[Andrew Mehta]

Hi, no first hand experience at DVD authoring myself, but from reading around, I’m guessing the following, which isn’t as good as first hand knowledge, but may tide you over till someone else replies:

For simple client approvals, just get a VCR that can record DVD-Rs from the outputs on your break out box.

For small scale runs, use BitVice to encode, and DVD Studio Pro to make the menus. Ask Keiran about that – he knows all the right settings, etc, for M100 files.

For uber professional authoring, track down ye olde copies of Spruce DVD Maestro, or use a company that has Sonic Scenarist.

Adobe Encore has been the PC equivalent to DVD Studio Pro for a few years, and is now available for Mac. I’m not sure how it compares.

[Andrew Mehta]

Trying to sound like he knows about Red in OSX, by talking about Boris FX in OS9.

I use Boris FX and Graffeti tonnes because it speeds up my workflow far more than exporting to After Effects and then reimporting, etc, but I often curse the versions I have, for just being arse. For instance, have a 3D sphere, and some 3D text – can you make the text spin around the back of the sphere? No. It just spins in a circle infront of the sphere. Doh!
Set up some wedges/starbursts extending from the centre of the sphere.
Put it all in a 3D container, because you want to move it left or right or something, suddenly everything changes, as all the spin and tumble attributes look different when its in a different position, so you have to go and figure out the z pivot crap (which should theoretically work, but doesn’t in practise), or you have you do some maths to enter new spin and tumble parameters that compensate for the X and Y value shift. Good grief.
That’s why I think Boris FX software is an arse.
But I’m still using it right this minute actually, as although its crudeness can make sophisticated effects a pain in the arse, it’s still quicker than exporting a M100 clip or timeline to a different program, and then reimporting it in. The integration with M100 is top notch. And if I don’t like how it came out, I just double click my composition clip in the timeline and make my adjustments.

I have Adobe After Effects, and believe it’s much better than the Boris products. But since discovering the Boris products (and the fact they can use After Effects filters) I’ve barely used After Effects at all, as it’s so convenient having Boris as a plugin in M100, it always feels like you’re saving time, even if it can be a hassle in other ways, if you’re trying to do something really complex with what’s essentially quite a simple tool.

But hey – put this in perspective:
I’ve been talking about Boris FX 6.1 vs After Effects 5 both in OS9.
I’m sure both Boris Red and After Effects have moved on a bit since then!!!
Well – I should hope(!).
I used my Grafetti 1.x today in Media100i 7.5, and was absolutely shocked I couldn’t put my text in a rectangle with rounded corners. Wtf? That’s one of the most basic features of DTP. Why isn’t it in my titling software? Only square corners were possible, unless I made a rounded corner image file and imported it. =P Pappity pap.

Anyway, I’m oldskool as you can tell. ^_^.

[Andrew Mehta]

=P Not even with Print to EDL?

I tried that once with a Media100i system. The timeline came up in Final Cut Pro, but none of the media was present. Doh!
And we couldn’t figure out how to relink the media.

[Andrew Mehta]

I believe you can also have Media100 and FCS2 on the same system, booting the relevant Kona drivers from different partions.

https://www.media100.com/news/duel_boot.asp

[Andrew Mehta]

“The program itself is 2 hours 22 minutes. Is that pushing it?”

^_^ My programme is 2hours 35minutes, and I’m in OS9.
I do find things slow a little when working in such a long timeline, but it’s no big deal. That said, I generally work in smaller programs, and then copy and paste all the parts together into a long one once done. Likewise, you can always copy a range out of your larger timeline, to a new program file, work on it there at full speed, and then paste it back to your longer timeline afterwards.

Regarding Media, none of my hard drives are as big as yours, and my current project spans a number of them, so is split up over multiple hard drives.

