[Ben Holmes]

Why don’t you spend $295 dollars on a Blackmagic decklink card? I reallt can’t see how much cheaper it could be to rent one. You can use it in the future to give you SPDIF/AES audio monitoring, and send beautiful SDI video to one of the many inexpensive SDI monitors around now, instead of viewing everything analogue via DV deck.

Ben

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[Ben Holmes]

You don’t specify which Decklink card you have – is it the SP or one with an SDI input?

If you are only digitising from the deck, you can rent a J-series player only. These are a lot cheaper to buy or rent than the player/recorders like the 2000 series. For full speed playback, you will seen no quality difference between the J-series and a much more expensive deck, as long as the heads are well maintained – otherwise you COULD see more dropout. In my experience, that’s rarely a problem.

Ideally, you want to use a digital capture card (the cheapest SDI decklink card is only $295 dollars) as this will allow you to take SDI video at 10-bit quality WITH embedded audio (usually 4-tracks off tape). If you use an analogue card, and take the video via component, you will lose quality that will be clearly visible. To be honest, given the cheapness of the cards, it’s going to cost you a lot more in deck hire than buying the card, so it’s a no brainer. Of course, if you want to capture as uncompressed, you’ll need fast drives – if you capture as ProRes, not so fast. Uncompressed SD will take about 100Gb/hour to store, ProRes HQ around 25Gb/hour.

Hope that clears things up for you. Please note there are two types of J-series deck, ones that take only small tapes, and ones that play the longer 60-124 minute tapes. These USED to be called the J-3 and J-30 respectively – and are available with or without SDI.

Ben

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[Ben Holmes]

Tyler – you won’t need Color for this – just use the 3 way color corrector as I described above.

Ben

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[Ben Holmes]

Jeremy’s right – but good luck with the wind noise, it’s a b**** to remove. You can try a band-pass filter to try to help, but it’s pretty hard on any NLE software.

Any mic used outdoors like this should be all dressed up in a wind-shield. This is what soundmen are for (and it’s the only thing they’re for, apart from moaning).

😉

Ben

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[Ben Holmes]

Wow – the Westway never looked so, erm, American! Hilarious vid.

If only the A40 was ever so devoid of traffic.

Ben

Oh – And ignoring software UELA’s bad – M’kay?

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[Ben Holmes]

In very rough terms, cloudy days are ‘cooler’ in colour terms, and sunny days are ‘warmer’ – doh!

Apply the 3-Way Color Corrector in FCP to the effects menu.

In the 3 way colour corrector, start by moving the mid ‘trackball’ towards the blue to make it cooler (and towards the yellow to make it warmer). Match the whites on both by using the eye-dropper next to the whites (right-hand trackball) on some white in the picture, and fine tune by eye. You will then have to adjust the gamma (mid-lift) of the sunnier shot to make it a lower – drag the slider underneath the centre trackball to the left to do this.

If this is not a critical shot and is as you describe (without an extreme difference in lighting), I doubt you will have to resort to more advanced correction (although you can do the same in Color with more control if you’re familiar with it).

A ‘better’ version of the FCP 3-way colour corrector is Magic Bullet’s Colorista.

Hope that helps – CC 101!

Ben

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[Ben Holmes]

Quick answer to a complicated issue: Progressive is easier to work with in post, although giving a different look to the footage. However, the primary consideration should be what format you have to deliver in.

I’m sure others will wade in with more detail.

Ben

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[Ben Holmes]

Last time I checked, the iDVD templates were available in DVDSP.

Honestly, for your requirements, if the quality is OK, use whichever software you are comfortable with. Until DVDSP supports Blu-Ray, I’d stay where you are (and I have NO idea how iDVD works…)

As far as the widescreen/letterbox debate goes, I understand your concerns. I have a very different perspective on it as a broadcast pro (as does Walter). For broadcast, what you are doing is plain wrong, as you have reduced the vertical resolution of the video by letterboxing it in FCP. If someone watches this on a widescreen TV, they will see letterboxing and pillarboxing, and may be tempted to hit the ‘zoom’ button on the TV, filling the whole screen. This zoomed picture would be lower quality.

Now, in a world full of widescreen, HD TV’s you may be disappointing as many people as you please with this method.

If you use DVDSP (and again – I have no idea if this is possible in iDVD) you can specify HOW a DVD player treats an anamorphic (ie. true SD widescreen) DVD. If the disc is set to display as letterbox in the DVDSP disc setup, if the DVD player is set to 4:3, your video will display in your arty letterboxed look. If the DVD player is set to play 16:9 to a widescreen TV, it will display full frame. Either way, it’s being shown in the shape intended.

As someone said earlier, giving someone a stretched/always letterboxed view on a widescreen TV won’t please some people, and the other option, zooming, will lose a lot of quality.

Ben

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[Ben Holmes]

I second Mark. It’s pricey, but nothing touches Ultimatte. Some things are worth paying proper money for. If you have a pro business, and do a lot of keying, you should be prepared to pay for this – like most products, it will pay for itself in a few jobs in time saved and client satisfaction.

Ben

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[Ben Holmes]

Matt

There have always been issues with FCP’s handling of photoshop files. I usually got around these by opening the originally imported PS ‘sequence’ then copying individual layers where required.

Now I use Motion or AE – Both are far better a handling PS files.

Ben

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