[Craig Hirshberg]

Ah! Finally got a response today! Very happy!

Thank you Media Mover!

[Craig Hirshberg]

I would try to narrow down a theme. What is this school all about? What makes it special? Diversity? Community? Etc. Do a brainstorm session and write down the big words that pop to mind, then pick the most fitting one. Your client could also be involved in this step if you’re comfortable enough with that.

Maybe from that a concept will develop, such as the previous post using famous quotes. The concept will drive the inspiration of the edit, the look, pacing and feel, though all decisions must still back up the overall theme.

Giving credit where credit’s due: I’ve learned a lot about theming and concepting from Hillman Curtis’s book MTIV: Process, Inspiration and Practice for the New Media Designer. He’s brilliant! Highly recommend his book for any artist.

Craig

[Craig Hirshberg]

I would try the above suggestions first, especially adjusting slightly to hit the sweet spot. Sometimes when fine tuning a crop in PIP, I’ve noticed it takes a two to three hits of the arrow key for the adjustment to only move over one pixel (not sure if pixel is right word here). I try to find the middle ground.

I would also try transcoding that DV25 footage to 1:1 (or recapturing via s-video, but try transcode first), then recutting it back under the 1:1 footage you placed on top and render it 1:1. I’ve had so funky things happen when mixing/viewing/compressing DV25 with SD (and mixing any formats for that matter) that I try to avoid it at all costs.

Sometimes you don’t even notice those problems until you actually view the final dvd on a normal television.

Craig

[Craig Hirshberg]

Thanks for the responses. I’ll definitely do some more robust experimentation with this.

[Craig Hirshberg]

Bouke,

Thank you. I was beginning to think that was going to be the case. At least the Avid lets you save styles per track or per sequence for that, so that is what I will end up doing.

Craig

[Craig Hirshberg]

Well, answering first part of my own post:

I went ahead and winged it, an it worked with no problems. No dongle upgrades, no firmware updates.

I think because I was going from MC 3.1.1 on PC to MC 3.1.1 on Mac.

As the Mac addicts always say, “It just works.” (I know this has nothing to do with Mac and more to do with Avid, surprisingly, but it’s still fun to say).

[Craig Hirshberg]

Thanks all,

I knew about the CMND + TAB thing, just was hoping for something else. Maybe I just need to re-arrange my workspace now to fill in the gaps with bins, tools, etc.

I can see the advantage of being able to have other windows open while actively editing though. It’s probably a better tradeoff – actually a WAY better tradeoff – at least I’m not on a PC anymore! 🙂

Craig

[Craig Hirshberg]

Assistant editors are the BEST!

You try to teach them everything you know, then they turn the tables and show you something you never knew or would have thought about.

Gotta love them young kids!

Here’s a shout out to ASSISTANT EDITORS!

Craig

[Craig Hirshberg]

Shane, thank you for your help, it’s beginning to make a little more sense.

Although I am now confused when you say HDV doesn’t run at 59.94 but I need to capture via firewire at 1080i/60. For clarification, is 60 interlaced fields not the same as 59.94?

Also, you mention if I have Avid hardware, which I do have an Adrenaline, I can capture differently. I tried, but was unable to do so via firewire thru the DNA port. Our Sony HDV deck doesn’t have any other HD outs that I know of (it has s-video, component out, and composite RCA outs, no HD SDI outs)

To get to the root of the problem, is it going to be possible at all to capture this HDV footage into my 720p59.94 project? (The bulk of my footage was shot in P2 at 720p24p)

Sorry for the confusion, but I’m just trying to wrap my head around this stuff, and it seems a lot of times the confusion comes from shortcuts in speech. Is there an HD bible out there I could buy?

Thanks again,

Craig

[Craig Hirshberg]

Thanks a million guys!

I knew it had to be something simple, and it was Sorenson. Sorenson has this weird way of not letting you change the presets, but in reality you can, if you make a new one from scratch, and the frame rate was set to 29.97, which I was just assuming what all MPEG-2’s needed to be.

I MUST remember that I am smarter than the computer!

Thanks again!

Craig

By the way, the N in 24PN stands for “Native” I beleive, and you can only get it with P2. It only records EXACTLY 24 frames per second – it’s a great space saver, but I’ve found it to cause a lot of headaches for editng, especially when trying to mix with different frame rates and formats like SD and 1080i.