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Context:

• In FCP I imported [File>Import] a CineForm AVI file residing on an NTFS disk.   It showed up in FCP’s browser OK.  I dragged it to Viewer and it played there OK.  I dragged it to timeline and it displayed there as a clip i.e. as a long pale-green block.

Problem:

• When I tried to play teh timeline the Canvas screen remained blank.
• Also the timeline clip-block had no thumbnail (which, given my configuraton of FCP, I would normally expect)

Interpretation:

• Mac support for AVI is said to be half-hearted.  This is probably what is happening here.

Response:

• Try re-wrapping the Cineform AVI file as a CineForm MOV file.
• This can be done via Cineform’s bundled tools as follows:
  •  On the PC by using HDLink
  • On the Mac by using ReMaster
• (I have not yet tried this)

Context:

• In a Compressor job I defined a file on an NTFS drive as source.  That was because I had a file of graded video on that drive which was being used in a Sony Vegas project and I wanted to use FCP’s excellent SmoothCam effect to de-shake that video.  For that Compressor job I defined a destination on a separate drive that was HFS+ hence read/writable by Compressor.

Problem:

• Compressor gave an error to the effect that the source drive was not writable hence not a valid destination.  Even though it wasn’t the destination…

Interpretation:

• Sounds like a bug to me!

Response:

• Workaround: copy the source media file from NTFS drive to HFS+ drive and use that as source instead, no other change.  Worked fine (apart from wasting my time and disk space).

From [http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/887550]:

• To save an FX chain
  • Click the “Plug-In Chain” icon (found in the upper right of the Video Event FX window).
  • Click “Save As” in the “Plug-In Chooser” window that comes up,
  • Give it a name
  • Save it.
• When you want to use this chain again:
  • click the Video FX icon on the event
  • Click “Filter Packages” on the “Plug-In Chooser” window that comes up
  • Click the one you want.

Problem: laptop ethernet connection to broadband via router didn’t work, but connection via WiFi (to another router) did work.   The “didn’t work” behaviour expressed itself in the form of:

• Took ages “acquiring network address” (ultimately failed)
• Error message: “Limited Or No Connectivity”.
• Attempted use, e.g. web browser access to Google, failed.

The solution, from http://compnetworking.about.com/od/windowsnetworking/ht/limited-connect.htm:

• ” 3) Check your network card to make sure its configured correctly and working properly. Many times setting the network card to 10Mbps/Full Duplex will solve this issue. To do this, open Control Panel, System, Device Manager. Go to the properties of the Network card, click on the Advanced tab and find the Link Speed and Duplex section. Change it from Auto Detect to 10Mbps/Full Duplex.”

 Automatic

Discovered at: http://prepshootpost.blogspot.com/search?q=

The Levelator is a freeware application (for various OS)  that automatically evens out multiple audio sources:

“It’s software that runs on Windows, OS X (universal binary), or Linux (Ubuntu) that adjusts the audio levels within your podcast or other audio file for variations from one speaker to the next, for example. It’s not a compressor, normalizer or limiter although it contains all three. It’s much more than those tools, and it’s much simpler to use. The UI is dirt-simple: Drag-and-drop any WAV or AIFF file onto The Leveler’s application window, and a few moments later you’ll find a new version which just sounds better.”

“So how do we calculate levels and process audio for The Levelator?  We first isolate segments that are silent and remove them from the calculations. We define silence as audio segments which have no subsegments of 50 ms or more where the RMS is greater than -44.0dB. We then compute the RMS value of the remaining segments and normalize them to our target RMS level of -18.0dB.

The above is actually a drastic simplification of The Levelator’s processing, which takes into account a number of subtleties when dealing with certain real-world sources. For example, the silence threshold of -44.0dB is not reasonable if the audio before normalization is already very quiet. The -44.0dB value is therefore used only after the overall RMS is first normalized to near that target. This requires an iterative calculation. The Levelator processes an entire audio file, not a continuous stream, so we have the advantage of infinite lookahead and the ability to make multiple passes over the data in large and small chunks.”

Mac/FCP add-on to automatically synchronize multicam clips based on their audio content.

Discovered in article at: http://prepshootpost.blogspot.com/search?q=

The article says: “…PluralEyes … syncs up multi camera footage without use of timecode. It’s in beta and you can download and try it out yourself.  (In the article author’s tests) it worked on about two out of every three clip pairs. When it worked, it was perfect, effortlessly lining up and then converting clips into a multicam clip in the browser.”

Video: http://www.singularsoftware.com/autosync/

”

System Requirements:

• OS X 10.4.11 or later
• Final Cut Pro 5.1.4 or later
• PluralEyes™ analyzes the audio content, so all clips to be synced need to have an audio track.

Once captured, the next problems are backup and archive.  Here is one man’s solution:

• We capture to a 2TB drive and edit from it as well. Then once it starts to get full, we use Retrospect Backup software to move files from the 2TB drive to smaller removable drives. Retrospect keeps track of the drives and once they fill up, you can just add another one. The main reason we do it this way is that Retrospect keeps track of all the data so that it’s very easy to find and restore projects. You can view them by the date you saved them or you can simply do a search…even for individual files. Plus, because they are firewire 800 drives, the restore process is very quick (at least it is right now with standard def DV footage….HD footage will take up more space)
• [http://promaxsystems.blogspot.com/2008/01/promaxs-xdcam-ex-workflow-video.html] 
  • It also has other useful info e.g. the transfer rates experienced in practice.

Forum thread on how to ingest EX footage into FCP (via ShotPut and XDCAM Transfer).

•  [http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/sony-xdcam-ex-cinealta/136492-xdcam-ex-fcp-xdcam-transfer-workflow-2.html].

It includes a cool screencast video tutorial by Matt Davis:

• [Batch naming clips in XDCAM Transfer] 

The point of doing it his way is that it makes thinks more foolproof than the more basic “just load it in” approach and does so in a fashion that is semi-automated.

Mac OS and Windows machines can now interact over a shared network.

The link below mainly covers:

• Connecting to Active Directory with Directory Utility
• Using Entourage with Exchange
• Communicating via Messenger and OCS
• Bridging the platforms with virtualization

[http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.12.interacting.aspx]

“To get work from Mac to PC, don’t use HTF, use an NTFS formatted drive running NTFS-3G for Mac OS X  [http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com] on the Mac.   Then the files will transfer without issue. “.

This advice was found on the CineForm thread at DvInfo.net [http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/cineform-software-showcase/146485-workflow-problem-switching-footage-pc-mac.html]

NTFS-3G is a read/write NTFS driver for several operating systems including Mac OS X.

System requirements:

•     * Mac OS X 10.4/10.5, running on an Intel or PowerPC computer.
•     * MacFUSE 2.0.2/2.0.3 or later installed.

The package has been tested with Mac OS X 10.4.11/Intel and Mac OS X 10.5.6/Intel.

[http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com]

Credentials/Claims [http://www.ntfs-3g.org]:

• The NTFS-3G driver is a freely and commercially available and supported read/write NTFS driver for Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenSolaris, QNX, Haiku, and other operating systems. It provides safe and fast handling of the Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 file systems.
• NTFS-3G develops, quality tests and supports a trustable, feature rich and high performance solution for hardware platforms and operating systems whose users need to reliably interoperate with NTFS.
• The driver is used by millions of computers, consumer electronics devices for reliable data exchange, and referenced in over 35 computer books.