CINEMA 219 – F.A.Q.
The Final Cut Pro manual can be found online at Apple.com here A sheet of commonly used FCP Keyboard shortcuts can be found here |
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GENERAL INFO
A1 - NO. If you re-record over a prior recording, you’ll introduce video and/or audio dropouts. Do not re-use the used portions of a tape.
A2 - This just means that your DV deck is turned off. If you do not need the DV deck at this moment, just hit the “continue” button. If you’re going to need to use the DV deck to capture footage or print to tape, turn on the DV deck’s power and click the “Check Again” button.
A3 - When working in the Mulberry lab, your project file will be automatically saved to your personal directory. From the desktop, double click on the “UserSpace” drive. Then find the directory with your login (lastname_firstinitial). Inside that folder you’ll find a folder called “Documents”, your project file is in there.
A4 - These are your “media” files and they’re in your “Final Cut Pro Documents” folder in a folder called “Capture Scratch”. In the capture scratch folder, you’ll find folders which are named to match your project files. Those folders contain the quicktime files of your footage
A5 - The project file is a small file that contains all of the information about your project. It does not actually contain any video or audio files. It does contain all the information about your project. With the project file and your original tapes, you can recreate your project on any computer quickly and easily.
A6 - Double click on the "Media WorkSpace Alias" on your desktop. Log in, Double-click on the folder that says "WISKEMANNM", go to the “CINE310-01” folder and inside you’ll see three a folder labeled “Assignment Inbox”. Copy your project file and Quicktime Conversion into this folder.
If you do not have the "Media WorkSpace Alias" on your desktop, then just go to the “Shared Workspace” alias on the desktop. Log in. Double-click on the "Media WorkSpaces" folder, and you'll see the "Media WorkSpace Alias" inside.A7 - Yes, by using the “Media Manager”. However, for the purposes of this class, you’re better off simply capturing your footage one time, putting your tapes somewhere safe as a ‘backup’ and leaving your footage on the computer until you are completely done with it and the class has ended. If you accidentally delete all the work you’ve done on your project because you were messing around with Media Manager, you’ll be very unhappy.
If, after the class is over and you've received your final grade, you would like to trim down your project to just the portions of the media files that are actually in use, you can use the “Media Manager” to do that. Media Manager is a touchy tool and I would recommend you read the manual and/or the FCP help file before you delve into it and possibly do something you don’t want to do.
But, if you’re ready to throw caution to the wind, and you’ve already passed 310, all you have to do is select the Sequence in the Browser. Then right-click on the sequence icon and select “Media Manager”. You should see a popup menu. From there choose “Copy” Check "Delete Unused Media" then click the Browse button to select your target HD.
Good luck with that….
GETTING AUDIO/VIDEO INTO FINAL CUT
1. Put in your CD, iTunes will launch (if it doesn’t, then start it from the dock)
2. From the menu bar, choose iTunes > Preferences
3. Choose the “Advanced” icon at the top
4. Click the “importing” tab
5. Click “Import Using” and select AIFF encoder
6. Click the “Setting” drop-down menu and select “Custom”
7. Select 48kHz from the sample rate menu and 16 bit from the Sample Size menu and Stereo from the Channels menu
8. Click OK
9. In the iTunes song list window, click the CD icon, select the tracks you want to import by putting checks in the boxes next to them.
10. Click the “Import CD” button at the bottom right corner of the iTunes window
11. NOTE: If the song starts automatically playing, you can stop it with the controls in the top left corner of the iTunes window
First, make sure you have iTunes set up to import files in the 48kHz/16bit format.
Open iTunes and go to iTunes> Preferences > Advanced > Importing > Import Using: AIFF Encoder> Custom> 48.000 kHz, 16 bit, Stereo >OK
Then put the mp3 into your iTunes Library if you haven’t already. (Simply drag your mp3 into the iTunes window.)
Select/highlight the file you want to convert, then go up to the “Advanced” menu at the top of iTunes and down to “Convert Selection to AIFF”
iTunes will create a new file with the SAME NAME as the original, but ending with .aif
If you’re not sure where the song is on your hard disk, select its title in iTunes and choose “Show In Finder” from the File menu.
You do not want to mix different sample rates within your FCP projects. Even if you think it is okay because “it works”, you’re asking for trouble down the line.
