[Chris Poisson]

Hey Bob,

All true yes, except that I already have a G5 setup with a Kona LH in it which works perfect for all kinds of HD.

On my laptop, surprise surprise, I have a 1 TB SATA RAID, tiny little thing, so I can do what I want there too, so some kind of affordable HD iO is all I’m looking for. I thought maybe BM has something in the works.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

Hey Peter,

Thanks for being patient with me, I think you told me the same thing last time. Didn’t get it right apparently.

So I suppose that if there’s a lot going on behind the object with the glint on it, it would all have to be precomposed? Seems kinda retarded, wish this would just work over everything.

But thanks, I got it working now.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

DR,

You get “The Longest Thread Without a Solution” award of the month. Sorry bro.

Personally, I would recapture.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

Try some of the TV effects in Nattress Big Box of Tricks, and all the other cool stuff in there. There are also some great TV effects in Riot Gear, a very cool compositing kit from Andrew Kramer. I’ve combined both to get some neat TV effects.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

Dan,

Getting the best quality and maximizing space are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Quality on a DVD depends greatly on data rates, the higher the better, at the expense of space, and unfortunately, playability across different machines and computers.

As a rule though, start with the best quality material going in, uncompressed is better than DV, and let Compressor encode a bit less than the default rates, say an average of around 5 and high of 7. The lower these numbers the more stuff you can fit on the disc. Test this of course to check footage with lots of motion and of your transitions. You can easily do a few test burns.

Some say the best encodes with Compressor come from going there direct from the FCP timeline, as it reportedly skips a step of compression, but this method is SLOW and ties up your editor for the whole time.

Another thing you may want to try is Episode Pro, of late it has been my encoder of choice for DVDs, just super clean all around. I use the 5Mbit setting.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

Peter,

I realized after I posted I only partly answered your question. Regarding the round trip to AE, as long as you render exactly the same format in and out there should be no quality loss. Making DV material 8 bit to do this won’t add anything, except that some effects and keys may work better in 8 bit.

As a rule though, I export my AE work lossless, usually in the Animation codec, especially when there are alpha channel considerations. You have to render in FCP but it looks great.

Too bad about the scaling up of your DV to 16×9, if you have time, uprezing in compressor is an option, I like Compressor for this better than any of the 3rd party uprezers, it does a great job. ou would have to fudge one of the current settings (advanced format conversions) I don’t think there’s one specifically to scale the whole frame by 33%, but I could be wrong. In any event, it can do this.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

Hi Peter,

Well, this issue gets a bit subjective. It really depends how you handle the workflow. For instance, on my system I have a choice of capturing DV material via FireWire or analog component. If it’s captured to 8bit via component it has a different look than via FireWire, a bit softer which can be nice. it also has 6 extra lines. These lines come into play in a few situations. If you put DV into an D1 timeline, it needs to be shifted up a pixel. Similarily, 8bit files with 486 lines need to be scaled properly or shifted a pixel to look good in a DV timeline.

But, let’s say you are just converting a DV project to 8 bit, which will make your graphics look better, all you do is change the compressor and render. I do this all the time, and because my playback is through the Kona, it plays in real time.

Does this help?

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

Sure would be nice to know, there are other HD monitors in this class (Hundai) which tout various format capabilities. I have a little Sony 17″ multiformat monitor which has all the formats as options.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

Hi pass filter is where I start.

Have a wonderful day.

[Chris Poisson]

Also Borjis,

Where did you find this for $568 or whatever? I didn’t see any rebate or sale info on Dell’s site.

Have a wonderful day.