Anyone Using FCP-HD?

ChuckS

ChuckS

Veteran
After watching the FCP-HD demo at NAB and again on the Apple road show in LA I have mixed feelings about both its performance and image quality. Is anyone using it, and if so, how do you like it?

Are you capturing using the Panasonic codec via firewire or full resolution HD via SDI?
Are there many bugs or is it stable (forgive me; I come from the PC world)?
How many streams can you realistically work with in real time, compressed or uncompressed?
Which monitor are you using?
Has anyone tried the new 30” cinema display?

I can go on for more, suffice it to say that I’m trying to distinguish between real world application and marketing hype. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

~chuck
 
Re: Anyone Using FCP-HD?

[quote author=ChuckS link=board=FCP;num=1089171494;start=0#0 date=07/06/04 at 20:38:14]After watching the FCP-HD demo at NAB and again on the Apple road show in LA I have mixed feelings about both its performance and image quality.  Is anyone using it, and if so, how do you like it?  

Are you capturing using the Panasonic codec via firewire or full resolution HD via SDI?
Are there many bugs or is it stable (forgive me; I come from the PC world)?
How many streams can you realistically work with in real time, compressed or uncompressed?
Which monitor are you using?  
Has anyone tried the new 30” cinema display?

I can go on for more, suffice it to say that I’m trying to distinguish between real world application and marketing hype.  Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

~chuck
[/quote]

I have used it from DV to HD, and since digital is digital is digital, I have not seen any program quality issues at all. Watch the movie Cold Mountian and see if you can tell that is was a digital production done on Final Cut Pro as opposed to a manual edit on a moviola.

There are many good codecs for FCP. The standard DV25 is a good basic codec that only breaks down in compositing. DV50 is a good format and handles compositing well. DV100 is a good way to get into HD cheap. Nothing beats the uncompressed HD formats used by film makers.

The main point in FCP is that a DVX100 user can edit a program in DV25, and then step up to uncompressed HD on the same application.
 
Re: Anyone Using FCP-HD?

I haven't used it for HD, but FCP HD is a pretty darn stable program. I've recently gotten the new upgrade (HD 4.5) and have put hours and hours into it and have yet to experience any kind of glitch whatsoever. My only complaint is that I can't get songs from the newest version of iTunes into it (I could get songs from the older version of iTunes into my earlier version of FCP and FCE).
 
Re: Anyone Using FCP-HD?

Acctually Cold Mountain would give no reference to the image quality of FCP. Cold Mountain, according to the huge artical on the post production of the film, was edited on FCP offline. The editors recieved the footage off BetaSP: which is SD resolution.

"Most of Cold Mountain was edited at 2 MB/s, which is less than the standard data rate for DV format video (3.6 MB/s)."
http://www.uemedia.net/CPC/2-pop/article_7021.shtml

I would guess that the "online" cut of the film was done acctually cutting the film from the EDL.
 
Re: Anyone Using FCP-HD?

[quote author=aryk link=board=FCP;num=1089171494;start=0#3 date=07/14/04 at 11:09:22]"Most of Cold Mountain was edited at 2 MB/s, which is less than the standard data rate for DV format video (3.6 MB/s)."
http://www.uemedia.net/CPC/2-pop/article_7021.shtml[/quote]

That seems odd, given the size of their disk array. Why such a large disk array if the data rate was so low?
 
Re: Anyone Using FCP-HD?

Cold Mountain was cut on FCP 3, on a dual 1GHz G4 and Mac OS 9.

All the best

Fidel.
 
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