FCP and Rendering Online and Offline

[JimmyB248]

Hey guys, quick question. I'm trying to get into editing and have been using Avid for a long while now. Recently I got myself Final Cut Pro for my MBP (runs incredibly by the way), however I'm having some very very simple problems that I imagine have the most obvious answer I just can't see.

1. Rendering Online and Offline. I don't do all my editing online, for one I have nowhere near the hard drive space so I cannot render every cut and effect I do. When working with FCP I cannot figure this thing out. I have my clips in the bin, I move them into the Viewer, make a cut/add an effect and then add it to the timeline. However, when played it is just a blue screen saying 'Unrendered'. If I highlight the clips in the bin and rick click and select "Make offline" I have three options, delete originals off hard drive, move to trash, or keep. Keeping them makes no difference, when editing the clips, I just get a red screen saying "Offline". So how I can simply work and add effects or edits or whatever while being able to see/hear the clips I put in the timeline.

2. Zoom. This one's real real simple I'm sure. I was playing around with Vector masks, and in the timeline I found that I could press 'Z' to change the cursor to a zoom icon and when I click I can zoom. Then if I press shift or something I can zoom out. I cannot for the life of me however figure out how to change the zoom cursor back to a regular cursor so I can click without zooming. I saw no button anywhere or anything to press. If I pressed 'Z' again nothing happened. I had to restart FCP to get out of it. Sure it's easy, which key is it?

Any help with these issues would be great thanks.

 

[LethalWolfe]

I'd strongly suggest cracking open the manual and doing the tutorial. Especially since you are coming over from Avid and you'll try and do things the Avid way. There is also a cheat sheet that came in the box with all the keyboard commands on it.

1. You shouldn't be making any edits or changes to clips in the viewer window, you should only do it to clips in the timeline.
1a. Taking clip X from the Browser into the Viewer and applying a filter will apply that filter to the entire master clip (typically not what you want to do). Taking clip X from the Browser, adding it to the Timeline and then double clicking on it will open it in the Viewer, but *only* the instance of that clip that is in the Timeline. So now if you add a filter to it the footage in the Timeline will be effected, but the master clip will remain untouched.
1b. If you apply an effect to a master clip and then edit that clip into the Timeline you may see the blue "render me" line because you've applied and effect that needs rendering.

2. If your clip settings and timeline settings don't match then you'll get the "unrendered" screen when you try and play the clip back from the timeline. You cannot mix and match resolutions in FCP like you can in Avid.

3. "Make offline" in FCP means "break the link between the file in the Browser and the actual piece of media on the HDD".
Keep - break the link, but keep the media where it is
Move to trash - break the link, toss the media in the trash can, but don't delete it
Delete - break the link, toss the media into the trash can, and delete it forever

4. Hit "a" to get the normal cursor back. Window->tool palette (I think) will bring up the tool palette.


Lethal

 

[JimmyB248]

Thanks very much for that. Very useful information there.

 

[poppe]

See if you can help me...

So we are trying to do an edit right now. The footage that came from the browser that was imported from an HDD (which is still connected) is causing use some problems. We take the footage from the Browser and put it on the timelinem. It asks us to render it which we do. But if we then move the footage up or down the time line it needs to be rendered again. There is no affects or anything on the clips. We are just trying to do a straight rough cut before anything.

My guess is that the footage was shot in PAL, and now it is on a NTSC computer...

Any other thoughts?

 

[bigbossbmb]

Poppe, it sounds like you need to change your Sequence Settings to match your footage. Make sure that the format of your video is the same as the description in your Sequence Settings.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Poppe, it sounds like you need to change your Sequence Settings to match your footage. Make sure that the format of your video is the same as the description in your Sequence Settings.

That would be my first guess as well. And *everything* has to match, resolution, format, frame rate, etc.,. I had a minor irritation working on some DVCPro HD footage recently where some of it was 29.97 and some of it was 59.94, and I had to edit in a 29.97 Seq so all of my 59.94 stuff had to be rendered. It played back okay w/"unlimited RT" turned on and it didn't take long to render, but it was a bit annoying especially since this summer I worked on an Avid show where we mixed SD and HD footage in the same timeline w/o a slowdown what so ever.


Lethal

 

[poppe]

That would be my first guess as well. And *everything* has to match, resolution, format, frame rate, etc.,. I had a minor irritation working on some DVCPro HD footage recently where some of it was 29.97 and some of it was 59.94, and I had to edit in a 29.97 Seq so all of my 59.94 stuff had to be rendered. It played back okay w/"unlimited RT" turned on and it didn't take long to render, but it was a bit annoying especially since this summer I worked on an Avid show where we mixed SD and HD footage in the same timeline w/o a slowdown what so ever.


Lethal

oh ok. thanks guys! ill try that. I really miss avid media composer. FCP is fun and all but I had a lot better time with Avid, well until I had to export to DVD.

ill let you know what happens when I change everything...