Ben Holmes
Forum Replies Created
-
Might be teaching you to suck eggs, but you ARE viewing this on a monitor, not the canvas? The canvas itself does not display the full resolution image, and it’s not interlaced. You may find that you do not see this effect on the proper output.
Apologies if this is no use – It’s just that complaints about the quality of stills or gfx are common on FCP and are usually due to the operator looking at the canvas, not a monitor. I know I used to when I started….
Ben
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS & FCP specialists for live OB operations. FCP systems just used on Sky Sports coverage of the Ryder Cup – live from the K Club.
“The Supercar Run” now available for international distribution from http://www.electricsky.com
-
This is a common user error in FCP. Click on the small icon shaped like a screen cut into four at the top of the viewer or canvas on the right hand side. On the drop down, change the option set to Alpha + RGB to just RGB.
You will find that many common problems like this have been posted about on here before – use the search posts function when you’re stuck, it’s helped me out many times!
Ben
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS & FCP specialists for live OB operations. FCP systems just used on Sky Sports coverage of the Ryder Cup – live from the K Club.
“The Supercar Run” now available for international distribution from http://www.electricsky.com
-
It sounds like your new sequence is still anamorphic. Does it show you a 16:9 or 4:3 window in the Canvas when you open it? Check the anamorphic box is unchecked on the sequence settings.
Ben
PS – I assume you are using DV or SD timeline, not a widescreen HD format?
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS & FCP specialists for live OB operations. FCP systems just used on Sky Sports coverage of the Ryder Cup – live from the K Club.
“The Supercar Run” now available for international distribution from http://www.electricsky.com
-
The limit effect in the colour corrector is very useful, but I suspect may not work effectively in this case – unless the ‘blood’ is very red. Limit can be used effectively to (say) leave a red car or dress (a la Schindler’s list) in a frame, but you will be trying to do this with red-ish blood on pink skin.
You may need to first exaggerate the colours in the frame by messing with the saturation. You could also try a chroma key to replace the blood colour from your shoot with one a bit more ‘primary’. There is a filter made by CGM called ‘selective colour correction’ that basically does just that – and also gives you the ability to limit the effect to an area. It could also replace ‘green’ blood with red if required – not a bad idea as it’s a lot further from the skin tones the blood will be against. In cases where ‘limit effect’ in the 3 way CC does not work, I have often found this to be a more powerful tool.
Good luck – I suspect that good lighting will help here, and really fake blood. Sounds fun… Try a simple test before your shoot, trying a few of these techniques – cheaper than a reshoot…
Ben
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS & FCP specialists for live OB operations. FCP systems just used on Sky Sports coverage of the Ryder Cup – live from the K Club.
“The Supercar Run” now available for international distribution from http://www.electricsky.com
-
I posted on FCS on a Mac Mini a few months ago – a search would have turned it all up.
FCS 5.1 will ALL run on a Mini (I have the dual 1.66) although it won’t all run well. Apple specify that FCS is not supported on the Mini as Motion requires quartz gfx. In fact, Motion DOES run on my mini – I used it recently for some animated DVD menus. However, it doesn’t (as you might expect) run very well.
One more thing – plenty of RAM is essential, as you’re leaning on the CPU pretty hard without a seperate GPU. FCS on a basic spec mini = spinning beach ball of death.
I haven’t tried using fx plugs in FCP 5.1.2, but as I have never had an issue in Motion (from whence they came) I would expect it’s OK.
Ben
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS & FCP specialists for live OB operations. FCP systems just used on Sky Sports coverage of the Ryder Cup – live from the K Club.
“The Supercar Run” now available for international distribution from http://www.electricsky.com
-
Do you have the project frame size in motion correct? It defaults to non-broadcast sizes sometimes.
Motion does not attempt to resize the HD video into a timeline in the same way as FCP does. FCP assumes you want to put any video into the timeline at a scale that outputs it full frame – not a bad idea really. Motion is software designed for a completely differentg purpose, and makes no assumptions about what you want to do with the footage you import.
Can I ask why you need to key in motion? FCP has a keyer that (as far as I know) is just as good – unless you want to composite other elements. Keeping your entire workflow within FCP will speed up things considerably.
Ben
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS & FCP specialists for live OB operations. FCP systems just used on Sky Sports coverage of the Ryder Cup – live from the K Club.
“The Supercar Run” now available for international distribution from http://www.electricsky.com
-
Ok. So are there NO cards that support more than 2Gb of Ram in the Mac Pro? Jeez. We were about to purchase our first Mac Pro (a little sooner than I wanted after our Kona 2 went phut and we have to look at a Kona 3 – which won’t run in our dual 2.7 G5 systems)
We regularly use 6Gb of ram in our current G5 towers – and I would be loath to go back to 2. I was just thinking it was safe to think about a Mac Pro – now I really am not sure.
Ben
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS & FCP specialists for live OB operations. FCP systems just used on Sky Sports coverage of the Ryder Cup – live from the K Club.
“The Supercar Run” now available for international distribution from http://www.electricsky.com
-
Export the entire timeline as a QT clip, sound and vision.
Re-import the clip, and drop it into a 4:3 timeline, so it’s letterboxed. Of course, you’ll have to render it for a print to tape, although it’ll play in RT off the timeline.
You may find in DV that you have some interlacing visible (or even a purple line caused by DV VITC) at the top and bottom of frame. You may get a cleaner letterboxed image by cropping the top and bottom by one line. You image will not be squash incorrectly by this method – if it looks wrong it’s your monitor.
The advantage of this method is that the render you do will be much quicker – and it gives you a handy backup of the timeline.
Ben
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS & FCP specialists for live OB operations. FCP systems just used on Sky Sports coverage of the Ryder Cup – live from the K Club.
“The Supercar Run” now available for international distribution from http://www.electricsky.com
-
You’ll have to zoom it – and lose quality – if that’s the only version you’ve got.
Minimise the damage and capture it at the highest quality, so 10-bit uncompressed would be preferable here. You’ll see a difference (even with it ending up on DVD) in your zoomed footage.
Ben
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS & FCP specialists for live OB operations. FCP systems just used on Sky Sports coverage of the Ryder Cup – live from the K Club.
“The Supercar Run” now available for international distribution from http://www.electricsky.com
-
As many similar previous enquiries will confirm – All text and gfx/stills look terrible in the viewer. You have to look at them on your monitor – via firewire or video output card. Even with DV timelines, you will get crisp clean text when you output – just avoid bad fonts or bad sizes, not all are suitable for video. Start with Arial bold if you want to compare it to something – that always looks pretty clean.
Ben
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS & FCP specialists for live OB operations. FCP systems just used on Sky Sports coverage of the Ryder Cup – live from the K Club.
“The Supercar Run” now available for international distribution from http://www.electricsky.com