Adolfo Rozenfeld
Forum Replies Created
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Dear friends, it’s a bit strange when the tool you favor doesn’t do something and you claim it’s not important. We do have a saying in spanish for that, but I don’t know if there’s an English translation for it (is about a fox trying to reach certain grapes from a tree and when he fails he says “they were not ready yet”). I would love FCP to do simple 3D transformations like Vegas apparently does. It would be foolish to say it’s not a good thing or that I can do better than that in After Effects (which is obvious).
Yes, TV is 8 bit (or actually, no bits at all for 95 per cent of worldwide audiences). But 10, 16 or 32 bit PROCESSING is an important thing regardless of how many bits per channel your final file has. That expanded color space has obvious advantages when doing effects, compositing, motion graphics, etc, regardless of the final color depth. Less banding (or no banding at all) less rounding errors (or none) in color correction and richer color gradients are evident examples.
The previous poster’s claim that FCP output is 8 bit only is a bold one. It could be true but I would like to see what part of the tech specs says that. In any case, even if true, the good thing about scientifc observation is that in FCP you can switch between 8 and 32 bit processing and see for yourself the difference. Just as you can do in After Effects with 8 and 16 bit processing (the difference of which is evident even with 8 bit output devices).
I guess that as more application are supported by Decklink boards, this discussion will show up more and more in this forum.
Just my two cents, as you say there 🙂
All the best
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Wow. When I saw the three or four messages in this thread, I simply assumed “SoundKeys” would have been mentioned.
Let’s say it fast, then. If the new FXplug arquitecture in Motion allows Trapcode to release a Motion version of Soundkeys, it would be a great day for Motion users. Given Motion’s philosophy, it’s odd that there isn’t some kind of “SoundKeyness” in Motion already. I would dare to say that SoundKeys is even more Motion-like than controlling animation though MIDI keyboards. After Effects “took” the SK idea and introduced some of it in version 6.What is SK? It’s an After Effects plug-in (no, it won’t work in Motion now) that scans the audio levels in an audio file and converts the level data into keyframes for a “dummy” effect. Then you can link the scale, rotation, position, tracking, fill color, stroke width, etc of your object to the values of those dummy keyframes. This leads to incredibly organic animation. If you want the hi hat to drive scale and the bass to drive position, no problem, it has a visual representation of the audio frequencies which lets you choose specific frequencies for different animations. Finally, it lets you adapt the scanned levels to the parameter range you need (0-100, 0-360, -50 to 50, etc). It’s a glorious concept!
I read somewhere that Trapcode are (is actually, Trapcode is a one person company) working on Motion versions of the plug-ins. Particular for instance is the closer you will get to Motion’s particle systems working in true 3D space.
All the best,
AdolfoAdolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Yes, Nattress’ G Converter is so far the best software tool available in terms of quality. There’s a free utlity called JES deinterlacer which also does it, with diverse results – sometimes excellent, sometimes quite poor. It’s by far the faster one. There’s a third option called Atlantis (by DVfilm) which costs more ore less like Nattress, is maybe simpler to use but gives not-so-good results. Nattress’ is the most versatile, it doesn’t just do PAL <> NTSC but it converts PAL/NTSC interlaced to PAL/NTSC progressive and vicerversa, and finally has a dedicated plug-in for NTSC/PAL to 24P (not sure if viceversa in this case, but very likely).
G Converter’s quality IMHO is above that from “prosumer” hardware converters. In theory, Compressor 2’s *should* be the killer one, but until it ships it’s impossible to tell.
Hope this helps.Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Compressor 2 will feature standards conversions using advanced optical flow technology.
Of course nobody tried it yet.Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Mitch and Bill: Yes, I know data rates are not the whole pictures and it’s about compression efficency. But that’s precisely where HDV at 25 Mbps (especially as a post codec) may not be the DV of HD. I’m not the only one who feels HDV’s reality could probably be shaped a bit too much to avoid cannibalization of higher formats.
Here’s what Adam Wilt wrote in DV magazine about this point:
“Long-GOP MPEG-2 may be good, but it can’t perform miracles. Will HDV turn out to be the “good enough” DV of the HD world, or will it wind up as HD’s Hi8: a cheap and cheerful acquisition format, but too lossy for any serious production work? After a couple of months with the format, I’m unable to make up my mind”.
This from one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the DV revolution in the 90s. Someone who really take sides about DV being more than “good enough”. You can agree or disagree, but you can’t deny there will be some discussion about it.
Mitch: The DVD argument is not a good example. A 35 mm film distributed on VHS tape will also “seem” much better. As a DVD Studio Pro teacher one of the frequent things I see is dissapointment with MPEG-2 quality, and I mean good encodes, not bad ones.
All this said, time will tell if in my particular case the DVCPRO HD thing with horribly expensive P2 cards is a possible route, or if I go HDV and live with the things I don’t like so much about it.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Of course, more choices is always good. I am not a fan of the HDV codec, but truth be said, more from a post-production point of view than as a camera original. I imagine FCP 5 allows to transcode HDV to DVCPRO HD or whatever you want.
We all know that with good lighting and good composition there are no bad cameras and no bad formats. HDV as a format for motion graphics and compositing is a different story. But as always if one strategically uses its’ strenghts and avoids its shortcomings, great results are possbile. It wasn’t me who said is “not usable” 🙂
It’s true we haven’t seen Panasonic camera in action. But something has to go very wrong for it to dissapoint.
All the best!Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Steve: This is usually true, but you surely know what I menat is that the difference in quality is well beyond the $2000-2500 in price. It’s certainly not for hobbyists, but the price point is nothing short of amazing. In any case, my main point is that HDV is not to HDCAM or DVCPRO HD what MiniDV was to Beta SP or even Digitbeta. People were saying that here.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
While saying HDV is “not usable” is not true, I think the comparisons with DV thoughout this thread are also missing an important point.
Of course DV is pretty nice. The problem with HDV is that it’s not DV – it has three times more compression than DV (this is, three times more pixels with the same data rate and a quite old codec). I have a strong feeling that one of the priorities of the HDV format is to make it just as good as they want, no more that that. In other words, NOT to repeat the way DV stole market share from Beta SP, costing so much less. This way, HDV is really far from HDCAM. On the other hand, seriously, if DVCPRO HD (and DV50 SD!!!) will be around in a $6000 camera, who wants 25 Mpbs MPEG-2 HDV?Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
There’s info about new functionality in FCP’s motion tab. Is it just new scaling and rotation algortithm or is there something else? Anybody at NAB could be so kind to check this?
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Thanks, Walter. I am particularly curious about the information that Apple made some changes in FCP’s motion tab functionality (for the first time since v.1.0, if you consider that time remapping is about “internal” motion rather than “external”). If you find out anything about that….
All the best!Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com