Alan Okey
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COW Coins
2
DaVinci Coins
Forum Replies Created
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You will need to purchase the Quicktime MPEG-2 playback component from Apple’s website.
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I forgot to mention that working in ProRes or ProRes HQ is a perfectly viable alternative to working in Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2, as ProRes is (reportedly) visually lossless when compared to full uncompressed. ProRes also has lower disk bandwidth and storage space requirements relative to uncompressed.
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Sorry, posted this in the wrong thread – please disregard.
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I forgot to mention that working in ProRes or ProRes HQ is a perfectly viable alternative to working in Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2, as ProRes is (reportedly) visually lossless when compared to full uncompressed. ProRes also has lower disk bandwidth and storage space requirements relative to uncompressed.
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Since your original film footage was transferred to DVCAM, any shots using unaltered content will never look better than DV, even if dubbed to DigiBeta. Any successive change of format can potentially further degrade the image, so it’s best to avoid it unless a different format is required. There are caveats, however.
If your project has extensive compositing and graphics, it could potentially benefit from being edited in an Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 sequence. This wouldn’t improve the quality of the original DV footage, but it would avoid further degradation of any graphics or composited elements added to the project.
Compared to Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 video formats, DV is noticeably lower in quality. DV has a 5:1 compression ratio, 4:1:1 color sampling and 8-bit color depth. The artifacts of DV compression are visible as banding, blocking and mosquito noise. It’s best to avoid adding DV compression to graphics, composited elements and effects footage if possible.
If you had graded your project in Color, you’d also want to avoid going back to DV. Color allows you to work in 32-bit floating point RGB color space. Depending on the extent of color manipulation, rendering Color output as Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 and then sending the result back to an Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 FCP sequence could potentially look better than rendering to DV, given the higher compression, reduced color sampling and lower bit depth of DV.
As for effects shots, exporting from AE using the Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 or Animation codec and then importing them into an Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 FCP sequence would similarly avoid the image degradation that would be introduced by bringing them back into a DV sequence.
In summary, if your project makes significant use of additional graphics/compositing/effects shots, or if you did extensive color manipulation when grading in Color, you would gain tangible benefits by working and finishing in Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 versus DV.
DigiBeta is a 10-bit 4:2:2 format with a fairly low compression ratio, so it would preserve the quality of your finished project better than DVCAM, which is 8-bit 4:1:1 with a 5:1 compression ratio. If your project has little in the way of additional graphics, compositing or significant color grading, then staying in DV all the way through the pipeline would probably be fine.
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If you simply want to add an audio track to your existing video file, you can do this in Quicktime Pro – there is no need to use a full editing application, especially one that limits your choice of codecs.
https://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/QuickTime_7.2_User_Guide.pdf
If you need to compress the deliverable video file to a more managable size, or if your delivery bandwidth constraints require a lower bit rate (i.e. web delivery), you can simply export an h.264-encoded .mov file from Quicktime Pro once you’ve added the audio track. AAC (256kbps or 192kbps 48kHz 16-bit stereo) is an efficient, high quality audio codec that complements h.264 video.
If your exported file is going to be imported into a video editing application, don’t use h.264, stick with uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 or Animation. The h.264 codec is a long-GOP compression format that is unsuitable for frame-accurate editing.
For more versatile compression options, use Apple’s Compressor or ffmpegX:
https://homepage.mac.com/major4/
What was the source of your video file? 720×540 is a non-standard video resolution. NTSC video is either 720×486 (NTSC D1) or 720×480 (NTSC DV).
If your source file is a computer animation that was created as 720×540 (square pixels), then it’s most likely already in a proper 4:3 aspect ratio. 640×480 is a more common square-pixel 4:3 format, but depending on your delivery format, it shouldn’t make much difference.
What is your ultimate delivery format going to be, web or video? If it’s going to be delivered on video, i.e. SD DVD, DV tape or NTSC broadcast, you’ll need to resize your output to 720×480 or 720×486, respectively.
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I hate this type of “marketing.” I have much more respect for people who state their affiliation up front instead of trying to pass themselves off as some Joe Schmo who just happened to stumble onto some “really cool product.”
I browsed the FXhome website and it’s chock full of effects examples from some really cheesy indie videos. It’s also pretty telling that there are no screenshots of all but one of the applications. Just showing results tells us nothing about the workflow of an app, or how easy it is to use.
Travis, I’ll give you some advice: if you want to interest professional users like those who read and post on the Cow: treat them like professionals, not 16-year-old “enthusiasts.” Professionals have plenty of great software options out there already. If you truly want to offer something of value, offer a great tool at a reasonable price and be very up front about who you are and what your affiliation is with the products you promote.
The muzzle flash plug-in actually looks pretty interesting, but there is nothing shown of the other applications’ user interfaces, just examples of shots that were presumably created using them. Customers should not have to download and install a demo of an application just to see its user interface and features.
In the spirit of the OP, I’m cross-posting this response to multiple forums.
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I hate this type of “marketing.” I have much more respect for people who state their affiliation up front instead of trying to pass themselves off as some Joe Schmo who just happened to stumble onto some “really cool product.”
I browsed the FXhome website and it’s chock full of effects examples from some really cheesy indie videos. It’s also pretty telling that there are no screenshots of all but one of the applications. Just showing results tells us nothing about the workflow of an app, or how easy it is to use.
Travis, I’ll give you some advice: if you want to interest professional users like those who read and post on the Cow: treat them like professionals, not 16-year-old “enthusiasts.” Professionals have plenty of great software options out there already. If you truly want to offer something of value, offer a great tool at a reasonable price and be very up front about who you are and what your affiliation is with the products you promote.
The muzzle flash plug-in actually looks pretty interesting, but there is nothing shown of the other applications’ user interfaces, just examples of shots that were presumably created using them. Customers should not have to download and install a demo of an application just to see its user interface and features.
In the spirit of the OP, I’m cross-posting this response to multiple forums.
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I hate this type of “marketing.” I have much more respect for people who state their affiliation up front instead of trying to pass themselves off as some Joe Schmo who just happened to stumble onto some “really cool product.”
I browsed the FXhome website and it’s chock full of effects examples from some really cheesy indie videos. It’s also pretty telling that there are no screenshots of all but one of the applications. Just showing results tells us nothing about the workflow of an app, or how easy it is to use.
Travis, I’ll give you some advice: if you want to interest professional users like those who read and post on the Cow: treat them like professionals, not 16-year-old “enthusiasts.” Professionals have plenty of great software options out there already. If you truly want to offer something of value, offer a great tool at a reasonable price and be very up front about who you are and what your affiliation is with the products you promote.
The muzzle flash plug-in actually looks pretty interesting, but there is nothing shown of the other applications’ user interfaces, just examples of shots that were presumably created using them. Customers should not have to download and install a demo of an application just to see its user interface and features.
In the spirit of the OP, I’m cross-posting this response to multiple forums.
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[Dave LaRonde] “An alternative: get Automatic Duck ($700), export your FCP timeline to After Effects”
Or, as an alternative to Automatic Duck, try xm|Edit’s Traffic, a node-based editing tool for Final Cut Pro that is designed to simplify and automate complex workflows and repetitive tasks:
They have a demo movie depicting the exact scenario you describe:
https://www.xmedit.com/case-studies/case-studies-visualfx.html
Traffic is cheaper than Automatic Duck, and has a broader range of uses. Nothing against Automatic Duck (it’s a great app), but Traffic might be a better fit for your needs in this instance.