[Dan Riley]

Thanks for the heads up everyone.
We are starting a project in Seattle with talent in the UK.
And your sharing of player and TV info from overseas
will make sending out DVDs of offlines and finished versions
much easier and cheaper obviously.

Thanks again,
Dan

[Dan Riley]

Daniel,

Really? I did not know that.

Thanks,
Dan

[Dan Riley]

Great step by step post.

Now how about this one;
you finish a 30min show, all NTSC, and one of the people
featured is from London so you want to send him a DVD of the
show that he can play over there. It needs to be PAL correct?

Yes, I can take a DigiBeta over to a facility and have them
convert to PAL and make a PAL DVD. I was hoping
there was an easy way to do it right in the comfort
of my edit suite. Is Nattress a way to go?
I’ve heard speed changes and effects are trouble with Nattress.
What about making the DVD?

Thanks,
Dan

[Dan Riley]

Chris,

We are spending way too much on FedEx for clients to view our
roughcuts etc. Sometimes we send out 7 DVDs or VHS reels
at a time and it’s just crazy to do that these days. So we are
transitioning to having clients view stuff on your computer.
Most of them use PCs, so I have to work with them to get
it to work for them. Our shows are 28:30 in length.

I can post to a .mac account a 320/240 h.264
(or mpeg4 if they don’t have the latest quicktime on their PC) and it’s ok.
But these are people who are used to watching stuff on a
TV set, not on their computer screen. So if I encode at
640 by 480, the larger viewing size is less of a problem.
Also, they need to clearly see the supers and titles for
approval.

Like I said, when I encode the 320/240 size, it looks very good
but needs to be bigger. And that’s when the strobing/jaggies
start to show up, with the 640/480 size. I use 29.97 frames.
15 frames does not work for our stuff. Too jerky.
Even so, at 15 frames I still see the strobing on the larger size.

I’ve tried various settings, even Sorensen3, and it’s still strobing
on the larger size. Interestingly, if you take a 320/240 encode
and ask the quicktime player to double the size, there is no
strobing in the picture (just a smeary picture),
But if you take a 640/480 encode (which you see the
strobing/jaggies on) and you ask Quicktime player
to show half size, there is no strobing in that picture.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

Any PC owner that downloads iTunes 6 will automatically download
and install Quicktime 7 which plays h.264. If people want to see
the best quality videos, either WMV or Quicktime, they need to
download and install the latest players from both camps.

I have a question for the previous guy from his encoding knowledge:
If I encode using h.264 and it’s half size (320-240) it looks
fantastic. But if I encode at 640-480, I get jaggies on people
and opjects when they move. Looks like interlacing problem.
But I don’t seen any way to get rid of it.
Anyone know how to encode an SD timeline using h.264
at medium quality and 640 by 480, and not have those jaggies?

Thanks,
Dan

[Dan Riley]

We haven’t gone HD yet but will very soon. My problem is in
advising what monitors to buy. I need one for color correction
that should be 20 to 25 inch that’s next to the LCD computer
monitors that would replace our Sony HR CRT 20 inch.
Then I wanted to put a 42 inch plasma (or something
like that) that would hang above and back a bit for the producer
or client to view. The client viewing one is not for critical viewing
but does need to be accurate. But the one next to me
needs to be a nice looking monitor. And we can’t afford the
$25,000 for Sony’s 25 inch CRT. If Sony or somebody
would make something like they did with the PVM line,
and it was 3 or 4 grand, that’s fine. But I’d love to get away
from CRTs and find a nice LCD. I don’t think the Apple 23
is quite there. Not the right inputs and not geared toward
video or broadcast work. But that Panasonic is. But it’s only
17 inches.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

When you say won’t open….tell me what happens when you double click on the
application in your applications folder, not any alias you might have in the dock
or someplace else. Starts to open then beach ball, doesn’t start to open, opens then
quits….. what exactly?

Next, I’d trash your FCP prefs. I could be the OS update effected something there.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

Simple dissolves look terrible using compressor.
Same as you…tried 10 bit uncompressed sequence
from digibeta clips, to DVCAM to DVCPRO clips and
sequences. Used the one and two pass settings..
tried different bit rates as high as I could go before
it said the bit rate was too high. Used Dolby or AIFF.
I still get pixelated dissolves when viewing the finished
DVD made with DVD Studio Pro.
This is “pro” encoding?

The stuff I make for the web using the H.264 codec
look fantastic, even with the medium setting.
So what’s up with Apple’s mpeg2 encoding?

Dan

[Dan Riley]

Michael,

I’m not familiar with Sony’s XPRI. Could you tell me how much
a system costs that would allow you to capture DigiBeta SDI
at uncompressed 10 bit with embedded audio, and then output same back from
a sequence? The program, the box it runs on, any associated
cards one would need? Drives, I assume, could be SCSI or Fiber
or SATA?

I know the cost difference between AVID Media Composer and FCP
because we have both. The difference in cost is pretty
significant but when you need realtime performance
the costs are perhaps justified. Just wondering about the Sony
system you are talking about.

Thanks,
Dan

[Dan Riley]

You assign which camera is which when you capture.
There is a box for “angle” number in the capture window.
If you forget to do it or change you mind, you can select
the clip in the browser and change or add it.
If you don’t assign it, FCP will look at what you called
the clip and try to figure it out.

Perhaps one could read one’s manual?