHz Advanced (2:3:3:2) Pulldown Removal". Is this what we need to use?

2) Can we capture the 24p footage on a different DV camera that does not have a 24p mode?

The confusing part: We did two projects shot in 24p before realizing that we couldn't use the default DV settings anymore. The footage so imported looks fine, but it's interlaced. (In addition to using the default, interlaced 29.97 sequence setting, at least some of the footage was also captured on a non-24p camera.) The part I don't understand is why it doesn't look worse -- since 24p footage has a different timebase, I can't imagine it being displayed sensibly in a 29.97-timebase sequence. Or is Panasonic's 24p method backwards-compatible enough that it cleanly displays as interlaced 29.97 footage when captured as such? (Of course, it's possible that the footage from these projects has problems that we haven't noticed -- we publish directly to the internet, so we don't pay as close attention to footage quality as broadcast folks do.)

As for the corrupted video: The video on the first two shots is divided into 6 or 8 horizontal bars, half of which contain no video signal. FCP crashes upon trying to import. I am pretty much resigned that it was a tape-writing error that's unrecoverable, but figured I'd ask -- is there any chance to salvage this footage? It was on a clean tape, the corruption ends precisely when the last corrupted shot ends, and it displays as such in two different cameras, both of which have had their heads cleaned recently.

FCP on a Plane... or, rather, a PowerBook

hifiparasol — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 10:09:49 -0800

How are your experiences with Final Cut Pro on a PowerBook G4? Right now I'm working on a few projects using FCP on a G5, but the G5 belongs to a college (I used to work there and still have a good relationship with the DV tech guys), and all I've got is a 1.67 GHz Powerbook G4 running 512 MB of RAM. I've got plenty of storage space for the media files, so that's not a problem, but I've heard (in various places) that FCP just doesn't mate with PowerBooks that well, even when the system requirements are met. I'd rather buy a copy of FCP5 and move away (the town I'm in is pretty dead) than remain tethered where I am. Can I count on my PowerBook to deal with FCP?

Cost-effective, shared storage for Mac?

brundlefly — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 11:41:02 -0800

Cost effective, shared storage for Mac? I work for a small production company that uses two G5s to edit video. We want both machines to share a large central drive (a RAID, I suppose). What's the best way to go about this? I looked into Xsan, but that appears to be out of our price range. Are there more cost effective alternatives?

Step 1: Footage Step 2: ??? Step 3: A Video!

Captaintripps — Mon, 29 May 2006 16:33:53 -0800

I've got my DV camcorder, my big hard drive and my PowerBook all set and ready to go with Final Cut Pro. I've tinkered around a bit, but I want to really get to know what I'm doing. What now? Final Cut's user manual is eggregiously huge, though helpful. I would love to go to a web site with tutorials on using it. My goal is to work up to a professional post-production level and also to just make what I want to make well. Any suggestions?

Archiving strategies for DV?

evil holiday magic — Mon, 22 May 2006 03:02:13 -0800

Final Cut Pro users: What do you do with your bulky collection of project and video files when you're ostensibly done with the project?

Training for the Online onslaught?

rotten57 — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 17:17:18 -0800

Now that all the major magazines are deciding to invest heavily in the "online" business, I'm trying to figure how what skills/software one might need. I've heard the combination of Flash, Final Cut Pro, and good design skills would be a start. What would you add to that? I'm a photographer/imaging specialist now. Thanks.

Live Video Mixing in FCP?

provolot — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 10:04:15 -0800

Help me edit video in real-time, from two recorded feeds of the same event! I need to edit a movie of an event that was already recorded previously. There were two cameras (mini-dv), and I can synchronize them -- that's not a problem, but I'm wondering if there's any way in Final Cut Pro (or any OSX software) to edit them in realtime -- that is, to have the two feeds play simultaneously, and appropriately choose either feed for a certain moment in time, while the feed is playing.

If you've ever worked with a simple live video mixer, you know what I'm talking about...

How to make a change list in Final Cut?

shmegegge — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 13:52:41 -0800

Final Cut Pro help: I'm taking over temporarily as assistant editor on a movie while the original assistant editor is off doing something else. I've been asked to make change lists between different versions of the movie using Final Cut Pro. Near as I'm aware, the only way to make change lists in Final Cut Pro is using CinemaTools. So there are two problems.

1. The movie was shot on minidv. Can I still use CinemaTools to make the change list, even though it's intended for use with film?
2. The original assistant never made a CinemaTools database, which is required for making CinemaTools Cut Lists and Change Lists.

So I need to know, what can I do here to get a change list made? Is there some other way to make change lists for minidv projects that doesn't involve CinemaTools? If not, what will I need in order to go in there, make a new CinemaTools database, and then make the Cut lists and Change Lists? Is it even possible at this point? The movie is basically at screening stage. Ideally, I'd like to be able to say to the editor "Meet me in the cutting room, and have someone bring us a list of the tapes used, the type of camera, etc..." or whatever other info I'd need to get this done.