Brendan Coots
Forum Replies Created
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“Staying in the same codec should keep your quality high, and will probably solve the brightness issue”
That’s not really true. DV, DVCPRO, and in this case XDCAM are all heavily compressed codecs, so rendering out to that codec two more times (once from FCP and once from AE)is going to degrade your footage.
The best option is to stick to lossless or 8/10 bit uncompressed codecs when bouncing between apps. If there is a gamma shift once you pull it back into FCP, something was set incorrectly at some point in the pipeline.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
I hate to say it, but you’re totally hosed, I wouldn’t touch this key with a ten foot pole.
The decision to shoot her in a blue/purple shirt against a blue background was a fatal one. Besides that, the overall color and lighting is so poorly done and skewed towards magenta/blue that there is no hope for getting a good key here. The camera operator shot in HD, but didn’t even white balance the camera?
Your only real option would be rotoscoping each and every frame by hand.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Not that I would ever purposely contribute to the endless Mac vs. PC war, but here’s my position on the benefits of Macs:
– Final Cut Pro. Say what you will, but FCP seems to have wider acceptance in the mid-to-professional community than any PC editing software aside from Avid, which is almost certainly out of the smaller shop’s price range. There is a reason so many have moved to FCP, and it’s not just slick marketing. Throw in (the previously $10,000) Color software and you’ve got a system that would cost $20k to match on a PC, computer not included. This is a compelling value proposition.
– Macs can run both Windows and OSX, all but ending the need to choose. Operating system isn’t really part of the equation any more.
– Mac hardware is, for the most part, of a higher quality than most preconfigured PCs out there. Dells are chock full of components supplied by the absolute lowest bidder, and while Macs aren’t perfect they do seem to last longer and offer up fewer complaints day to day. This also results in a MUCH higher resale value than any PC can hope for.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
For Youtube videos, use Quicktime with these settings:
Codec – Photo-Jpeg
30 frames per second (or 24 if your project is at 24fps)
Quality – slider to medium
44.1khz audioRender out to 425 x 318 or Youtube will scale up your video to this size anyway, degrading the quality of your video somewhat.
By the way, h.264 is MPEG4 part 10, so they aren’t different codecs. In fact, you can create an h.264 video in the MPEG4 container, it outputs as a .mp4 file.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
What codec are you outputting to? You said you were using the highest settings, but in which codec? You should be rendering to Animation codec unless there is some special reason not to.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
First thing’s first – you should not use S-Video (single cable) or composite video (yellow, white, red cables) for connecting to monitors when doing video work. The signal quality is very low and not reliable at all if you are using the set to judge colors, brightness etc.
A solid, cost-effective option is to purchase the $250 Blackmagic Intensity card which offers HDMI output. Connect this to any HDTV set and you’ve got a large screen suitable for client monitoring from afar. This setup will handle full HD.
Another option that will yield more accurate, reliable color/gamma would be to purchase an Aja card or the Blackmagic Pro card (my personal choice). The connectors these cards use for output are typically only found on moderate-to-higher end broadcast monitors, so be warned you can’t just go hooking these up to any old TV set.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Create a 720×480 comp, drag your larger comp into it, and scale the larger comp down. Output from the 720×480 comp.
By the way, doing things in this way won’t really save you a lot of time, AE will still need to evaluate that super huge comp in order to render. It may shave a some time off your render, but don’t expect a massive difference.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Don’t use the export feature, add your comps to the render queue for rendering. Exporting in AE is a no-no for all but a few situations.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Honestly I like the idea of building your own system using a tool like Filemaker Pro. This way you can limit the features to just those that your team needs, but it also offers near limitless expansion possibilities.
My studio built our own CRM with Filemaker, and it eventually turned into a full blown project management system, employee/contractor system, script/storyboard manager etc. If you really want to get nutty, you can even log and capture footage through Filemaker for tracking clips.
You could probably hire a Filemaker developer to build a basic CRM app and buy Filemaker licenses for your team for the same cost as outfitting everyone with an off-the-shelf system with no flexibility in features.
BTW, SugarCRM doesn’t look free based on their web site, all I saw was a free trial and several pay options.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Glad it all worked out! Here’s how to approach the template guides:
Title Safe (inner-most guide): All titles should fall within this boundary. Even if the video is for the web, this is the “comfort zone” for text. It originated from older TV sets, described below.
Action Safe (outer-most guide): No important action, elements, borders etc. should fall outside of this guide if you want them to be seen properly. The frame of tube-based TV sets tends to cut off the outer-most 10% of the screen, which is why this is used, and it also explains why your titles should fall within title-safe – to keep them from coming right up against the edge of the TV frame.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com