Boyd Mccollum
Forum Replies Created
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[randy j] “but wont the DV have a flicker/strobe effect because it is interlaced and a different frame rate?”
it shouldn’t be a problem – people do it all the time. Check out Graeme Nattress’ Standards Converter (at http://www.nattress.com).
Another way to do it – and the best way to see how something works is to just give it a try – is to take your PAL footage (or a short 30 second clip), drop it on a timeline with your HDV settings. Render, then export to a QT with your timeline settings. Reimport into your project.
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If possible take an Intro to FCP course with an instructor. If that’s not possible in your location or for expense, I highly recommend getting the Diana Weynand Final Cut Pro 5 book. It’ll take around 20 hours or so to go through everything, but you will know FCP – though the first few chapters are enough to get you going. The investment in time will pay huge dividends in time savings in the future (probably 10-fold). It’s also an excellent reference guide to go back and review how to do certain things (each of the APTS books are great this way).
Larry Jordan and Jerry Hoffman both have excellent books as well. Lynda.com is a great place for online tutorials (taught by the aforementioned Larry Jordan). With their premium subscription, you can also download project files to work on with the lessons. Hands-on is always a great way to go. The nice thing about Lynda.com is that they also cover all the different FCP Stuido apps, Adobe CS apps, and much more. You can go there without signing on and try out the first few chapters in the lessons to get a flavor of how it works.
I’ve heard good things about Ripple Training but have no direct knowledge (I do with all of the ones I mentioned above.). Of course, the search function here on the Cow is priceless and has saved me a whole lot of stress, not to mention time.
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[James Veitch] “Also, i’m not asking the program to do anything creative, simply fade down and up at specified points. “
actually, I think it wouldn’t be as simple as that, and there are a world of creative choices that are being made, even in a simple voice over. Simply choosing to do a fade down and up is a creative choice. Plus you’d need to adjust any number of presets to have it do what you want it to do. How much should it fade down? How quickly should it fade down and/or fade up? How long should it wait for pauses while you’re speaking? How should it fade down or up when you have mulitple tracks, some of which don’t need to be faded?
Recording the voice over is also just the start. Often you end up moving the VO (even by one or 2 seconds) and then you’d have to go back into the automatically generated keyframes to reposition your fades…. In the end, as each VO is different and interacts with the footage differently, even within a single short sequence, you may end up making more adjustments getting your presets set for automation, then doing the work afterward.
Also, this type of automation is something that could create a lot more problems for those most likely to use it, basically the less experienced user. They would be the ones that don’t understand keyframing
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In additon to Walter’s suggestions, you should make sure that whichever monitor you are using is calibrated for color/tint/contrast/brightness/sharpness. You can do a quick search on the internet to get the information you need on how to do this. To get your color/tint correct, get yourself some blue gel and look through that when adjusting your bars. You should be able to get the gel from lighting supply house or camera store. There are also calibrating DVDs available for setting up home theatre systems – check with your local Radio Shack/Electronics store – that walks you through proper set up of your monitor. Some of these DVDs come with the gel you need. You can also run bars straight out of FCP.
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[Chris Poisson] “who feel Apple is maybe selling us out.”
how is this Apple selling us out? It’s Apple compensating their CEO. It’s done all the time and it’s not necessarily illegal or even unethical. The article you point to is an opinion piece by some guy whining about Dems getting a pass where Reps don’t. And it’s from 2 weeks ago.
Here’s a more current report (took about a minute to Google and then read it).
https://www.infoworld.com/article/07/01/16/HNapplestockoptions_1.html
If something’s wrong, if someone broke the law, then someone may go to jail. But it’s not “selling us out”. Selling us out would be a secret decision to kill FCP, etc. without telling us, so we have incomplete information to make business decision on or platforms and the like.
But if anyone feels strongly that this is unacceptable behavior on Apple’s part and don’t want to deal with them, there’s always Avid 🙂
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After you update your nested sequence – you need to force update the nest in your master (or parent) sequence. The easiest way is to turn on clip overlays (opt+W), then drag the opacity of the nest to 0 then back to 100. Then rerender. The reason to do this is that the parent sequence reads the render file of the nest, not the contents of nested sequence itself, so you need to break the link to the render file so you can rerender it.
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you could also place the playhead over the clip in question, do a match frame (f) which pulls up the original clip in the viewer, and then do a replace edit (F11).
As a general workflow recommendation, don’t do too much audio sweetening, etc., until after you lock your picture. What happens is you spend a lot of time working on something that ends up getting cut, or needs to be changed in relation to other audio elements that are added later.
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[Jon_Alpha] “QUESTION: 1) Why is this happening and how do I solve it?
2) Will this appear more in the film (I know I might have to watch the film thoroughly, but there is only so many times you can watch an 80 minute film in a day, as well as doing editing work)
3) Will this slip my audio out of sync?”Since no one’s tried, I’ll take a stab at it –
1. How many frames back is your slate from the In point in the HDV timeline (and do you have a dissolve going on in there)? It may be an I-frame vs. Long GOP issue when converting from HDV to DVCProHD via QT conversion – you might want to try using Compressor to convert from HDV to DVCProHD. Not sure how to solve this, or if that is even the problem. One thing you can do, since you have your show on the timeline in DVCProHD before you compress it, is just to scrub thru it and see if/where you have problems, and cut it the problem frame before exporting.
Definitely do some more research, here on the Cow (maybe the HDV forum). Jerry Hoffman has a great article on the HDV workflow in the Creative Cow magazine. Ken Stone may also have some good info for you.
2. Depending on the problem, it might.
3. It shouldn’t – but you can double check on the timeline before you compress it. And 1 frame won’t be noticeable.
Unless you were going to picture lock, I wouldn’t sweat it too much at this point. As I mentioned earlier, do some additional research. As you get close to locking your picture, you might think about recapturing via a capture card to DVCProHD or HDCam (depending on your deliverables), for CC and any effects work you’ll be doing.
Just my $0.02.
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([David Roth Weiss] “[Mark Suszko] “I think a careful distinction should be made between the terms “flat rate” and “flat fee”.”
Okay, good point!!! I’ll change to recommending a “flat fee” from this point on.”
It’s an excellent distinction, though I imagine that folks do use the two terms somewhat interchangeably – I think Mark’s suggestion would be to use “flat rate” (pay ongoing) not “flat fee” (paid once).
I would be careful even with a flat rate, and define what that means – is it for 30 hours, 40 hours, 60 or 80 hours a week? Is it for 8, 10, 12 hours a day? A flat rate can quickly become a “flat fee” for a specified time period, and you could easily go from making a good hourly rate to making below minimum wage.
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Obviously, rates vary based on a wide variety of factors. And what you might charge for a 30 sec spot would be different then what you would charge for a long form project. Here’s a good starting point to look at (from the Motion Picture Editors Guild):
https://www.editorsguild.com/v2/wages.htm
In your case, being more long form, I might do ~$2,000 a week, based on a 10 hour/day x 5 days a week. I would be clear up front with the hours/day and days/week and charge 1.5x for OT. You could also make this rate based on a 40 hour/week.
Salary is always a negotiation, so you may come in high, and he may make a counter proposal, and then you arrive at something that you both can live with. As others have mentioned, be careful of flat rates – you could find yourself working for some ridiculously low hourly rate.
Rates can also vary if you are using your own equipment (at your place or having to take it to their location) or theirs, and if you are doing DV/HDV vs. Uncompressed HD, etc.