[Alex Elkins]

[Goutom Ain] “I use mp4, mov and also wmv in timeline”

There’s your problem. FCP is built for editing using codecs in a mov wrapper. Even then, the contents inside the mov need to be compatible. Generally people convert everything to ProRes 422 before editing. Doing that ensures good performance.

Like Daniel said – you need to provide more information. What codec are the mov files you’re using? (You can find out by opening them in QuickTime and pressing ‘Cmd+i’ for ‘Info’.

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
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[Alex Elkins]

I’ve had problems with external Seagate drives in the past. The drives themselves are fine, it’s the enclosures that would fail, though that was a few years ago now. I imagine things have improved.

My personal favourites are Glyph and G-Tech

DV50 is 50Mbps, so theoretically you can reach 16 DV50 streams with FireWire 800, although in practical terms you won’t get as many as that.

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.postblue.tv
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[Alex Elkins]

Hi Roy,

I’m not familiar with the Country & Western music scene at all, but there must be online forums where people would be interested in seeing it. There may even be a Country & Western music TV station – I’ve no idea as I’m not in the US, but it seems fairly likely in certain parts of the country.
The bottom line is that despite the women in bikinis, a track like this isn’t going to be played on MTV, so the web is probably the band’s best (and possibly only) outlet, so just get it out there and tell the people who are into the music about it (or rather, tell the artist to do that…)

One thing that struck me having opened the video on YouTube is that you have fallen into the trap that lots of indie music video directors fall into, which is to assume that the most important piece of information to add to the video description is who shot, produced, directed and edited the video. You’ve even said it was shot on a Scarlet and edited in FCP. Whilst I might be quite interested to know that, I’m not your audience. Most of your audience doesn’t care what you shot it on and probably doesn’t even know what an editor does. Just get the guy’s website details up there, some tour dates, maybe even the lyrics. BTW, you’ve also listed it under the ‘Sports’ category.

So to get back to my overall point, just sell it to the people who want to buy it. The artist himself is the best person to do that as he’ll know the online places where people go to hear this stuff.

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.postblue.tv
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Latest work: Greyhounds in Motion at 500fps
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[Alex Elkins]

I’d call it a double-take.

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.postblue.tv
Post Blue showreel
Latest work: Greyhounds in Motion at 500fps
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[Alex Elkins]

Hi Esther,

What nobody has asked is what your original shooting format was. Or is this all animation from After Effects?

For a 2K festival projection there’s definitely plenty of cause to be using (at least) ProRes422 HQ, but then there’s nothing to be gained if this was shot on a little DSLR camera for instance – it’s horses for courses. You’re working at 2K so I’m guessing it’s either all animation, or shot on either Alexa or Red. In any of those cases, ProRes 422 HQ or ProRes 4444 are appropriate mastering formats. In terms of delivering to festivals, you need to check with them what they want. Some of the bigger ones will want a DCP, some may even want 35mm. Most will probably request HDCAM.

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.postblue.tv
Post Blue showreel
Latest work: Greyhounds in Motion at 500fps
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[Alex Elkins]

[Catherine Tosko] “it seems to compress into pixels too much with any of the options given.”

Sounds like you’re doing something wrong here, but we’ll need some more info in order to diagnose and solve the problem.

If you could follow these steps it’d help us to help you:

1. Click anywhere in your timeline and then press CMD+0 (Apple 0)
2. Take a screenshot or make a note of the Sequence Settings window that opened and post it here.
3. Close the Sequence Settings window and now select one of your clips in the timeline that is stuttering during playback.
4. Press CMD+9 (Apple 9)
5. Same again – take a screenshot of that and post it here.

What I’m expecting to see is a mismatch between your Sequence Settings and the format of the video files you’re working with.

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.postblue.tv
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Latest work: Greyhounds in Motion at 500fps
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[Alex Elkins]

Hi Catherine,

It sounds to me like you just want to purge all of the excess material you have, right? If that’s the case, the most sensible option is to use the Media Manager. You can set it to save only the clips you use (with handles if you want), but you get the added ability to move clips around, replace graphics, remix audio etc.
Dubbing it to tape and re-importing is a very strange way of working in my opinion. If you do just want a flattened file, why not just export one out of FCP?

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.postblue.tv
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Latest work: Greyhounds in Motion at 500fps
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[Alex Elkins]

Sarah – I’m so glad I re-read your post. At first glance I thought you were trying to create the look of dog shit.

Anyway, that aside…

This is quite a technical grade, which needs to be done in stages. FCP is definitely not the ideal tool for the job so if you’re familiar with Color, Resolve or After Effects I’d head over to those first.

Essentially you just need to follow that colour spectrum graphic in the article you linked to.

[Alex Elkins]

[Rick Tejada Flores] ” In FCP settings do people recommend?”

When people talk about sharpening in post, they tend to be talking about doing this during the grade. The standard Sharpen filter in FCP is dreadful.

Whether and how much you sharpen all depends on the camera and lens combination used, as all will have slightly different degrees of sharpness even if the focus on-set is perfect. I find the GH2 to be quite sharp anyway, so use your judgement first before assuming a one-size-fits-all policy when it comes to sharpening.

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.postblue.tv
Post Blue showreel
Latest work: Greyhounds in Motion at 500fps
My Vimeo Pro page

[Alex Elkins]

[Parisa Rezvani] “In Compressor, should I maintain the pixel aspect, PAL CCIR 601, or would it be better to change it to what most of my footage is in the project?”

Change pixel aspect ratio to square pixels.

Compressor can also do the 25 to 23.98 conversion at the same time. Just make sure you set your Video settings to 23.98 in the Encoder Tab, and Rate Conversion to ‘Best’ in the Frame Controls tab.

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.postblue.tv
Post Blue showreel
Latest work: Greyhounds in Motion at 500fps
My Vimeo Pro page