I took the plunge and started editing 'White Light' on Apple's new operating system Mac OS X with FCP 3. I've set out my journey below, but one thing I will say is that, so far, Final Cut Pro 3 on Mac OS 10.1.4 has been rock solid and a joy to work with, the only think to let it down in my mind is a few glitches in the operating system, which are slowly being fixed and the fact that the FireWire Extensions are still in 'Dev'... If you don't believe me check them out with your 'Apple System Profiler'. That probably one of the reasons that Apple don't, in theory, support FireWire HD's with FCP yet.

After about 4 tapes I began to find lots of time-code breaks, down in Dorset, with the Mass Grave scene we had a bad tape problem with a Sony tape which clogged up the tape heads, meaning we had to shoot the scene again the next date. From that point on I became extremely paranoid about checking the footage we had just shot. This would have been OK if I had backed the tape up 4 or 5 seconds to allow the camera to write A1 time-code but again I didn't want to risk taping over any footage, the DV-7W does have a function to review your footage safely without having to worry about the code but we only found it in the manual later on in Liverpool, thanks to the lads for finding it... It just goes to show you should always read the blood manual... not just when you have to...

So I've got about 15 to 20 tapes with time-code glitches... Anyone who digitizes knows what a massive headache this is... It basically makes capturing the footage, if you do it accurately... Times the factor of 10... Great... So in the end it was about 3 to 4 weeks before I could even start to sort the footage out... P.S. I think Final Cut Pro 3 should make this a lot easier... It now has an option to abort capture on a time-code break... But I wonder if it actually gives you the numbers prior to the time-code break? I'll let you know... Enough of the technical stuff...

When I started editing on Mac OS 10.1.2, I was having a lot of problem with FireWire devices, the LaCie Hard Drives were going to speed after about 10 minutes even with FCP open and running, it wasn't dangerous but annoying as I would have to wait for 2/3 minutes when I came to a part that was using media on the different HD's. Also when you wanted to save the project, you would have to wait for all the FireWire HD's to come out of sleep before FCP would save; the same scenario when quitting FCP. I had many discussions with Apple support, who are very nice but don't really know much past the basics, basically they said it was LaCie's problem, quite rightly Lace said it was Apple's problem as they wrote the FireWire Drivers which are built into Mac OS X. Anyway to cut a long story short, Apple decided that it wasn't there fault and that was it. Except that a week later Mac OS 10.1.3 was released and suddenly 90% of the problem disappeared. Hooray I can start editing... Apart from a glitch with my Canon XM-1/GL-1 DV Camcorder acting as Digital to Analogue Converter, which is not serious. I sometimes have to turn the camera off and then on again whilst in FCP for the footage to show on the external monitor. The whole system is rock solid and, like I said before, a joy to work with. And lets be honest, without FCP, avid and Media 100 would still be charging outrageous amounts for their software, well some still are, and we would all be editing are feature films on Adobe Premiere or even worst iMovie...

A few little tricks, well just sensible really, that I have are: 1) Made a 'User' called FCP which is only used for Final Cut Pro editing. This means any office, fax etc. software that has its own login items doesn't get activated in the FCP account. 2) If you are outputting to an external monitor, especially if you are running 2 screens like I am on a PowerBook, set both screens to thousands not millions of colors, it really does make a difference. 3) And most of this is left over from Avid days, have a plain desktop background, don't overlap FCP windows and for heaven sake turn off your ADSL connection...


My experience as FCP Supervisor on feature film

Working Title - FCP Supervisor/DV Specialist - DVCAM to 35 MM. - 2 Terabyte of Storage.

FCP v1.25 defiantly wasn't stable at this point, not on a dual processor G4 with over 2 Terabyte of Storage. The amount of times the system just locked up or plain wouldn't open a project was unbelievable, luckily I have a little trick I know to open up corrupt FCP project files. I think at that point we were the first big project to use FCP in the UK, and probably one of only ten in the World.

One major feature left out, which was real problem, was FCP inability to output the correct 'timecode' for the originating material when you work as you would for film, i.e. if you sync up your rushes, picture and sound, in a project and then use that project as you would your rushes, which I believe is what you can do with either Avid or LightWorks, but then what can you expect when the system costs $900 instead of $40,000 plus. In WT case, and this was pre the OMF export to ProTools function in FCP 2 (There was a third party product called 'FilmLogic', which Apple bought and have just released as Cinema Tools which is a work around.) But at the time I came out with what we called 'The Sandwich' file, basically the rushes were sync'd up in a project using the DVCAM picture and DAT audio. The project was then exported as DV file with a new clean timecode. This then became the Master footage and was backed up to DVCAM tape and could be used by the sound guys to get there pristine audio. Just before the edit was finish, after heavily testing FCP 2.0 myself, they made the jump. Unfortunately it was to late to use the OMF export but the bugs and crashes were definitely starting to go away.

Most of the mess above was caused by the terrible sound problems with the 4 x DSR-PD150P's they were using. You can read about the nightmare, 'March has been total chaos', in My Online Diary.

HighTime Pictures - FCP Supervisor - 1.85:1 35 MM. to DV via DigiBeta to 35 MM.

On this feature film, which was shot on 35 MM., we transferred to DigiBeta before making a DVCAM clone. This allowed the film to have a DigiBeta master prior to the final 35 MM. print. Again we were using FCP 1.25 and all Online Edit Suites were grumbling about the accuracy of FCP edl's. well one think I can tell you is that they were totally wrong... The edl's went through without a hitch, it looks like people in this industry are generally so skeptical of change they didn't give 'the new kid on the block' a chance.

Again we had the separate audio timecode problem, this time, again pre FCP 2's OMF export, we broke the edit down into 2,000 ft. rolls the lab could handle and then saved each one of the 24 audio tracks as a whole aiff file and imported them into a ProTools project. This wasn't ideal but it worked...

Hollywood Daze - FCP Supervisor - 2.35:1 35 MM. to DV via 16:9 DigiBeta to 35 MM.

Using FCP 3 on Mac OS 9.2.2 the system is much more stable, just about no crashes or file corruption and now with the OMF export all the audio can be exported ready for ProTools, eliminating some of the major problems associated with FCP 1.25.

UIP - FCP Supervisor/Editor - DVCAM to 35 MM.

This one is my own film 'White Light' and basically I following the same route as Working Title, except I might transfer to high-definition via Magic Bullet Suite and convert the footage to progressive frame 24p HD, as the new master. Again I'll probably rebuilt the whole sound and ADR the dialogue. I love foley...