[Angelo Lorenzo]

I would probably stick to ENG for the time being. Why?

If you’re a one-man-band, consider these advantages:
-Better mic preamp and audio controls on-camera, with full sized XLR inputs on most ENG cameras.
-Better form factor without the need to purchase into a zacuto or red rock system
-Better lens control with autofocus (albeit most AF tends to be flaky in low light) and a zoom rocker

For all the shooting I’ve done with a dslr, I’ve found that you need to treat it like a movie camera. Movements need to be more steady, and you need in most cases to have a competent assistant pull focus.

On top of that, feel out your clientele. If they just want an interview video and they aren’t wowed by shallow depth of field then ENG may be the way to go because of the associated benefits.

If you need one camera over the other, they are cheap to rent even with a modest client budget, but with corporate clients I feel that you’ll get more mileage with less headache for sticking with something ENG.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

I haven’t had the chance to cut a full project on it since I’ve downloaded the demo. After Effects and Premiere seem more speedy overall.

Speedgrade still feels like the black sheep, but I’m glad they jammed it in the suite so soon after the acquisition. I graded a music video shot on SD camcorder (kind of a restoration job) and the speed of the program simply flew.

One big issue with the Speedgrade demo is that it doesn’t come with any help file. Really steep learning curve in terms of setting up a project. The color controls you’ve seen a million times before so they are responsive and comfortable.

Some issues I came across:
-It doesn’t seem to like dropframe timecode from EDLs
-To be really useful, the color management settings need to be in unity with After Effects and Photoshop. Speedgrade still uses its own nomenclature for these and it took some guess work before I had a matching color pipeline.

I’m suggesting both as improvements to Adobe.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

1) https://ffmpeg.org/ FFMPEG might be able to do it depending on what version of RealAudio it is (every version seems to use a different encoding scheme)…. get use to the command line.

2) Yell at or fire whoever is giving you RealAudio files.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

[Paul Ray] “So, you’re saying to use these band filters across the board as my last step before exporting? Or, to apply the filters to each individual clip of just the dialog in the timeline?”

I’m not familiar with the mixing tools within FCP7 (I use Adobe almost exclusively) but I would add these band-pass effects to a sub-mix that contains all the dialog. Any music backing tracks are probably of higher quality and don’t need the same treatment.

It’s really a clean up step. Not only are you getting rid of frequency information that dialog really doesn’t “live in”, dialog-only passages will hold up better when re-compressed for DVD or web or what have you. If there are slight glassy high frequency artifacts, then a high-cut may really minimize or remove that and be virtually transparent in terms of how it affects your real audio.

For Q settings… whatever creates a reasonably steep cutoff. A larger number is steeper (smaller frequency transition range) so play with it.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

In Preferences > Media, you may want to turn off “Write XMP ID To Files On Import” as this, at the least writes a metadata “serial number” to your asset files that allows Premiere to cache/conform your assets properly. For instance, if you have data on an external drive and copy it to an internal RAID, Premiere can compare the serial and understand that the conform files are still in the cache and skip rebuilding them.

https://help.adobe.com/en_US/premierepro/cs/using/WSAB1EDD0E-ADC2-4a10-B399-E809E588618B.html#WSE3BD4A43-7022-4fe6-97F5-95313935347B

https://forums.adobe.com/message/3009053 gives some more in-depth info on the process as a whole.

Also worth turning off is “Enable Clip And XMP Metadata Linking”. There is some metadata-like info (for instance you can rate your asset or leave log notes) that are stored in your project file. Leaving this option checked will make Premiere also sync the corresponding XMP metadata field.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

May I also suggest looking at a power conditioner in-line before your UPS.

When running off a generator, be it a genny trailer on a feature or the simple genny from a small production motor home, my biggest issue has been the fluctuation in voltage causes the UPS to constantly switch from line to battery power. Not only does this cause the warning beep to go like crazy but it drains the battery to the point that it’s useless if a cut-off were to actually happen.

A good conditioner is a few hundred ($100-300) and you’ll find them mostly advertised to the studio audio/high end home audio world.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

What is your deal memo with him? I’ve you’ve paid up to the point where he should hand over the files (I’d fire him from mixing at this point) then a letter threatening small claims court may have him change his tune.

15.6K a second is Kilobytes with a capital K? Works out to 124kbps (I assume it’s really 128kbps and whatever program you’re using is taking into account overhead or something).

It’s not entirely ideal, but since it isn’t sonically rich — by that I mean it’s dialog and not a music track — you might be able to put a low and high pass filter on it and preserve it from further transcoding damage. Cutting under 40Hz and cutting above 18kHz should leave the dialog virtually untouched.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

Better how? I use Squeeze for broadcast and DVD/Blu-Ray authoring and I don’t have any glaring issues with it. Is there one aspect or set of features you’re looking for that Squeeze doesn’t fulfill?

[Angelo Lorenzo]

I wouldn’t say it’s a fad, but it’s far more prevalent in Youtube content. It certainly speaks to the speed and lack of production value/B-roll that most of these videos are produced with (while many of them have become more sophisticated… most started with a webcam against a white wall). I do praise the fact that many people do have the balls to embrace it than try to pull it off in an awkward way or to keep the camera rolling through the fumbles and dead air.

You might see it sparingly in interview/news material, but editors try to match cut without jarring the audience too much; they want the cut to remain as invisible as possible. In fact, I think Adobe Premiere CS6 will have some frame warping tools to ease these types of cuts as well.

With traditional standards and content, you’ll hear a lot about the 30 degree rule: Cutting between angles that are at least 30 degrees difference up, down, side to side. This gives a more solid feeling that we’ve shifted perspectives. Conversely, there is a type of jump cut called an axial cut. This cut is the jump forward that you’ll see in Alfred Hitchcock style thrillers.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

Hm, you have a professional setup indeed.

Are you running a nVidia card on each system as well? It makes me wonder if there is some RF interference between the graphics card and any cabling… but even then I suppose at least the Presonus is a little usb AudioBox (the decklink, I recall uses a breakout cable; there are so many versions of that card) so it’s a moot point.

I have Premiere on a little M-Audio box and Shure studio headphones (PC system).

Unless someone else can chime in, my next step would be using a power conditioner or ferrite cores on any analog audio cables.