[Adam Taylor]

Rafael – i may be wrong but i thought the alpha channel is the option “millions of colors+” – where the + denotes the alpha channel

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

Hi Malcolm (why is your name so familiar?) – you might try a little application i found on the web a while ago called “What Size” – this will search your entire hard drive and list everything (including hidden files) and show you how big the files are.
It is really useful for tracking down large files or finding why your hard drive is suddenly full. Be careful how you use it as it quite easy to delete a file without knowing exactly what it is.

Its possible that your render was so big that you ran out disc space before the render completed.

I think that may be the case here because you say the media is on an external drive, yet its used up loads of laptop disc space. It has probably rendered a huge cache of data but run out of space and not finished the process..therefore using up space but not showing the final movie.

Out of interest – what format are you rendering, and how long is the finished edit?
Digital Heaven have a free downloadable dashboard widget that will tell you how much disc space is needed for various formats/codecs based on running times…could be a useful thing to have. Bear in mind you will need more disc space than is shown, simply because discs use free space to shuffle data during read/write operations

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

I’d seriously suggest you don’t put ProTools and FCP on the same machine.

Digidesign are notoriously slow at updating ProTools when new operating systems are released. They still have not posted a fully compatible Snow Leopard version – what is out is a make do beta version.

I’m so unhappy at the idea of combining the two that i installed a second mac just for the audio mixing! – sounds extreme, but i can’t afford the time chasing down problems due to upgrade incompatibilities.

As for integrating…the files will easily swap between the systems. I export .omf audio and dv quicktimes as a guide track. They import into protools easily enough – assuming you have the DV Toolkit option installed in Protools.

If you can I would recommend you partitioned your hard drive, with a clean install of the operating system on each, then you can have protools on one and fcp on the other. OK you will need to reboot when switching between apps, but if you don’t you will need to be aware that if you update your OS, Protools is quite likely to have problems.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

not always practical to lay someone down for a shot !!

I have just completed a series of videos showing Yo-Yo tricks. To make it more visually interesting we needed the camera very low, looking up at the guy doing the tricks, so we can see a dynamic close-up of the yo yo spinning but still see the guys face.

We weren’t shooting on green but a white paper cyc. The principle is the same – we had to carefully rig the cyc with enough height to totally surround the talent, and then in edit, i had to garbage matte out the lights and ceiling that did appear in the frame. and drop in a matching white background.

I’d suggest leaving the ceiling green, but attaching a black drape in such a way that its covered up unless needed.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

Unless your lighting for the green screen spills onto the talent, i don’t see you having a problem with a lighting mix. Ideally your talent lighting should be unaffected by the green screen lighting – no spill either way.

FCP and every other video keyer allows you to sample the green directly from the video, so it can work out exactly what shade of green you want to key.

However, having only type of lighting could be more practical when it comes to replacing blown lamps, etc.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

sounds to me like you are using Protools to create a quicktime movie with the new audio attached to the guide video?

Thats a odd way to work. Your most flexible method would be to “Bounce to disk” each individual music piece and name them accordingly, as a stereo aiff file.
Then using whatever video package you choose you can marry together whichever bits you need, whenever you need without having to play through everything on the track to decide which is the relevant bit.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

also sounds a bit like “Magnolia”

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

you could duplicate all the files to an external hdd then give him that.

He can then either send you timecodes and reel numbers, or if he has FCP he can send you a project file with the shots on a timeline.

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

i second Taiyo Yuden discs – (i believe they actually invented the technology as well)

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk

[Adam Taylor]

Dan – as always, you prove yourself to be a genuine generous genius.

many thanks – that solution is exactly what i needed.

rgds
Adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk