[Alan Okey]

I’ve had success using DVDxDV Pro in cases where MPEG Streamclip has failed.

https://www.dvdxdv.com/NewFolderLookSite/Products/DVDxDV.products.htm

Of course, this would add an extra step to your process, as I don’t believe DVDxDV Pro transcodes to MPEG-4. You’d have to convert to an intermediate Quicktime format and then go to MPEG-4 form there.

[Alan Okey]

How do you set your playback preferences, i.e. do you only use Safe RT and high quality playback, or do you use Unlimited RT and variable quality playback?

The unfortunate reality is that there’s no free lunch. To get realtime playback without rendering, you need to sacrifice image quality (resolution) or frame rate. I can’t stand watching “preview” resolutions or choppy frame rates, so I usually just suck it up and render.

Of course, it all depends on the type of projects you’re working on. For some editors, they need to “stay in the zone” and are doing lots of cuts where rhythm is more important than playback quality, so they can deal with degraded playback for the sake of getting timing down.

I grew up editing in the post-DV age without ever learning the traditional offline/online workflow, so I’m not accustomed to viewing degraded quality playback during editing.

I also find that many clients are distracted by preview resolutions while working on supervised edits. They would prefer to wait for a segment to render so that they can see how it is “supposed to look” rather than imagining the finished product, so I usually just render as I go along.

To each his own, I suppose.

[Alan Okey]

If you could provide the following information, it would greatly help readers of the forum to better answer your questions:

1. What version of Final Cut Pro are you using?

2. What model of Mac are you using?

3. What version of Mac OS X are you using?

4. What kind of video storage are you using?

5. What kind of HD footage are you working with, i.e. what camera was the footage shot on, and how did you import the footage?

7. What are your sequence settings in your Final Cut Pro project?

[Alan Okey]

[Petteri Evilampi] “I wonder what is going to happen to Sony EX-series sales after new Canon-video cameras has been introduced…”

They will continue to be purchased by the same types of people who use and love them today. The EX series is an outstanding value for the price, and for those who need a more capable codec, several solutions at affordable price points already exist (nano Flash, Ki Pro).

Canon’s new camera(s) will only be disruptive if they can offer a significantly better product at an equivalent or lower price. That would necessitate a native 1920×1080 progressive sensor, variable frame rate recording (over/undercranking), a true manual focus lens and HDSDI on all models (not just the top end model). If Canon’s new products offer those features plus full-raster 4:2:2 recording, some people may consider it as an alternative to the EX line.

Canon is late to the party, being several years behind Panasonic and Sony in regard to solid state workflows and codecs superior to HDV. I don’t think Sony has much to worry about.

[Alan Okey]

What version of Mac OS are you running? If you are running on Snow Leopard (OS X v10.6), are you using Quicktime Player X or Quicktime 7?

[Alan Okey]

If you are editing HD video and you want accurate color representation, you will need a breakout box like this:

https://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/mxo/

Simply using a second computer monitor attached directly to the computer (i.e. as a second computer monitor) will not give you accurate color preview for video content. You need a proper video output interface and a way to properly calibrate the preview monitor.

If you are not editing HD, you can use Firewire out of your iMac through your camera or DV deck to connect to a TV. Alternately, you can use a DV interface like the Canopus ADVC-110:

https://www.grassvalley.com/products/advc110

The Canopus is actually preferable to a deck or camera because most consumer DV devices (cameras and decks) do not output the proper black level for US-NTSC, which is 7.5 IRE. Instead, they mostly output 0 IRE, which is too dark. If you do color correction while viewing improper black levels on your preview monitor, this will result in your videos appearing washed out when you burn a DVD or play back your video on a properly calibrated system.

More info here:

https://www.signvideo.com/dv-black-levels-dvd-authoring-mpeg-2-part-1.htm

[Alan Okey]

Are you by chance making the video described in this post?

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1072713

Either way, there is no magic filter that makes video look like animation. If you’ve ever seen Waking Life, Through a Scanner Darkly or the Charles Schwab commercials, you need to know that those films were all created by the same company using proprietary rotoscoping software and thousands of man hours. It’s a fantastically expensive and mostly manual process. There’s not a simple plugin that can achieve that effect.

The closest you can really get is something like Photoshop’s cutout filter, but it’s really not the same look at all.

Check out Red Giant’s ToonIt:

https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/featured/toonit/

[Alan Okey]

If their budget for an entire music video is $880.00 (your VFX rate of $55 x 16 hours), I think that tells you just how professional of a “video production company” they are.

I can only imagine what the footage is going to look like. They’re probably shooting the video on their cousin’s son’s friend’s phone camera, using only available light and no on-set music playback.

Run.

[Alan Okey]

I love how crappy the chroma key is – it totally sells the spot.

Spill suppression is for pansies!

[Alan Okey]

There is no reason whatsoever that you should be getting dropped frames while importing NTSC DV footage unless something is seriously wrong with your storage configuration.

Are you doing either of the following?

A) capturing video to your system drive

B) capturing via Firewire from the camera/deck to a Firewire drive connected to another one of the computer’s built-in FIrewire ports

Never capture video to your computer’s system drive.

Avoid capturing form Firewire devices directly to Firewire storage when both the camera/deck and Firewire hard drive are both connected to the Mac’s built-in Firewire ports. It works, but it’s not recommended because the Mac’s built-in Firewire ports all share the same bus, and bus contention problems can arise. Instead, either

A) capture to a second internal SATA drive (not the system drive)

B) add a Firewire PCI card to your G5 and connect any external Firewire storage to the PCI card instead of to the computer’s built-in Firewire ports

C) add an eSATA PCI card and use an external drive connected to the eSATA port