[Andrew Mehta]

I try and always use 50% or 25% with my Media100i 7.5, sticking to even figures, so it’s either double the frames, or x4 the frames, etc, so there’s no tricky maths or uneven numbers for it to process, and the final effect has always been perfunctory. I haven’t seen Premiere CS3 on Mac yet though, so dunno how much better it is. I used to use Premier on PC before I bought my Media100i system, and I got annoyed at having to use different cursors from a cursor tool palette to do all the different functions(you have to switch from an arrow to a razor cursor before you can cut, etc), but to be honest I never had it long enough to really learn it, and/or any keyboard shortcuts it might boast.

I like the idea of upgrading to Producer at some point in the future too, when my budget allows (am a cheapo ex-student type), and I agree, keyframes for speed&slow-mo would be a great addition to the software.

Actually…I keep hearing all this stuff about Boris integration, and okay, v12 has selectable boris effects, but, I keep wondering when I’ll be able to flip an arrow down on my M100 video track, and suddenly see a boris timeline beneath to which I can add keyframes. ^_^ Heehee. Might get a bit crowded or overcomplicate things a bit, but it’s still what I keep imagining every time I hear a press release mention better integration with Boris. 😉

*goes off singing The Spice Girls – when 2 become 1*….

[Andrew Mehta]

Media 100i 7.5 user, Boris FX 6.1, OS9, Mac G4 dual 450Mhz Gigabit Ethernet.
No problems normally with jaggies on static text.
When animating a scrolling credit roll however, I experienced flickering due to using a narrow/thin font. I improved this situation, by going into Boris’ preferences and selecting 1:2:1 Deflicker…that made it less bad, but it was still flickering a bit, so I increased the text edge width so it was less thin, and that improved things again.

I recently had a problem with jaggies on an imported PICT file when zoomed and rotated. It looked fine in Boris, but after rendering, it flickered horribly. By ticking the “render fields as frames” text box in Boris’ preferences, it rendered without any jaggies, but I found the underlaying interlaced video was now flickering instead. So it seemed to be a choice between flickering video, or flickering PICT file edge, which wasn’t too nice…but the zoom and rotate was only a few frames, so it moves quick enough to not be noticed so much.

I’m using old technology, so don’t know if any of this is applicable to your modern setup.
But I’d advise experimenting with such tick boxes in your Boris preferences, and of course, check your host editing programme’s render settings too, to ensure everything is being rendered to a decent quality afterwards. Boris also gives options for adding an edge to text, which you can then soften, or likewise have a soft shadow to the text, which can help reduce jaggies at the edge.

[Andrew Mehta]

am I doing something wrong in the import or export process?

>>The few times I have had audio errors on export, either the computer has froze, or the export has failed in some regard. As such the end file is damaged, and can’t be played.
I was just wondering therefore, is this an error message you’re getting as you export? Or does it appear as if everything is fine, but you discover the problem with the audio when you try and play the file back, and if that’s the case, what are you playing it back with? Just wondering if this is a problem exporting from M100, or a problem importing into some other programme.

That said, I do not feel I’m an expert on any of this, and I’m a little embarrassed I’m the only one to have responded to your post as of yet. As I feel there are far more experienced people on these boards than myself, that might offer better advice in due course.

[Andrew Mehta]

Forgot to mention, if you do try Producer, play it safe, and only open copies of your project file, to avoid any probs with going back to 8.2.3 afterwards.

Furthermore, the other post I was referring to in my last post, was here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/4/858976

I don’t know if the problem is slightly different now, or still the same as then.

[Andrew Mehta]

Hm.

Just read the post some time ago by Bob and yourself, detailing the same problem way back then too, and seeing what other people suggested at the time.

All I can say is I’ve never had the problem myself. I do have trouble digitising audio via DV on my Media100 7.5 (OS9), so I always use analogue audio in and DV just for Video, and have never had any probs exporting. Of course, how the audio is acquired is probably neither here nor there, but..just another variable to try.

Since you’ve tried a tonne of stuff over a long time period, across multiple software versions, maybe it’s time for some more drastic experimentation to get to the bottom of it:

Try the trial version of the now software only Producer, and see if the error still exists there or not. [Assuming the trial will let you export…I assume it does].

Try buying a cheapo Mac off ebay (I got a 2nd G4 recently for only