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I’d recommend a Blackmagic Design Decklink card, they have SDI models for as little as $295, what are you using with Premiere?
I’ve had trouble with two applications fighting for the external monitor but with a single app open it should work fine.
Glenn Stewart
1K Studios

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After Effects never gets good compression rates, I like to think that because it’s concentrating on a frame at a time it cannot compress between frames. Decent compression usually takes more than one pass which after effects could not do. I find it’s always best to render uncompressed from After Effects, or at the worst photo jpeg if I’m running out of space.
I’ve had decent results with the free windows media encoder, maybe you should give that a shot. I like Canopus Procoder too, although Squeeze is worth the price for the pro version of the sorenson codec alone.
Glenn Stewart
1k studios

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You can import uncompressed avi’s directly to AE on the mac, change the pulldown at the top of the import dialogue to “All Files” instead of “All Acceptable Files”, select the file you want to import and then check that the Format pulldown on the bottom is set to Quicktime, the file will then import no problem.
It’s a little trick I learnt here that seems to catch everyone, I don’t understand why they made it so difficult, although
I have a suspicion that editing the preferences file could fix it, I’ll give it a shot as soon as I get a chance.
Glenn Stewart
1k Studios

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The shift key does not work, we’ve found the same trouble, we also do DVD menus and need to copy layers between documents while maintaining registration. It seems to be a CS2 problem, on the one machine we have updated to CS2 the spacebar will not activate the hand tool either, I just hope they fix it soon.
Glenn Stewart
1k Studios

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We’ve had all kinds of problems with the apple codecs in the past, I was hoping that the version in FCP5 was fixed but judging from you guys it isn’t and I’m dreading having to switch when we upgrade the systems.
This is really serious, we produce DVD menus and I’d rather stick with FCPHD than deal with Gamma corrections to our stuff. Why can’t we stick with the blackmagic codec?
Glenn Stewart
1k studios

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Thanks for that tip, it was big problem for us a while ago and I eventually gave up on it. Just to clarify you just open it in QT pro and save a reference file into the same folder? I’ve had so much trouble with the reference quicktimes coming from Mac to PC that I’ve always stayed away from them.
Glenn Stewart

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We’ve had the same trouble, wierd luma shifts with the apple uncompressed codec, we do DVD’s too and it’s a nightmare trying to get the static menus to match the animation.
I don’t know how Studio Pro handles it but the final MPEG2 should be YUV not RGB right?
Glenn Stewart
1k studios

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I know I asked about this before but we are not happy that we need to use the apple codec from now on, it’s a real pain as we have a lot of windows boxes for compression, 3d and compositing and I’m not looking forward to the need to transcode everything we capture so they can use it. Also we’ve had a lot of trouble in the past with luma shifts when introducing non yuv media into an apple timeline, we managed to fix it with the Blackmagic codec but not using the apple one.
Anyone else in the same boat?
Glenn Stewart
1K studios

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Regarding setting the offset in the preferences:
I don’t think it’s that easy, we have the same trouble with dBeta, it wouldn’t be a problem if it was consistent, then we could just adjust the offset, but sometimes it does it and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the in point is spot on but somewhere in the first 30″ (by the end of the bars) everything is either one frame early or one frame late, it’s always one frame off (when it’s off!) no matter what the duration of the sequence too which is odd.
Glenn Stewart
1k studios

PS does anyone else have trouble with Final Cut Pro resetting your preferences every couple of days, all our systems do it and it’s driving me nuts!!

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I love the HD link but SD footage looks awful when stretched up on the LCD, it gets wierd blocky/interlaced artifacts even with progressive motion graphics, we had to switch back to a CRT for SD.
Glenn Stewart
1k Studios