exporting video from fcp into squeeze only audio ?

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

what video codec are you using? Squeeze should be able to read all codecs on your system, but sometimes that doesn’t actually work out.

Try rendering with a different video codec.

Aharon Rabinowitz
Email: arabinowitz (AT) yahoo (DOT) com
All Bets Are Off Productions, Inc.
Creative Cow After Effect Podcast
Internet Killed the Video Star: A Guide to Creating Video for the Web

[Arty Gold]

the thing is i’m not even at the render level
it’s when i bring the video into sorenson squeeze
all i’m getting is a black box where the video shoudl be playing…

the audio runs fine….i hear that

the video well that’s just a black screen

i have updateed the latest quicktime…
it’s sorenson squeeze 4.7 i just upgraded that as well…is there a patch update as well ?

project due tuesday…i need help !!! ha

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

By “rendered” video, I mean exported or whatever your video editing program calls what it does when it makes a final video file.

You are putting the rendered video into squeeze.

So, before squeeze, in your video editor, in the place where you prepare the settings for export or output or render – that’s what I’m talking about. That;s where you need to change the video codec.

Aharon Rabinowitz
Email: arabinowitz (AT) yahoo (DOT) com
All Bets Are Off Productions, Inc.
Creative Cow After Effect Podcast
Internet Killed the Video Star: A Guide to Creating Video for the Web

[Arty Gold]

hi arron

i’m messing with some of the codecs and it seems to be working

thanks alot for the suggestion….i never had to do that before…it always just worked !

my next question is how would i go about taking my videos shot at 16×9 ratio (720p)
to compress down to a 4:3 (320 x240) without having it look all squished and smashed ?

it looks great in rectangle from but it needs to be a square…do i do that in fcp or can it be done in sorenson while i compress…

i’m buying your dvd by the way
mazel tov

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

[Arty Gold] “i’m messing with some of the codecs and it seems to be working”

Make sure to use uncompressed video or a lossless or near lossless codec – quicktime with animation compression is a great example of that.

[Arty Gold] “my next question is how would i go about taking my videos shot at 16×9 ratio (720p)
to compress down to a 4:3 (320 x240) without having it look all squished and smashed ?”

Hmmm. I don’t think you can do that in squeeze, but I am not in front of my work computer and can;t check that at the moment.

What program are you rendering your video in?

Normally, in After Effects, before rendering, I’d take the final widescreen composition and nest it into a 4:3 comp and scale it down proprtionally to fit in my 4:3 comp, giving it the black bars (letterboxing) above and below.

Since I don’t know your situation, I’d say – render out the movie as 16:9, then bring it back into your video editor and place it in a 4:3 comps and scale it to fit in there, same as above.

Aharon Rabinowitz
Email: arabinowitz (AT) yahoo (DOT) com
All Bets Are Off Productions, Inc.
Creative Cow After Effect Podcast
Internet Killed the Video Star: A Guide to Creating Video for the Web

[Daniel Low]

No point using an uncompressed codec if the source was compressed – best bet is to match the source codec as closely as possible. Using the Animation codec is just a huge waste of resources (time and drive space) unless your source is uncompressed Animation type material.
A great intermediate codec is PhotoJPEG with the quality slider at 75%

Squeeze is not capable of trancoding material while adding letterboxing. More professional applications like Episode from Telestream are capable of this. You’ll probably find that Episode doesn’t have any of the problems display exported video like Squeeze does.

[Arty Gold]

yeah…
that’s the thing

i don’t want the letterbox…
i basically just want a sqaure

picture a speaking head…with a white background
i shot it so i would have space to crop it out

i’m just trying to figure out the best workflow to make that happen

thanks for all the help !!!!

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

but it’s at 16:9 – you’re going to cut off the edges of your screen on both sizes if you make it 4:3.

Well, if that’s what you want to do, use the cropping feature in Squeeze – in the video window you can just grab the edges and crop with the red lines. I have not used this feature, but that;s what it’s there for.

You best bet however is to follow my instructions from the last post only instead of fitting everything in, just drop the 16:9 video into the main comp and DON’T shrink it to fit 4:3. It should fill up the entire thing – BUT your edges will be cut off.

Aharon Rabinowitz
Email: arabinowitz (AT) yahoo (DOT) com
All Bets Are Off Productions, Inc.
Creative Cow After Effect Podcast
Internet Killed the Video Star: A Guide to Creating Video for the Web

[Daniel Low]

So you have a 16:9 clip and you want to make it a 4:3 clip, with no distortion?

Simple: Apply a 4:3 crop on the 16:9 clip and resize to 320×240 or another 4:3 frame size.

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

[Daniel Low] “No point using an uncompressed codec if the source was compressed”

With full respect, I disagree. Every time you compress you lose quality. If your source is compressed, you will only make it worse by compressing twice. Although I agree with you that photo JPEG is within the zone of good looks. It’s a great compromise when you have to.

However – Episode is a mac only program, which Arty has not said he’s on. Also, Arty is controlling (at least it’s my understanding) the original footage so that he should be able to get the source uncompressed. I might be wrong about that.

But, let me say this… waste of space is never a good excuse with compression. You should only compress (use a lossy codec) at the last step. No matter what. That’s the nature of video – it takes up a lot of space when you do it right.

Oh – out of curiosity – as someone who has never used Episode – what makes it “more professional?” I always want to learn more on the subject.

Aharon Rabinowitz
Email: arabinowitz (AT) yahoo (DOT) com
All Bets Are Off Productions, Inc.
Creative Cow After Effect Podcast
Internet Killed the Video Star: A Guide to Creating Video for the Web