DV is 48kHz, 16bit audio and you want ALL audio used in your project to be exactly the same. CD audio is NOT the same. Mp3 files are NOT the same. Unless you’ve recorded the sound with your DV camera itself, it is likely that your audio will need to be converted before using it in Final Cut. Also, you do NOT want to try and make FCP play audio directly off of your CD in the CD-Drive. If you want to add audio clips to your project, you need to actually have those files on the computer itself. Do not just drag songs from your CD into the FCP window.Most likely you’re trying to capture a clip that is at the very beginning of the tape. Because capturing requires the tape to ‘pre-roll’, you’ll need a small amount of space on the tape PRIOR to the beginning of your first clip. If there’s not enough tape, or not enough time code prior to the start of your footage, you will get this error.
If your first "IN" point is set at the very beginning of the tape, then the deck cannot sufficiently "pre-roll" to a point prior to the IN point (which it needs to do). If you get the timecode error while trying to batch-capture multiple clips, realize that it is most likely due to *one* of your clips, not all of them. So you can start off by only selecting a couple clips at a time and batch capturing them. This will allow you to identify the "problem" clip. Once you've found the one clip that won't capture, you can re-set the IN point within the "browser" window. Use the scroll bar at the bottom of the Browser window to scroll to the right. Then, using your mouse, select the starting point for the 1st clip and change it to a slightly later point. OR just go back to the first shot on the tape and RE-log it with new IN and OUT points. The overall solution: Don't set your first shot's "IN" point at 00:00:05:00 or earlierDouble click on “Media”. At the bottom of the window, you will see how much hard drive space is available. It should say something like “10.14 GB available” If it is below “2 GB available”, email me so we can provide more space. If it says anything with a “KB” (kilobytes) instead of “GB” (gigabytes), let me know.
DV footage requires about 250 megabytes per minute of footage. That’s ~1 gigabyte for 5 minutes of footage or ~13GB per hour.
There are a couple things you need to do. First, you need to set up the DV deck so you can direct your video/audio from the VHS through the DV deck and into FCP. Secondly you need to tell FCP to stop looking for timecode for the moment because your VHS tape doesn’t have any.
To set up the DV deck so it will re-route the VHS to FCP, you need to:
- Press the “display” button at the top left of the DV deck. This will show the timecode of the tape as well as either “DV IN” or “A/V -> DV”. If you see “A/V -> DV” your deck is set up to receive an analog input (VHS).
If you do NOT see this, you need to:
- Press the “menu” button (just below the power switch). Now, using the Select/Push roller to the right of the menu button, work your way to the “VCR SET” menu to the “A/V->DV OUT”. Press the Selection roller, scroll to highlight the “ON” setting and press the roller again. Now, press the “menu” button to exit the menu system. Your deck is now set up to receive video and audio via the analog cables attached to the DV deck. The VHS/DVD deck underneath your desk is wired in. So you should be able to play your tape in that deck and the signal will be routed into the DV deck and then into your computer.
Go to “File” and to “Log and Capture” to open the log and capture window. Since your VHS tape doesn’t contain any timecode information and FCP will be looking for timecode information, you need to tell FCP to stop looking.
In the “log and capture” window, click on the “capture settings” tab. You want to change the “device control” from “firewire” to “non-controllable device”. Otherwise FCP will keep waiting for timecode and won’t start recording.
Press the capture “now” button and press play on the VHS deck and your video should start coming in and being recorded. Hit “ESC” to stop capturing.
NOTE: When you’re done with this, you should (a) reset the “device control” back to “firewire” and (b) go into the Sony DV deck’s menu system and turn the “A/V -> DV OUT” back to the “off” position.
Keep in mind that it’s illegal to duplicate copyrighted material. But if you have your own homemade DVD of your own material, you can follow the same instructions seen above in Q6.
GETTING AUDIO/VIDEO OUT OF FINAL CUT
“Print to video”. Once your editing is complete, render all your effects and save your project. Go to File>Print to Video. You’ll see a window with different options. Check the box next to ‘countdown’ to record a numeric countdown before the first frame of your project. Select any other options you want and hit “OK”. Simultaneously press the two record buttons on the Sony DV deck and begin your output to tape.
Open up your completed project in FCP
Go to: File-->Export-->Quicktime Conversion
The “Format” should say “QuickTime Movie”. Next to that is a button that says “Options”. Click on the “Options” button and a "Movie Settings" window will open.
In the "Video" section of this window, click the "Settings" button which will then open the “Video Compression Settings” window.Set the “Compression Type” (at the top) to “MPEG-4 Video” Under “Data Rate”, restrict it to 1000 kilibits/second At the bottom right is a slider where you set the “Compressor” Quality. Set it to medium.
Click “OK” and “OK” and Export your project with those settings.
AFTER IT’S DONE – WATCH IT!!!!!
You should watch it to make sure the entire clip is there. To make sure you’re not missing something that you thought was in there or whatever. And THEN upload/copy it into your folder on the Shared Workspace CINE310 folder.
