Possible Issues with FCP6

Now, I'm not 100% on all of these, but I've seen it reproduced several times on several systems. Keeping in mind we're dealing with some lazy editors that hurried up and rushed into FCP 6 from FCP 5.1.4 - and now don't want to crack the manuals. Keep in mind that all of these problems are linked to opening 5.xx projects. Fresh projects made fresh in FCP6 work fine. That's not really a solution though when you have a huge library of projects that needs going back to on a regular basis.

So. To the meat...

Clips losing their in/outs
We have some projects (5.xx) that have a single dig'd segment that being used throughout in various small clips (in/out's). Displayed in thumbnail view in the timeline, they look fine. Clicking on the thumbed clip and it just flips to some other point on the clips timeline. Essentially, the clips in this project are not respecting the set in/out points set. If this is done in FCP 6, it works fine. Tried selecting all the timeline and copy/paste into a FCP6 project and that didn't work either. This is cropping up on a variety of systems and does not appear to be hardware specific.

Rastering issues
We have some projects that are canned logo bumpers for the editors webkit. When they're used in FCP6 timelines, they exhibit rastering issues. Video and graphics look like draft renders from After Effects. The actual pieces play fine. The workaround has been to rebuilt the webkits in FCP6. Not elegant.

Still graphics/photo raster issues
Dropping a still into the timeline and doing a move on it produces some very "jaggy" looking renders (yes, they're set to high quality). Can't figure out how to make them look good. No, we haven't tried doing this in motion, shouldn't have to.

I appreciate your thoughts on this. And if I'm just not RTFM in the right area... please flame away.

Thanks!

Geoffrey Miller - Head of the Herd
MadCow Studios
Toluca Lake, CA

...we're outstanding in the field...

[Dropping a still into the timeline and doing a move on it produces some very "jaggy" looking renders (yes, they're set to high quality). Can't figure out how to make them look good.]

These sound like JPEG's-- are they? I avoid them. Use PSD or TIFF, in 24-bit RGB format.

[ No, we haven't tried doing this in motion, shouldn't have to. ]

Actually, Motion is supposed to be *perfect* for photomotion! As soon as I get an Intel tower and card which runs it I will be test-migrating such work out of FCP-- for projects requiring major stills work-- while smaller segments I'll keep in FCP because the scaling algorthm Tom Wolsky flagged years ago appears to be fixed.

As for pixel import limits, that could be an issue for you. The old QuickTime "G-world" model has been scrapped and replaced with OSX Core Image components which are apparently more robust, but until I hear an absolute pixel limit I'm sticking to 4K square-- that is, if your imports are over 4K on a side you may be in trouble, so that's worth checking as well. I like to err conservatively anyway.

- Loren
Today's FCP 6 keytip:
Set Video Only In and Out with Control I or O !

The FCP KeyGuide?: your power placemat.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

" (yes, they're set to high quality)"

depends what it is that's set...
there's more than just the render settings to worry about (and as they are all set to 100% by default, not much to worry about)

in the sequence settings, Video Processing, you can set "motion Filtering Quality" to high.

and i hate to ask, but are you looking at an external monitor?
if you;re not, go to the back of the class.
the canvas is notoriously low res., and renders DROP in quality!
(go figure)


nick