Al Bergstein
Forum Replies Created
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Thanks John! That’s really good to know.
Al
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eye yi yi….
Al
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Sorry Brad, I meant to direct this to Ken.
Al
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Thanks Steve. I’ve used Vegas since #9, and I never encountered the need to use a third party alpha channel titling output, so I guess when I went to find the answer to the problem of “why is this opaque on Vegas and not on Premiere?” that I had no idea where to look for the answer. Did I miss some obvious way of understanding this obscure setting deep within the menu of preferences for the clip? I thought I was just skillful or lucky in thinking to look at those differences.
Al
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Brad, your signature shows that you have 8 GBs of RAM. Are you also using multiple monitors? I’ve had to come back and use Vegas for a couple of updated videos lately, and as someone who was plagued by many crashes (and still get them, mainly on exiting the program), I can say that upgrading my system to 16GBs RAM has seemed to have helped stabilize Vegas. Also, moving back to one monitor also helped. Not sure if that will give you some hope, but it worked for me. I also keep my titles on a separate track of the timeline. No problem with MOV files here, but mine are from my 5D, rather than effects.
Al
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That’s great to hear John, regarding FCPX. What are you using to run Windows on the Mac? After this current project I’m expecting to convert all my Windows stuff to my Mac with Parallels, but if there’s a better option before I begin, I’d love to know what it is.
As to Premiere, I made the switch and have been editing a lot of work in the last year on it. While it is much more cumbersome to use than Vegas (and I have upgraded to 12 though am still disappointed in it’s performance), it is rock solid, and I never worry about it crashing on me. I have completed one upgraded project on 12, just last week, and it crashed every day I used it, once I started adding effects and titles. Oddly, it was stable for over two weeks until I started grading it and putting in the titles. Then it crashed every time I exited it. This never happens to me in Pr.
Pr cross platform does work well. However, it seems that there are more problems on the Mac, from the listings of problems on the Adobe forum. My recommendation to anyone switching is to max out their RAM. My latest 36 minute HD project was having problems with 8GBs on Windows, and when I upgraded to 16GBs my problems all vanished. The project was using 14 GBs when rendering.
I am not as irritated at the subscription model as some. I won’t store *anything* of work on any cloud, but the subscription model has been cheaper and automatically gives me updates of fixes and functionality. I think that’s a win for me, and obviously a win for Adobe.
Adobe’s suite, including the integration with AE and Audition has been great. One feature I really feel they need, that Vegas has, is the ability to burn a DVD on the fly from the main editing menu. Their ignorance on the need for DVDs for those of us in the field is something that has caused a lot of anger as they begin the faze out of Encore. I’ve found Audition to be much more valuable to me than Sony’s products, though they aren’t bad. I still deliver everything on DVD, even work I deliver to the web. That is still a couple of years away for the majority of us to leave dvds behind.
A small side note for Vegas “switchers” is that recently, in the middle of a project, had a drive on my RAID 5 fail. Windows 7 could not reliably read the sectors, and I had to go back to getting some footage off an archive. In order to take other work off the drive so I could install the new drive and reformat the RAID. I decided to see if the Mac could read the sectors of the NTFS drive and plugged it in. Oddly, I was able to salvage much more to the Mac than to the Windows 7 side. I don’t know whether it was a fluke or that the Mac OS did a better job of reading NTFS than Windows did (seems hard to believe). But there you have it.
I personally won’t go to FCPX as Apple’s abandonment of FCP users lost all trust I had in them to treat their customers as professionals, not consumers. I like their OS better than either Win7 and especially Win8.
Al
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Great to hear Bill. As mentioned, I’m very impressed with the Gh3. Have you shot a two hour concert with it yet? The guy i worked with did lots of b roll clips, very short, but no continuous long takes. Doing educational work, there’s often assemblies and other simple documentation I would assume.
Al
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While I am an owner of a ton of Canon gear, if I was starting out and had $1000 to buy, I’d likely also try the GH3. But for your requirements, I would buy neither. First, the GH3: The quality of the GH3 footage is superior to the Canon T3i, etc. in that range. I’ve shot side by side with the two (a fellow shooter who has run B cam for me has one) and the results rival on the small screen the images I get with my XF305. The T2i/T3i does not.
Be aware that the body is only the start of the cost. your budget might be too low. For example, you will likely need a wide angle, and a zoom lens, to match the range that a simple camcorder can give you. Also, you might not be able to record long enough on the GH3. Audio recording is miminal, and usually requires an external recorder. And microphone.
I would recommend looking at camcorders for this use. Why? Because DSLR’s are *not* setup to record long continuous takes for an hour or more at a time. Camcorders are. You might run into overheating, etc.
For long running performances, I always use my xf305 as my *A* camera and shoot my DSLRs as B cameras.
Some ideas for your budget, but you are pretty low priced for a decent camcorder. Maybe used?
Panasonic HMC150 (used)
Canon G20 Camcorder (your price, but not the best option).
Canon XA10 or XA20 (probably the best bang for the buck)These models get you into the world of shooting without adding a bunch of extraneous ala carte gear.
These are not as good of quality image in low light as the GH3, but they are all in one units with xlr inputs, (not the G20) and offer a great lens for the price.
good luck!
Al
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Cody, that’s almost certainly a cell phone or other wireless device, as it comes and goes. If it were steady, I’d suspect a bad fluorescent light.
I’m no cell phone engineer, but what I do know is that they *beacon* every so often, especially in areas where the signal strength is poor. These beacons are the phone reestablishing contact with their towers. This is the transmitter and receiver of the phone, and these phones, while governed by the FCC regulations on emissions of RF, are not designed to be RF neutral. To illustrate, I can easily generate RF noise by putting my cell phone next to my clock radio.
I always insist, and make it a joke, to tell the talent that we need to set our phones on ‘stun” while filming. I ask them to at least turn the phone to the airplane mode, to stop the beaconing, but I ask them to actually turn it off if they can live without it for a few minutes. And I do so myself. It’s especially important for those near the gear, such as the shooter, and the soundman.
Adobe Audition or other spectral analysis might be able to get it out, but it’s not easy sometimes. I’ve had mixed results in removing it, without affecting the voice quality. It looks like you are using Adobe, so look at their videos on the web, they explain the way to try and remove it quite clearly.
Al
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Sounds like I should just make sure to charge them the night before and not leave them charging when not in use. Seems like it won’t buy me much and use electricity as well.
Al