It will take 10 or 15 minutes or so to compress the file.
FCP shows you every single bit of the frame but regular TVs and monitors won’t show you the entire underscanned frame. When doing titles, you need to utilize the “title safe” area of the frame.
See the “How can I see the “title safe” area of the frame?” question for more information.
DV files and DVD files are two completely different formats. Video on a DV tape (and the video you’re using in Final Cut) is compressed and encoded in a completely different manner and file format than video that can be played on a DVD player and is contained on a DVD.
Therefore, you must convert all of your files in order to burn a DVD.
NOTE: The video files you put on the DVD will not be suitable for further editing in Final Cut. If you’re just looking for a way to back up your footage so you can do more editing later, you should either utilize an external hard drive or simply burn all your media files to a DVD as data. The following instructions are for making a DVD which will play in a DVD player hooked up to a TV, not as a way to backup files.
Make sure you’ve saved your project and you have your sequence open in the timeline. Then go to [File > Export > Quick Time Movie] (NOT “Conversion”)
- Make sure the “Setting” dropdown menu is set to “Current Settings”
- Make sure the “Include” dropdown menu is set to “Audio and Video”
- The “Markers” menu will allow you to use “chapter markers” from your timeline to set the chapters on your dvd. You set these in FCP by placing your playhead in the timeline where you want a chapter marker. Then tap the “m” key twice and a new window will pop up where you can name your chapters and “add chapter marker”.
If you’ve done this and want them to be used on your DVD, set the “Markers” menu to include “Chapter Markers”
- Next you should UN-check the “Make Movie Self-Contained”. By UN-checking this, you will be exporting a reference movie. A reference movie contains pointers to the video files that your project is using, but none of the actual video itself. Therefore, the reference movie is a very small file and can’t be played on any other computer. But since you’re ONLY creating a file that is going to be re-compressed by iDVD, making a reference movie is all you need.
Give the file a name and save it somewhere where you can find it.
Now you are ready to burn a DVD: drag the final movie to iDVD project or Import Asset in DVD Studio Pro.
Basic way to use iDVD to burn your video
- Open iDVD (it's a blue colored icon of a DVD with clapper markings at the top)TROUBLESHOOTING
First, is the MBox plugged in and getting power? Are there lights on the front that are lit up? If not, then the MBox has no power running to it. It gets its power from the USB cable, make sure it’s plugged in.
If there is power to the MBox and you’re trying to use the speakers, make sure that the speakers are plugged in and turned on as well. Most of them have a volume dial on them.
If you’re still not hearing anything, make sure you not only turn up the volume on the MBox using the first “headphone” dial, but also that the third dial (the “Mix”) is turned to the center (up and down).
If you’re still not hearing anything, you may have the audio routed from the computer directly to the Sony DV deck instead of to the MBox. See the next question for info on how to change that setting.
If you’re not hearing any sound as you see the picture on the Sony DV deck, you might try turning up the volume by pressing on the Volume up button on the deck.
If you’re still not hearing anything, the audio might not be routed to the Sony Deck. Go to Final Cut Pro > Audio/Video Settings and click on the Summary tab at the top. At the bottom of this window make sure that “Video Playback” is set to “Apple Firewire NTSC (720 x 480)” and “Audio Playback” is set to “Firewire DV”.
If the Audio Playback is set to “Digidesign Mbox 2”, the audio will be routed through the Mbox and then to your speakers or headphones. This is fine while you’re editing but when you are printing to video you need the audio to go, via the firewire, to the DV deck.
The DV decks must be set up to receive the video and audio signal from the Mac via firewire. Press the “display” button at the top left of the DV deck. This will show the timecode of the tape as well as either “DV IN” or “A/V -> DV”. If you see “A/V -> DV” your deck is set up to receive an analog input and not the firewire.
Press the “menu” button (just below the power switch). Now, using the Select/Push roller to the right of the menu button, work your way down the “VCR SET” menu to the “A/V->DV OUT” . Press the Selection roller, scroll to highlight the “OFF” setting and press the roller again. Now, scroll down to “return” or just press the “menu” button to exit the menu system. Your deck is now set up to receive/send picture and sound via the firewire cable attached to your computer.
Go up to the “View” menu and down to “Show Title Safe”. The inner box is “title safe” the outer box is “action safe”. If you definitely want your titles to be seen and look good, put them inside of the “title safe” box. If you definitely want your action to be visible, make sure it’s inside the “action safe” box.
There are a number of things that might be going wrong here. The first thing you should do is to stop the playback and play the clip again. Is it still out of sync? Is it out of sync in the exact same way as it was previously?
