2008 Unlimited Final

[Bill@Interstell]

OK it's been bugging me that I'm sitting on a lot of great tape but never get around to editing and posting it. Last night I fired up Final Cut Express 2 on the Mac and started to work. Now I rememeber why I never get this done. What a piece... If any of you have experience with this software, please help. More on that later.

For now, lets just say it will only let me capture a few minutes at a time, so here is a test of the first two laps of the race posted to youtube. It's not too bad if you chose the view in high quality option.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IT5IAmFr60

The problem I'm having is that if I try to capture more than a few minute clip, I get a message that there are dropped frames and the whole capture just aborts. I will capture the rest of this race in seperate clips and edit them together later.

This "footage is not up to my usual standards. Sorry about that. I lost my nice old Bogen 3033 tripod with a brand new fluid head during race week and had to make do with Fenceliner's spare. Thanks Larry. Also thanks for the viewpoint.

If anyone happened to find said tripod about a block south of the west pit gate... well I'd love to get it back.

[FENCELINER]

Re: 2008 Unlimited Final

Can't wait for the other laps.
Considering that tripod was never meant for video it came out pretty good.

[wingman]

Re: 2008 Unlimited Final

Now that is impressive -- great views of the passes -- the best view I've seen of Tiger passing Dago. It's interesting how Dago really had the initial acceleration to jump into that big lead but Strega had the top end to pass so decisively. Stories within stories -- I think gearing was a big story that we may never really hear...

Thank you Bill -- waiting eagerly for the next chapter.

Neal

[T.F.]

Re: 2008 Unlimited Final

As usual- fantastic video. I look forward to more. I'm a great admirer of your 2005 work (available on past pages of this very site).

[Bill@Interstell]

Re: 2008 Unlimited Final

Now that is impressive -- great views of the passes -- the best view I've seen of Tiger passing Dago. It's interesting how Dago really had the initial acceleration to jump into that big lead but Strega had the top end to pass so decisively. Stories within stories -- I think gearing was a big story that we may never really hear...
Neal

I did hear Dago made some choices in setup that may not have paid off, but I'm also giving a big chunk of the credit to Tiger. Notice how he set up high and wide at the previous pylon to let him trade altitude for airspeed and an inside position...

[First time Juke]

Re: 2008 Unlimited Final

Bear had some problems !?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKEhn7ot8XI&feature=related

[FedexBob]

Re: 2008 Unlimited Final

Bill, GREAT video! Can't wait to see the rest. Juke, thanks for linking my video. Tripod? What tripod I'll have to look into uploading better quality video to youtube...not quite sure how to do that.
Bob

[Bill@Interstell]

Re: 2008 Unlimited Final

This tripod... just in case somebody happens to run across it. Thanks Betty but I don't think the one you have is mine. As you can see, this one isn't "compact".

[CMW]

Re: 2008 Unlimited Final

Sounds like you are having a frame rate issue. I don't know how you are hooking up your computer to the taped source and if there is any kind of auto detection (firewire from camera to computer), but it looks like you shot the video in an HD format which should be 24 fps. Final cut may have a default of 29.97 fps for standard video. Not too familiar with your software, but you may have to setup your project at 24fps to import video from a 24 fps source. Good luck-hope that helps. - you may also choose to "load live" or load the clips without a defined in and out point - basically like recording the video onto your hard drive without the native timecode.

[Race5]

Re: 2008 Unlimited Final

Bill,
You might try uploading your vids at Vimeo.com instead of Youtube. You can upload HD formats and it will be MUCH better quality.

[Bill@Interstell]

Re: 2008 Unlimited Final

Sounds like you are having a frame rate issue. I don't know how you are hooking up your computer to the taped source and if there is any kind of auto detection (firewire from camera to computer), but it looks like you shot the video in an HD format which should be 24 fps. Final cut may have a default of 29.97 fps for standard video. Not too familiar with your software, but you may have to setup your project at 24fps to import video from a 24 fps source. Good luck-hope that helps. - you may also choose to "load live" or load the clips without a defined in and out point - basically like recording the video onto your hard drive without the native timecode.

Final Cut has a default configuration for the XL2. It is firewire and it may in fact be 29.97 fps. I'll have to check. the camera has some options including 24p, but I've mostly recorded at 60i as 24 give me some prop strobing problems. The XL2 is not HD. It is better than standard and records native 16:9 which is nice. The output format with the least distortion (round objects are round) is 768x576 although Final Cut thinks the XL2 is 720x480. that setting makes everything look wider than it is.

To make maters worse what you see in the final Cut windows is not what you get. 16:9 is smashed down to 4:3

I'm not sure any of the above is related to the dropped frames issue either but it might be. IT seems like I'm oveflowing a buffer somewhere, but that might not be right either as it is not a consistent amount of time. Long takes won't go but sometimes even short clips crater then work fine on a second attempt.

Pretty frustrating software. Id swear it was from Microsoft.

[Bill@Interstell]

Re: 2008 Unlimited Final

Bill,
You might try uploading your vids at Vimeo.com instead of Youtube. You can upload HD formats and it will be MUCH better quality.

I'll check that out. thanks. The files look fine at my end although youtube subjects them to s second round of compression.

