Apple Pro Training Series. Optimizing Your Final Cut Pro System. A Technical Guide to Real-World Post-Production

Lesson 13. Implementing Stand-Alone Uncompressed Systems

Now that your FCP system is optimized for work with DV and other native compressed formats, your thoughts may turn to transforming the system into a no-compromises, uncompressed editing system.

Uncompressed editing allows you to bring in and push out each frame of video as purely as possible, without the image artifacts and color loss that come with compressed formats. Compositing of multiple tracks, effects, and text can all be done without worrying about how compression might affect these multiple layers.

The process is quite simple, although it might get a bit expensive. Fortunately, the prices for the hardware for the transformation have plummeted in the last few years.

You'll need two new devices to handle uncompressed frames: a capture device that retrieves the frames from, and lays them back to, the tape deck, and a storage array that has the horsepower to read and write the appropriate data rates for the formats you want to work with. You might need a few more devices, depending on which capture and storage device you settle on.

Capture devices and storage options are explained in great detail in Lesson 8. Our assumption is that you've read these parts of the book, since we'll refer back to them from time to time.

Roll up your sleeves, blow the dust off that machine, and let's get going.