Sometimes these computers just can’t keep up with playback so even though your footage is IN sync, it will play out of sync occasionally. If this is the case it’s usually cured by playing the piece again and you’ll find it to be back in sync.
If that doesn’t solve it, and you’re playing from your timeline, you should check in your timeline to make sure that you haven’t accidentally bumped the video out of sync from the audio. If you’ve been turning the “linking” on and off, you may have moved your audio out of sync from your video. Look at the clip. If there is a little red box with numbers in it, that’s FCP telling you you’ve moved the audio and video out of sync from one another.
If your problem still isn’t solved, and your audio was recorded simultaneously with your video onto the same DV tape, shut down Final Cut, log off, restart the computer and check again. Watch your tape on the Sony deck. If it’s in sync there, it should be in sync when you capture it. If none of these things help, then try capturing your footage again.
Unfortunately this is sometimes a problem with the computers in Mulberry because they can't keep up with your project. If you keep getting this error while trying to play your project, you should try the following:
Shut down and restart Final Cut. If that doesn’t work, restart the computer. If you have multiple projects or sequences open simultaneously, shut the ones you aren’t using. Make sure you’re not running other programs (like Firefox, Word, iTunes etc) while you’re trying to edit.
If that doesn’t work and you're trying to "print to video", go to the next question (Q7)
There is one, somewhat drastic, solution if you need to print your project to tape and you can’t because of these ‘dropped frame’ errors. That is to take all of the separate elements of your project (every single video clip, audio clip, title, effect etc) and combine them into one single file that FCP can play back without dropping frames.
NOTE: This is not a suitable solution if you need to continue editing and you’re getting the ‘dropped frame’ error while your cutting. This is only something you want to do if you need to print the entire completed project to tape but can’t because of the ‘dropped frame’ error or if your deck is missing or not working.
Make sure you’ve rendered all of your effects. In your timeline, set an “IN” point at the very beginning of your project and an “OUT” point at the very end.
Go to File -> Export -> Quicktime
You’re going to export a full-quality quicktime version of your project. The biggest downside to this is that the file is going to be very very large. Because of that, you need to make sure you delete the file after you’re done with this process.
Make sure that “Make Movie Self Contained” is checked!
Save the file to your desktop so you can find it easily. When FCP is done exporting the file, close all of your projects and open a brand new one. Into this new empty project, you want to import your newly created quicktime. Place this single clip into your timeline and you should be able to Print to Video without any dropped frames.
After you’re done, delete the large full-resolution quicktime version of your project and empty the trash to regain the used hard drive space.
If you need to print to video from a different computer because your deck is missing or not working, you just neeed to move this file. It's too big to email but it can be moved by using an external hard drive, some USB thumb drives or the shared workspace. Move it onto the other computer and open it up in FCP and print to video. After you're done, delete the large version of your file and empty the trash.
Shift + S toggles the audio scrubbing on and off.
You have accidentally hit ctrl + z while that window was selected and you’ve turned on the “range checking”.
You can also turn this off by going up to the “View” menu and turning “Range Check” off.
You’ve accidentally hit option + z which toggles the timecode overlay feature on and off. Select the window where you see the numbers and hit option + z to make them disappear.
It’s possible that you have two tracks in your timeline but only one of them actually contains any sound. This is because, when you record, you’re recording a mono signal in through the DV camera, yet your project is set up (by default) to bring in both R and L channels for stereo. Turn on the waveform display to see if some of your audio clips are actually silent.
Not if you don’t have your media files on another computer.
If you have a portable firewire or USB hard drive (sometimes called a “lacie drive”) you can use it to move your media files from one computer to another or you can permanently store your media files on that drive. Portable hard drives are extremely useful and allow you to take all of your media with you wherever you might go.
If you do have your media on another computer OR you have a portable drive OR you want to re-capture your footage from your DV tapes, then the only other thing you’ll need is your project file.
Simply put your project file on the new computer and open it up with Final Cut Pro. Final Cut will not be able to find your footage (media) because it’s not sure where to look. Click the “reconnect” button and show final cut where your footage is.
If you’re going to re-capture all your footage from your DV tapes, then simply select all the clips in the browser window and do a ‘batch capture’ from the log and capture window
This can happen for a couple different reasons. Maybe you’ve just accidentally closed one of your windows. The first thing to try is to reset your windows to their original layout. Go to the top of your screen to the “Window” menu. Then to “Arrange” and select “Standard”.
If this doesn’t help and you’re still missing windows (particularly if you’re missing your timeline window) you probably don’t have a sequence open. You might have your project open, but you’ll need to go into your “Browser” window and double click on a sequence and you “Timeline” and “Canvas” windows should reappear.