[Alan Okey]

Here’s a great plugin for you:

https://web.me.com/andymees/Free_and_Easy/main/Entries/2008/3/3_Andy’s_Elastic_Aspect.html

[Alan Okey]

You’re a little late to the party, Rafael… Conduit has been around for several years now. It’s been mentioned occasionally in this forum.

You’re right – it is indeed amazing, and very reasonable priced. While it’s not a simple one-button click program that everyone will appreciate, anyone who’s familiar with node-based compositing will appreciate having a tool that works right within FCP. It’s not a Shake replacement, nor is it meant to be, but it’s great to be able to get under the hood and build your own keyer or perform other compositing operations without leaving the application

Conduit just keeps getting better, and Conduit Live is a pretty unique tool for doing realtime on-set comp previews.

https://www.dvgarage.com/conduit-2

Check out the downloads section for some great tutorials – Alex Lindsay is a great teacher.

[Alan Okey]

[Shane Ross] “FCP doesn’t distort the stills to fill the screen.”

Funny you should mention that…

I was quite surprised the other day to find that while adding 4:3 PowerPoint slides (960×720 square pixel .tiffs) to a 720p ProRes sequence, FCP decided to automatically distort and scale the stills to fill the 1280×720 frame. I wanted to keep the 4:3 stills at their native size, so that they would be pillarboxed in the 1280×720 frame.

It’s almost as if FCP saw the 960×720 resolution and automatically flagged it as being DVCPRO HD, then applied the scaling and distortion to make the still fill the 1280×720 frame. While this is a desirable behavior for video source clips, I don’t think it should be the default behavior for stills.

I can’t seem to find any way to turn this “feature” off. The workaround is to simply reset the scaling and distortion on the still in the timeline, but it seems odd to me that FCP would apply this behavior to stills.

[Alan Okey]

[eric pautsch] “I’ll throw much opinion in here and say Compressor is the worst MPEG 2 encoder in the Universe.”

Agreed. I use BitVice. If I could justify the expense, I’d buy CinemaCraft MP.

[Alan Okey]

It all depends on your workflow. In my own experience, I’ve discovered that Adobe Media Encoder’s scaling (CS4) is inferior to that of Compressor with frame controls turned on and scaling set to Best.

I’ve run A/B comparison tests using 720p source footage encoded to 640×360 .flv (On2 VP8) files, and I get superior results if I first use Compressor (with Best quality scaling enabled) to make a 640×360 ProRes intermediate file and then use that as a source file to encode to .flv in AME. Encoding to a 640×360 .flv directly from a 720p source and letting AME do the scaling results in inferior quality output.

The funny thing is, AME has a better h.264 encoder (Main Concept) than Compressor/Quicktime, so I end up using both Compressor and AME when I have to make the highest quality downscaled web videos from HD sources. I use Compressor to do any scaling/cropping/padding, export a ProRes intermediate, then do the final encode in AME. Id’ prefer a single application to do everything, but there’s no budget right now for alternatives.

Does anyone have opinions on the quality of scaling in Episode or Squeeze?

[Alan Okey]

Message from client:
“We’d like to use a new font.”
“It’s called Comic Sans.”

Client not happy
Logo does not fill the screen
“What is title safe?”

Built-in microphone
Sound is bad; too much reverb
“You can fix it, right?”

Client is confused
4:3 on 16:9 screen
“Why do they look fat?”

Acting, script are poor
Producer says “That’s OK!”
“We shot it on RED.”

[Alan Okey]

Indie shot on RED
Budget for post is tiny
festival next week

for Walter

[Alan Okey]

[Richard Hendrick] “I do want to confirm one thing. When I brought the HD source clip into the sequence I created with your settings, FCP asked if I wanted to change the sequnce settings to match the clip settings. I assume the correct answer is “NO”, since I just made the settings I wanted the clip to conform to. Right?”

Correct, don’t change the sequence settings in this case.

[Alan Okey]

[Michael Gissing] “Why are people still using DV timelines? So wrong. It is a codec that will ruin good pictures, adds a further degrade by transcoding and extra render time in order to soften and add artifacts that make the mpeg encode even blockier. Only consider DV sequences when you footage is DV and even then I don’t recommend it over ProRes422.
“

That is precisely why I recommended to Richard that he change the sequence codec to ProRes 422. Obviously it’s best to work in a native HD sequence and let Compressor do the downconversion to SD. However, in Richard’s case, he had already prepared graphics at the SD sequence size, so it would have been a lot of backtracking for him to go back to a native 1080p 30 sequence at that point. He’ll know to work in a native HD sequence next time.

As for why people still use DV timelines, it’s most likely because it’s the default easy setup in FCP, and people new to editing/FCP often simply choose the default. Things that may seem obvious to seasoned editors aren’t always intuitive to those with less experience. Fortunately, they have the Cow as a valuable resource!

[Alan Okey]

[Richard Hendrick] “Thanks Alan. This looks like it puts me on the right track, though trying it once, the picture looks like it might be a bit distorted in the vertical, i.e., the faces appear a bit long. A few questions: Should the sequence setting be NTSC DV (3:2) or NTSC (4:3)? Second, what pixel aspect ratio?”

Sequence setting should match the following image:

If you open a clip from your timeline in the viewer by double-clicking on it, the scale and aspect ratio attributes should match those shown in the following image:

[Richard Hendrick] “3. What should the picture in the Canvass look like – e.g., in relation to any blue or gray borders and to overlays?”

I don’t understand your question.

[Richard Hendrick] “4. What does copying the first clip do without pasting it anywhere?”

It copies the attributes of the source clip, which you can then paste using the “paste attributes” command.

[Richard Hendrick] “5. I have some titles and a stills in the sequence that naturally get distorted; will I be rebuilding them or could I deselect them before pasting attributes?”

You could either deselect them before pasting attributes, or select them afterwards and use the “remove attributes” option.