[Bob Cole]

[Tim Wilson] “real-world success with every version of FCP.”

Sounds great. But the version I will care most about is FCP6. Will that be thoroughly covered?

— Bob C

[Bob Cole]

John’s solution is great, but here is an ultra-low-budget alternative.

For the occasional shot of sports broadcasters in the ballpark booth, showing the field behind them, tv crews put ordinary black fiberglass window screen in front of the window, and a small HMI on the subject.

— Bob C

[Bob Cole]

I’d recommend buying a few things of high quality rather than lots of junk. Assuming that you have a camera mic and that you’re a one-man-band:

First, buy decent headphones with good isolation from ambient noise. Then, buy the best wireless/lav combo you can afford; make sure you can also use it hard-wired.

That’ll be all you absolutely need for one-man-band. You can add the rest as you really need it, or you can hire a sound recordist who has more bells and whistles than you can imagine.

Good luck!

— Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[Todd at Fantastic Plastic] “this shower curtain material from the fabric store”

Does this material have a name?

[Bob Cole]

Foamcore is great, especially for slashes and similar simple shapes.

But for complicated patterns you may still prefer either the Chimera window pattern kit or a Source 4.

— Bob C

[Bob Cole]

Great tip. Nothing wrong with fabric store lighting. I have a whole video with a Halloween-themed black backdrop in it — very dark and out of focus, or else you’d see little witches flying around on brooms.

Pre-Chimera, cameramen used to put their open-faced lights behind a shower curtain to light an interview.

Good idea.

[Bob Cole]

Nice fixture, Ty! Put a Chimera on it and don’t worry about all that other stuff. It’s never going to be a nice direct light compared to a fresnel.

I’m warning you — you keep up this cameraman stuff and I’m going to start learning how to record sound.

— Bob C

[Bob Cole]

Thanks very much. I used one-pass VBR.

I’d hate to think what I would have done today if it weren’t for this forum.

— Bob

[Bob Cole]

[Tom Brooks] “This is a known issue with some newer versions of Flip4Mac plug-in. Check out their support site. “

Thank you (sincerely, as opposed to the sarcasm later on for Telestream).

Does this strike anyone else as outrageous? I’ve wasted a morning on this, thinking I must have been making some silly mistake (besides using the product, that is.) Maybe there is something on the support site, but if so it sure isn’t prominent. And their forum is a broken link.

I downgraded to 1.02, which didn’t show up in FCP, uninstalled & reinstalled F4M, upgraded to 2.1.0.33 F4M, trashed pref’s in FCP, restarted… And finally got my .wmv file done, after two hours of pointless effort.

And it still doesn’t show up in Compressor.

Thanks, Telestream. I didn’t know you were running a stealth beta program.

— Bob C

[Bob Cole]

my version of Flip4Mac is Studio Pro HD.

— Bob C