Editing Videotape

Not really anything to do with FCP but with all the hoopla over the new Doctor Who, here's a fun article on editing Ampex and RCA 2" videotape back in the day (60's and prior) when you had to worry about vacuum guides and re-locking sync pulses and quite literally used a microscope. I'm old.

The wiki article is here.

Thank your buttons.

The Sounds of a Dying Hard Drive

Ever wonder what a hard drive sounds like when it dies? If you've never heard it scream before here's your chance.

These are two sound files of a dying hard drive an editing place has. This hard drive is so bad that it's way beyond Disk Utility's help.

Sorry they're .zip files at a free hosting site, but they didn't want people streaming them over and over, and embedding them from their server.

83K - The idle sound of the dying hard drive. Download Link.

2.23MBs - The HD tries to read data, gives up, coughs and chokes, then kinda just gives up. Download Link.

Make sure your speakers aren't too loud as some of the sounds are pretty harsh and somewhat loud.

What does that installer install?

When you have an installer launched, before you actually install whatever it is, you can hit Command + I to "Show Files" which will present you a list of what files will be installed. It won't mention any files that are created when the installed application launches but you'll see what the installer will dump onto your HD.

Quickly find out what media an optical drive can burn

A few times I've been someplace editing and have no idea what kind of burner is in the Mac there. Being pro-Terminal mostly, I tend to fire up the terminal and type in "drutil info" and hit Return. You'll see something like this:



You can also use System Profiler (Hold Option when selecting the Apple menu and you'll see About this Mac turn into System Profiler...) or use something like Toast but launching the Terminal and tying a simple command is reliable and fast.

Smoothcam Bug in FCP7?

Some people are finding that smoothcam when exported from FCP 7 doesn't export as seen in the viewer or canvas.

A friend just ran into this issue and is now reverting back to FCP 6 and then Leopard (10.5.x) to see which causes the problem if either.

Wintertime & Coulomb's Law

In the winter the air is dryer and that means electrons like to jump around causing static electricity which while fun for siblings and spouses isn't for cats and computers.

If you're switching a lot of cables around, plugging in cameras, etc...try and reduce your static potential with a humidifier. I leave mine running pretty much 24/7 near my editing stations in the winter. Here are some more tips on reducing static electricity.

Remember, the lower the relative humidity the higher potential the static is...potentially 21,000+ volts which hard drives really don't appreciate.

FCP Versioner Updated

I don't use it but it does offer some interesting features.

The $60 (single license) FCP Versioner saves projects as XML files* (which FCP already can do, so I'm not sure of the benefits there) but it also provides a change log between saved versions of a project (which can be handy if you're not already familiar with XML, diff and the terminal) and allows for greater flexibility of number of saves per some length of time. I like autosaving every 15 mins so after an 8 hour day you have 32 saves with only 15mins of work between them. For longer projects or when they're closer to completion I usually change that to about one every hour.

There is a 15 day trial here.

*FCP Versioner's Autosave requires FCP7.

Remove the U3 partition on USB SanDisk flash drives

I use flash drives for quick, cheap and small backups of FCP save files. I use Dropbox but when the client doesn't have an internet connection or it'll take too long to download 800MBs of save files I like to use a flash drive.

But, on some SanDisk flash drives they have this annoying U3 partition that seems impossible to get rid of.

Here are two links about how to remove that partition on a Mac.

Link 01
Link 02

Final Cut Pro 6.x + Snow Leopard means your gamma is wrong

FCP's Viewer vs. Quicktime Player 7

If you use FCP 6.x and Snow Leopard your Gamma onscreen in the Canvas and Viewer is likely wrong. Here's some more info about it.

FCP corrects for viewing at 2.2 gamma, so when you're using Leopard or earlier which has 1.8 gamma everything is okay. But, since Snow Leopard defaults to 2.2 gamma, FCP is over correcting the gamma.

If you have FCP 6.x and Snow Leopard check it out yourself. Open up a file in FCP, then also open it in QT 7 and compare the images. Toggle "Enable FCP compatibility" in QT Player 7 as well. Compare the gamma of the images.

Bottom line, if at all possible correct your work on a broadcast/production monitor or just burn off a DVD and pop it into your player and take a look at it.

Conversely, you may see a similar issue with FCP7 and Leopard.

If you don't do anything else, at least learn to use the Vectorscope and Waveform Monitor and correct using those.

Viewing small movies at correct size in Quicktime X

I really really really don't like Quicktime X.

Here's a rather unusual tip to view small movies at their correct size since QTX resizes and scales up smaller movies.

"To quickly view a movie without this restriction, I drag it into a new mail message. The player used in Mail has the old-style controller at the bottom, and plays the movies at the correct size."

It may be further evidence that QTX is just window dressing to the old standard QT core technology that's been around for a while now.