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With Support from Apple(Page 2 of 3 pages for this article < 1 2 3 >) Filed under: Hardware •Post Production • How To Get The Most Out Of Your Easy Setup Part 1
NAME & DESCRIPTION
This is fairly self explanatory. The name you enter here is what will appear in your CS window. What I like to do is add a space before the name I’m going to give my CS, that way it always appears at the top of the CS window. As for the Description, what I normally do here is put in the name of the project that this particular CS is relevant to. That way if another editor sits down, and needs to figure out which CS I used for a particular project, there will be absolutely no confusion.
Here is where you need to have attention to detail, because if your settings aren’t correct here, you can start to run into a world of problems. The frame size obviously is directly related to the footage type you are capturing, and that means that you NEED to know either what camera the footage was shot with, or what deck you will be digitizing from, and with the world of HD, there are many different ways of working on the same footage. Let’s use the Panasonic Varicam as our example.
I know that it is a 720p camera, and that should raise a flag right away about the needed frame size. 720p equals 1280x720, and will be the frame size for our capture, but not our sequence. I know that the native codec for DVCPro HD is 960x720, and that is created by our Compressor Setting, not by our frame size. This will make more sense as we move forward, so just bare with me, and everything will make sense towards the end. Once you have chosen your frame size, there is a checkbox next to it called Anamorphic. What you would use this for is if you are doing an offline from an HDCam VTR in DV resolution, you can set the VTR to take the 16x9 image and “Squeeze” it to be full frame, and then have Final Cut Pro “Squeeze” it back to an anamorphic frame. This is imperative if you are doing a 4x3 offline for a 16x9 online. You can click here and check out another article I did that talks about 4x3 offline for a 16x9 online.
Digitizer & Input This setting will vary depending on one main factor, and that is which capture device you are using. Higher end editing systems using capture cards such as a Kona 3 or Blackmagic will see “Kona” or “BlackMagic” in this drop down menu. If you have multiple capture devices (Kona and Firewire), you can select the one of your choice here as well. Input refers to just that. How will you be inputting your video? Will it be SDI, Firewire, S-Video? You will need to tell FCP how you want to get your footage into your system. Compressor/Quality/FPS/Advanced/Limit Data Rate
This is probably where people get stumped the most, and you really shouldn’t be. This is where you are going to set the codec that will be used to capture your video, but keep this very important fact in mind. Different codecs support different frame sizes. Like I had mentioned before with the Panasonic Varicam, even though it is a 720p (1280x720 frame size - 16x9) format, it records on the tape at DVCPro HD Compression, which is 960x720 (4x3), so at the end of the day, FCP will be reformatting the footage based on the codec you have chosen to capture with, so when you are editing and outputting, you are doing so in 16x9. If it sounds confusing, think of it this way. Up until a little while ago, there was only one camera that could record in true 24p (24 individual frames per second), and that was the Sony F-900 Cine-Alta camera (we have George Lucas to thank for that). There were other cameras out there that recorded in pseudo “24p”, but it wasn’t a true 24 individual frames per second. Inevitably, pulldown had to be removed when capturing the footage so you could edit in “true” 24p. There is something else very important I want to point out here, and that is that just because you are capturing from a DVCPro HD source, you don’t have to capture with the DVCPro HD codec if you don’t want to. You can pick any codec you want to work with like ProRes 422 (or HQ), Uncompressed 4:2:2 8-bit (or 10-bit), or any other codec that your system supports, assuming your drives can handle it. For example, I would never work at 720p Uncompressed 10-bit on my iMac with a FW-800 drive, as my computer would probably croak. This is where you can experiment to get the right codec for your particular editing configuration. Quality is self explanatory. The lower the data rate, the lower the image quality, and the more you can fit on your hard drives. To be honest, I leave this at 100% as in most cases I’m working in DV or compressed HD (DVCPro HD, ProRes (and HQ)), so I don’t normally offline and need tons of free storage space. Frames-Per-Second, again, is fairly self explanatory. If you live in North America, chances are you will be working in one of three frame rates, which are 23.98, 29.97 or 59.94. Don’t confuse 59.94p with 59.94i, as they are very different. 59.94i is basically referring to standard 29.97 interlaced frames-per-second.
The Advanced button is very similar to setting up your QuickTime codec in the Render Queue in a program like After Effects. You can adjust the codecs for things like “Interlace” (yes/no) and “Aspect Ratio” (4x3 vs 16x9). These settings will vary by codec, and I always tell people to stay away from the Advanced button, if you don’t know what you are doing.
Last, we have Limit Data Rate which, if you are familiar with creating H264 QuickTimes from QuickTime, you should know what this means. Other than DV that has a fixed data rate, you can cap off your video at any data rate of your choosing. Again, I never set this, as I don’t want anything capped off, as it will directly affect the quality of your images, and as always, especially with HD, it’s all about the picture quality.
Device/Input/Format Much like in the QVS section, the Device drop down will vary depending on your capture device. If you have a Kona/Blackmagic or if you are just using your Firewire camera or VTR, you will either see, or need to set that here. In most cases, if you are using a Kona 3 capture card, it will default to that, and you won’t have to change it. The same can be said for a DV device.
(Page 2 of 3 pages for this article < 1 2 3 >) 
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