Apple Final Cut Express HD - Manual (Page 970)

970 Part XII Output
 Every Frame: Plays back every frame of the sequence, whether or not rendering is
required. If there are transitions or effects in your sequence that haven’t been
rendered, your sequence will not play back in real time, but every frame will be
recorded on tape.
 Forward: Plays from the current position of the playhead forward to the end of the
sequence in the Timeline.
 Reverse: Plays from the current position of the playhead back to the beginning of the
sequence in the Timeline.
7 Press the Stop button on your camcorder or deck when the sequence is finished
playing in the Timeline.
Important: The last frame in your sequence will be held as a freeze frame when
playback stops. This may be awkward if this frame is not black. To avoid this, add a Slug
generator to place black at the end of your sequence.
Outputting to VHS Tape
Although the VHS tape format is starting to be replaced by DVDs, it is still a ubiquitous
output format for work-in-progress tapes and distribution copies. There are several
ways to output to VHS tape from Final Cut Express HD. Because VHS is not a digital
format, and decks rarely support device control protocols, there are no capture or
sequence settings in Final Cut Express HD that correspond to the VHS format.
One way to output to VHS is to simply output to whatever tape format corresponds to
your sequence and then make a dub from that tape to a VHS tape. The other option is
to output your digital signal via a camcorder or VTR that supports composite video
output. In this scenario, the digital signal is output from the computer to the video
interface, which then converts the signal to composite analog video. The composite
analog signal can then be recorded on a VHS tape. Many DV camcorders and decks
have the ability to convert an incoming signal from your computer to composite
analog video. This mode is referred to as electronics-to-electronics (or E-to-E) mode, or
passthrough mode.
Note: Other decks can only output to multiple video formats when a tape is playing
back, which means you have to record the signal to tape first, and then dub to VHS.