[dvddude]

Re: 2008 Unlimited Final

The problem I'm having is that if I try to capture more than a few minute clip, I get a message that there are dropped frames and the whole capture just aborts. I will capture the rest of this race in seperate clips and edit them together later.

This "footage is not up to my usual standards. Sorry about that. I lost my nice old Bogen 3033 tripod with a brand new fluid head during race week and had to make do with Fenceliner's spare. Thanks Larry. Also thanks for the viewpoint.

If anyone happened to find said tripod about a block south of the west pit gate... well I'd love to get it back.

I am not familiar at all with Final Cut, as I edit exclusively with Vegas Pro, but here are some tips that worked for me when I had dropped frames with Vegas a while back. This may or may not be your problem, but I offer it as a possible solution. It sounds like your computer may be having a hard time capturing frames because it is busy with some other application running behind the scenes, in effect, "stealing" your CPU's resources. Some things I do, which make a HUGE difference:

1) Close ALL other applications and make sure NOTHING is running in the background. On Vista, you can check by going to the task manager and seeing what is running. For starters: a) make sure your anti-viral software is turned off, b) make sure your screensaver is turned off, c) make sure any and all programs are not "updating" their software when you don't want them to. Microsoft is particularly bad about getting updates at inopportune times. Something as inoccuous as Quicktime could be connecting to the internet to check for updates. Make sure ALL software applications have the "auto-update" features turned off, d) clean out all "junk" or trialware software from your computer. Yes, they DO hog your computer's CPU.

2) When you capture your video to your hard drive, make sure you do NOTHING else with your computer - no internet, no e-mail, no listening to videos/music, etc. I even go so far as to physically disconnect my computer from the internet, to prevent any software applications from getting updates that I might have missed.

3) Make sure you have two physically separate hard drives, not just two "partitioned" on the same drive. Have your Final Cut program on one drive and your capture drive on another. Having two physical drives, makes it MUCH easier for your computer to capture.

4) Make sure your capture drive is at least 7200 rpm. Anything less than that and you are really increasing your chances of dropping frames.

5) Make sure your hard drive is configured utilizing NTFS. I don't know anything about Macs, but on P.C.'s, FAT32 hard drives are limited by the file size that can be saved without partitioning. This ends up making a series of approximately 13 minute video chunks in Standard Definition. So, with FAT32, you can only capture 13 min long video at a time.

6) If Final Cut has an option to turn off the graphics window to see the incoming video it's capturing, then do it. Something as simple as watching the incoming video on your computer, can hog your computer's resources so much, that it will cause dropped frames. If this isn't an option in Final Cut, then minimize the viewing window as small as you can make it. The point is, that you want to make it very easy for your computer to concentrate on one task-capturing video, not playing it. Remember, ANYTHING your computer does outside of capturing the video will make it harder to accomplish the capture.

7) If none of this works, then you might have a frame/conversion issue going on. I can't help you with Final Cut, since I'm not familiar. You might have to experiment with different preferences and capture settings to tweak it.

8) It goes without saying, but make sure you have the latest version of your software. ALL and I mean ALL Video NLE's have bugs in them. You might just be experiencing something that got overlooked by the software designers. A new update might cure all.

9) Also, it goes without saying, but use the fastest, most powerful CPU you have access to. If you are trying to capture something on a very old 1 GHz CPU, you might have some issues with dropping frames.

If none of the above works, then try some internet forums for advice. I don't know about Final Cut, or if they even have a user's forum, but I learned a tremendous amount when I learned how to use Vegas many years back, simply from asking questions on their outstanding forum.

That's about all I can think of, hope that helps!

[AAFO_WSagar]

Re: 2008 Unlimited Final

I don't know if this helps or not but.. due to a repair issue, I had to replace my P-IV 2.8 dell last year with the best I could afford at the time... what I got was a Lenovo core2 duo.. ... whatever the cpu speed is.. but, long story short, I managed to get the dell fixed (after the fact) with extended warranty Dell issued, via a class action suit (that I had no part of) and it's like new...

I digress....

OK.. when I speced out the Dell back in '04, I put the fastest CPU available at the time, and, here's what I think is important here.. fastest hard drive... (these are both laptops) I belive it was a 7200 RPM large cache unit.. pretty high end for the day..

Long story short, the new laptop specs out and benches WAY faster than the "old" Dell but... I can't capture video to save my arse on the new one without dropping a TON of frames and having the end result totally useless.. yet the Dell, same program, does fine.... The Lenovo has a 4500 rpm HD.. I believe, it's a SATA, but I could not swear to it....

Is the HD the key???

Both have 2gb of ram, running xp Pro...

Wayne Sagar

[ignomini]

Re: 2008 Unlimited Final

Wayne,

I'm not a PC guy, but I can tell you modern notebook processors have no problem handling video capture. The problem is usually disk I/O. Even my 8 core Mac Pro starts dropping frames if I try to both capture video, and do something else disk intensive at the same time. The processors are just loping along, but the hard drive is overwhelmed. Laptop drives tend to be pretty slow. If you've got USB 2.0, or better yet Firewire, hook up an external 3.5 inch 7200 rpm drive and you should have no problem with dropped frames. The other alternative is a fast internal 2.5 inch notebook drive, but they're not really ever going to perform as well as a 3.5 inch drive.

RG