trim forward

FCP Partial Log and Capture of RED footage

If you're using FCP Log and Transfer to import RED footage into an FCP project, once you click on the "Add Selection to Queue" button, don't click anywhere else. Go have lunch. Doing anything else in the Log and Transfer window or FCP will cause the current clip to get truncated, importing only a partial clip to your bin.

There is no warning, and no error message. Just a perfectly fine looking truncated clip.

Looks like we have to manually verify Media Duration in Log and Transfer with the clip durations now, and all of the time saving benefits of sorting and editing while importing clips is gone.

Compressor setting for Grass Valley Turbo

Here's a compressor setting to prep just about any HD video (720P, 1080i, or 1080p) for a High Definition Grass Valley Turbo box. The resulting 1080i MPEG-2 video files should get sucked into the Turbo without any recompression. Otherwise, you'll be stuck with the Turbo's very long compression times and unpredictable results.

Download the Compressor setting here, unzip it, and put the .setting file in your ~user/Library/Application Support/Compressor folder. Restart Compressor, and you'll see it in the Custom Folder of your Settings window.

Warning: Always do full play-through test screenings after ingesting your footage into the Turbo.

Compressor setting to output 2:1 RED footage to DVD

Problem: If you want to make a 16:9 widescreen DVD from a video project that was shot in RED's 2:1 aspect ratio (ie. 2048x1024), some precautions must be taken during the final compression in order to avoid stretching.

If just drop your 2:1 video into Compressor, and apply a DVD preset, it will stretch your video vertically to fit the 16:9 frame. The problem is that it's a somewhat subtle stretch, so it's easy to miss the problem altogether.

Solution: We need to add letterboxing to the top and bottom of the video such that when it plays out in 16:9 widescreen, everything looks normal. It's easiest to just create a new Compressor setting to do this. If you don't want to follow these steps, skip to the download below.

In Compressor, locate the "DVD: Best Quality 90 Minutes" preset folder (in the "DVD" folder). Click on it, and then click on the "duplicate" icon (the third icon in the settings window). This will duplicate the entire folder, with the video and audio presets, into your custom settings folder (at the bottom of the settings window).

Locate the new settings folder. If you click on the folder, you can rename it in the Inspector window. I just appended "2:1 to 16:9" to the name.

Now, click on the MPEG-2 setting in that folder. This will bring up a bunch of info in the inspector window. Go to the Geometry tab of the inspector (5th icon), and change Padding Top to 27, and Padding Bottom to 27. Click on the save button in the lower right of the inspector.

Now all you have to do is drag your new "DVD: Best Quality 90 Minutes 2:1 to 16:9" folder on top of your video, and you're all set to go. The final output (which you can verify in DVD Studio Pro) will be a 16:9 Anamorphic video with some black on the top and bottom, so when it stretches out to widescreen everything will look right.

Download: If you're having problems, I've zipped up my Compressor setting for you. Download here. Unzip it, and drop the folder into the ~user/Library/Application Support/Compressor folder, then restart Compressor. The preset will appear in your custom settings.

Kickin' it Old Skool: The power of cheap Sony DV cameras

I have an old Sony DV camera that I use as a firewire-to-analogue bridge between my Mac Pro and TV when I'm editing DV footage (which admittedly, is very rare these days). I set the camera in VTR mode, plug it into the computer by firewire, and plug it into the TV with a mini-RCA cable. Change the video output setting in FCP and it's set to go. Simple enough... nothing special there.

The other day I got a new (to me) Sony PVM-14L5 broadcast monitor so that I can do proper colour correction. Besides the multitude of component inputs, etc, it has an S-VIDEO input. I'm waiting for the Matrox MXO2 Mini to come out to set everything up correctly, but I tried a little experiment in the meantime: I hooked up the S-VIDEO from the camera to the monitor. Of course it worked, but what I think is cool is that it simultaneously output to the TV by RCA.

These older Sony DV cameras (I've used both a TRV-30 and a TRV-17) can be purchased for next to nothing on ebay, and they're really quite useful for this kind of application.

Another great thing about these little cameras is that they pass along timecode information when you're capturing, even though the cameras themselves have no ability to record timecode. If you have footage shot on a DVX-100 or something though, they work like a charm.

And finally, one very powerful, and little known thing about them is that they can play and capture PAL DV tapes in Final Cut Pro, even though they are NTSC cameras. The PAL footage won't play on your NTSC TV / Monitor, but it will play fine on the camera's LCD screen, and can be captured without timecode in FCP.

Status of Trim Forward

I'm going to start posting more regularly here. The initial intent of the site was to post the answers to all of the things I couldn't find online, and had to figure out myself. I'm going to expand that to more general notes of interest to the editing and filmmaking communities.

I don't have a lot of interest in posting links to every editing product that gets released... just the ones I have a personal interest in.

I'm also refocussing the @trimforward twitter account towards editing and camera banter only, so you can follow me there.

Historic fonts

Just came across some beautiful historic fonts (wild west, civil war, etc).

Burning Blu-ray on a Mac

I purchased an LG BE06 External Blu-ray burner today. It took me a long time to find a non-Lacie external burner available in Canada (even with Google), and I finally found it at Best Buy. I think Best Buy is the only place that carries the BE06, as the LG Canada website doesn't even list it.

This unit was praised for functionality, but criticized for price when it came out several months ago. They have since slashed the price, and I picked it up for $340 open box, which is a great deal. The Lacie external is still over $700, and is not as fast.

Right out of the box, I was able to successfully burn a BD-RE (Blu-ray rewritable disc) with Toast 9, which I purchased separately. No drivers necessary.

Next step is to test burn a blu-ray video disc in Toast. My clients will likely only need autoplay discs, so I won't need the menu functionality of the Adobe Production Suite.

How to fix unorganized Firestore MXF footage for P2 Log and Transfer

If your shooter has been shooting on HVX-200 with a firestore drive and has output to MXF instead of quicktime, they have to run an organize footage command before giving you the footage. If they don't do this, the files won't be structured in the proper format for FCP's log and transfer (or any other application, for that matter).

What to do?

First, if the shooter is still around, have them run that command on the firestore and give you the footage again.

If not, use this tutorial. It's very labour intensive, but will get you out of a bind.

ProRes now viewable in Quicktime for Windows

For those who work in an environment with Windows-based encoders, this is very good news. We tried it out this morning, and were able to encode ProRes on a Root6, which circumvents old work-arounds.

In other news, the Root6 can finally compress XDCAM HD quicktime files now, which has been a long-standing issue for us.

FCP Log and Transfer for RED footage

A few days ago RED quietly released a beta plug-in for the Log and Transfer tool in FCP that makes the RED workflow very similar to the P2 workflow. I tried it out yesterday, and it worked well.

Once it's installed, you can drag in a RED clip directory and it will automatically bring up that clip and all other clips in the same hierarchy, along with what you'd expect from a P2 import (thumbnail, "proxy", ability to mark in/out, etc, and a bunch more information. The Editblog has a bit of a rundown on it.