[Andrew Rendell]

There’s something about the idea of dropping the Mac Pro that I don’t get: on the basis of “good, better, best” marketing, the top of the range kit isn’t necessarily there to shift units. The purpose of it is to set a top price point that validates the rest of the range, i.e., the stuff that you actually sell in quantity. Most people don’t want or need the ultra-powerful, ultra-expensive machine but they’ll pay a premium price for the mid-range stuff because of the association with the top-of-the-range.

That’s a principle that applies to selling just about everything (not just computers), and Apple are at least as much a marketing company as they are a technology and design company, so it seems very strange to me that they would drop the top priced product because then the next one down the range becomes the top price one, so the median choice for the consumer goes down…

[Andrew Rendell]

A tv set that looks right for watching at home will look too blue and probably be excessively contrasty on camera. Careful adjustment of the brightness & contrast controls should be enough to get those looking ok, but not all tvs have enough control over the color balance/ temperature to stop them looking blue. Some screens have presets for color temperature, in which case choosing the 3200k setting is usually what you need (that’ll look rather orange to the human eye, but come out looking right on camera).

Also, watch out for flickering. If the pictures on the screen are running at the same rate as the cameras you shouldn’t have a problem, but there is a degree of flicker inherent in tv (which we’re generally not aware of) which can become an issue when filming with screens in shot (it’s better to deal with this at the time of shooting, perhaps by adjusting the camera’s shutter speed, than trying to fix it in post).

[Andrew Rendell]

Plan for the edges of the 16:9 frame to be cut off for the 4:3 transmission. Over here we call it “shoot and protect”. Then use the 4:3 markers in your safe area of choice for lining up the text/graphics.

I agree it’s awkward for framing, but it’s usually possible to get a shot framing in the camera that works for both (as long as you plan for it at the shooting stage), so very often it’s only the text/ packshot/ graphics being rather central on 16:9 version that looks a little odd.

[Andrew Rendell]

It’s unusual for stock footage to be particularly old. If it’s appropriate you could take some modern footage and add some filters to make it look old, but if it really needs to be old you might have better luck searching news archives (although that would probably cost more that stock footage).

In the meantime, a genuine news report (just check the date) for your amusement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27ugSKW4-QQ

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[Andrew Rendell]

Strictly speaking PAL is an interlaced format (we generally use the component version defined by ITU-R rec.601, only transmissions are actually encoded into full composite PAL). So Digibeta only records PAL (or NTSC) interlaced.

I think that most people regard “PAL progressive” as an interlaced signal where both fields together represent a progressive source, e.g., film.

So I don’t think that it’s entirely unreasonable for Blackmagic to not support a fully progessive 576line 25fps output as there is currently no tape format (at least not a standard one) that can record it.

Deinterlaced output on a PAL monitor or Digibeta dub is a different issue, and one that you need to be very careful about describing what’s happening – do you mean that what’s on the output is field dropped, i.e., one field of each frame is being used for both fields of the output?

[Andrew Rendell]

I’d find out whether they would even consider a speculative idea before going any further – most places won’t even look at something they get sent in case seeing it opens them up to accusations about copying in the future.

(I know that writers on a well known tv series over here are banned from looking at fan sites for that very reason).

[Andrew Rendell]

The out of memory error is because the image is too big for FCP to handle. FCP only works with stills up to 4000 pixels along either direction.

You have 2 options – cut the still image into 4 sections and put them on overlapping layers, or do the overlay in different software (e.g ., motion or ae) and bring it back into FCP when it’s rendered.

[Andrew Rendell]

IIRC you have to turn it off, then turn it on while holding the “set” button in.

[Andrew Rendell]

Sounds like a mistake to me. No doubt they would have made a 4:3 SD version of the promo as well as an HD one, so maybe there was some mix up and the wrong one went out… just a guess though.

[Andrew Rendell]

It just occurs to me that when you use the log&transfer to import via XDCam Transfer, the import isn’t instantaneous (it can take a while for big files) and if you haven’t got the activity window open it’s not entirely obvious that anything’s happening. So check that, it might be that the files are importing but he can’t see it.