$10 paypal to the best answer: FCP HD questions :-)

[TMerry]

Hi All, I know, $10 its cheesy ploy, but your time is worth something for
answering me and i need a quick turnaround on this. Beside the paypal $
you'll have my undying gratitude.

I am more of a director, but have used Final Cut Pro HD to edit a few short films
with great success that were shot on my DVX100. I have a good feel for editing,
but not the tech part. :crybaby:

Question: My 1st time director friend can't find anyone to edit his latest film.
I really like the guy so I volunteered to edit it and score it for him.

Then, I found out he shot in on HD ( I don't know the camera used, or frame
rate etc.) All I know is that he is bringing over the footage on a hard drive
tomorrow and I wanted to know:

1. Will I be able to hook up firewire to his drive and be able to
play it on my FCP HD system? Is yes, How? Drag takes to timeline?

I always used a DSR-11 to capture my footage to internal drives, so it's not
making sense to me how to approach this .. duhh.. I know

2. I know I should back the whole thing up on another drive before working on
it, but if its a fast drive (say FireWire 800) would I be able to edit on it, as
opposed to importing as I'm used to?

and finally


3. I have a standard definition monitor (sony pvm 14L1), that has a
letterbox setting, will I be able to view HD footage on it?


Thanks for your help - I'll contact the person with the best advice
for their email address to paypal them the cash :dankk2:
I'll also send the two runners up a copy of my bands CD
http://www.tommymerry.com

 

[ullanta]

Hmmm.... unless you know the actual format of the files, it's hard to answer. You don't even say (know?) if it's a FW, USB, eSATA, or SCSI hard drive...

FCP will read some formats; some have to be transcoded.

As to 3., what is your monitoring setup? How do you connect the monitor to the computer? Some devices will downconvert HD so you can view HD footage on them, some don't.

FCP HD is a little old... it doesn't work with as many formats as more recent versions of FCP...

There are way too many unknowns here for any useful answers... can you spend the $10 on a phone call to get the details from the director?

 

[TMerry]

All Great points ullanta!

The director, while a fantastic actor,is not technical
and does not know what the cinematographer shot on etc. :-/

I know its a lot of open ended questions, I just hoped
to have some idea before he arrived of how to approach
viewing the footage, for a start.

I also know $10 is nothing. I'm just not a very active poster
in the years I've belonged here, and wanted to show a token
of my appreciation for shared knowledge.

PS for monitor set up: I go firewire to DSR-11, then RCA out
into my monitor.

Thanks for any and all help,
-Tommy

 

[ullanta]

I'm pretty sure that FCP won't do a live downconversion to allow that monitoring setup to work... will the director bring the camera? It might work as a play-through device... though it likely won't.

 

[MikeWilkinson]

1. Will I be able to hook up firewire to his drive and be able to
play it on my FCP HD system? Is yes, How? Drag takes to timeline?

As long as it's a Mac hard drive, your system will be able to read it. You're right in wanting to make a copy of this footage on a backup drive, so do that. The video has already been captured, so when you're ready to edit, in FCP go to File>Import... select the files and attempt to import them. Hopefully that might work, but as Ullanta noted, there are many flavors of HD. You should look at the footage on the hard drive and click Cmd-I to get more info on it's size/codec. People here will be able to help you more with that info. You may need to do some transcoding. It my also be helpful if you upgrade your system.

2. I know I should back the whole thing up on another drive before working on it, but if its a fast drive (say FireWire 800) would I be able to edit on it, as opposed to importing as I'm used to?

FW800 should be fine for you. Cross that bridge when you get to it.

3. I have a standard definition monitor (sony pvm 14L1), that has a
letterbox setting, will I be able to view HD footage on it?

You should see a still frame whenever you've pressed pause. I have had FCP v6 give me a live downcovert in the past, but not all the time. A workaround is when you cut a scene, nest it and drop it into an SD timeline, render, and preview.

Thanks for your help - I'll contact the person with the best advice
for their email address to paypal them the cash :dankk2:
I'll also send the two runners up a copy of my bands CD
http://www.tommymerry.com

Not needed! We're here to help Put it towards updating your FCP. If you want to repay us, post more often, participate in discussions, and eventually help someone out like yourself in the future. Good luck.

 

[TMerry]

Thanks arges03!

Great stuff. Will do.
He'll be here in about 5 hours, so
I'll know more then

Best!
-Tommy

 

[David Saraceno]

FCP 4.5 HD only supplied certain DVCProHD codecs.

Anything else HDV, to my knowledge, occurred following FCP 5.

 

[TMerry]

Thanks all for you help & arges03 for all the details ;-)

He has come and gone.

Turns out I could not open the file formats on his drive, but, it did come with a P2 Viewer and P2 Content Management System ,
which I installed and at least allowed me to go over all his clips and see the work he had done.

Alas, he told me he had bought a G5 just before coming over .....