[Dave Johnson]

If FCP makes you render, it simply means something about your media is different from the sequence you have it in. To avoid rendering, you’ll need to make sure everything about your MOVs matches your FCP sequence (codec, frame rate, audio settings, etc., etc., etc.) To determine where the difference might be, when you right click the FCP bin window there is a list of things you can have it show about each file and sequence (video codec, frame rate, aspect ratio, audio codec, etc.). Check all the pertinent ones then go down the list and compare the MOV file specs to the FCP sequence specs.

It’s important to note that all “uncompressed” MOVs (aka “none” codec) are not created equal … if the MOVs were made with one “uncompressed/none” codec and your FCP system uses another, you’ll have to render. For example, I ran into that when I first started bringing “uncompressed” MOVs from my Windows After Effects station into FCP since the Windows system was using BlackMagic Design “uncompressed” codecs and my Mac uses the AJA “uncompressed” codecs. I just installed the AJA codec on my Windows system, made sure the “none” settings I used to render from AE matched those I used in my FCP projects and voila … no more rendering in FCP. Similarly, you will have the same issue if both your FCP sequence and your MOVs use the same type of “uncompressed” codecs, but one is 8-bit and the other 10-bit.

I hope this helps!

[Dave Johnson]

Glad to help, Tracy … we’ve all been there.

[This started as just a small web video for a friend of a friend … I guess you could say no good deed goes unpunished.]
They always start that way, they always end differently and I’d bet that cliche was first coined by a video editor. So, in my opinion, video production is a field in which it’s increasingly important to find the right balance between being a good friend and devaluing your own training, knowledge and experience by giving those things away for free … then, stick to your guns. Have you ever tried asking an attorney friend to take a case through trial for you for free since it’s only a “small” one? Then, when he gives you that “are you insane” look, try telling him “well, all you have to do is read some stuff and talk a lot”. Personally, it’s been many years since I’ve been willing to make a video for anyone for free, although I’ll sometimes do things that are not only very simple, but have a very clear end point like convert a friend’s vacation video so they can watch it on their iPod.

Best of luck!

[Dave Johnson]

[can I enlarge everything outside of the title/action safe area since this will be displayed on a flat screen?]
You could, but you’ll create new problems either way you do it …
If you scale everything up beyond 100%, you’ll lose resolution so some of your text may become illegible, if not just ugly. If you go through and increase all the font sizes one-by-one, you’ll not only spend more time/money on projects than any reasonable budget would allow, but your text will get chopped off when DVDs are played under normal circumstances, which they inevitably will be regardless of what your client thinks they know.

Unless you plan to make all of your projects twice (once to TV specs using safe title/action & once without), you’ll have to get your clients to accept that video specs are what they are … not what they want them to be.

[how do I combat the stretch that happens when you output to DVD and then put in on a large screen. Is there a special encoding trick or is this something I should be considering in FCP?]
If you’re making a standard-definition DVD from a SD FCP project, which is what it sounds like you are doing, the stretch is from wrong settings on the player or TV the DVD is used with. If by “large screen” you mean wide-screen (as in 16×9 HD as opposed to just a large 4×3 SD projector screen), then there are only 3 options:
[1] set the player and TV to play SD content showing the black bars on the left and right
[2] set the player and TV to play SD content by stretching it to fit the 16×9 aspect ratio
[3] make a 16×9 DVD, which has start with your source material and continue all the way through both FCP editing & DVD authoring

The core of both of these issues is that its basically impossible to make a single video that is all things to all people and all playback devices … a TV screen is different from a computer screen which is different from a projector screen, all 3 can be either SD (4×3) or HD (16×9), and there is simply no way to make a video that’ll magically conform to all of them without some compromise (i.e., extra space, cropping, letterbox, etc.).

Sorry to offer what may seem bad news, but it sounds like your client is the one with issues, not you.

[Dave Johnson]

Thank you for your reply, Tom. I would still very much like to find the keyboard combination since using match cuts for this purpose works fine during the editing process, but not so well with completed edits wherein I need to compare original footage to corrected footage without changing anything in the timeline. Thanks again.

[Dave Johnson]

The other designer used a third-party plugin called “Inner Bevel” (maybe Alien Skin Eye Candy), which is not installed on your machine.

Unless you have access to the machine with that plugin installed, the easiest thing to do will be replace it with a native AE effect. You might want to do this using a copy of the original project file …

To locate the affected layer(s), select all layers in the timeline, press E on your keyboard to reveal all effects and look for any effect names preceded by “Missing:”. To each layer with the missing plugin, apply a native AE effect that does the same thing as the missing third-party plugin (i.e., Bevel Alpha) and delete the missing third-party plugin from those layers. Save and re-open the project before making any other changes and you should no longer get the error message (unless you missed a layer that used the plugin).

[Dave Johnson]

If you’re goal is just to make your video look more official by adding an FBI warning screen, there are tons of those screens that can be downloaded on the web via a simple Google search.

If you’re goal is to actually help protect your creation from unauthorized use by guaranteeing that all viewers are aware that it is protected material, pay careful attention to the wording of the various FBI copyright warning screens … most were made specifically for Hollywood films and all of the ones I’ve seen specifically warn viewers that unauthorized use of copyrighted material is illegal. So, if your material isn’t copyrighted, a warning about copyright infringement doesn’t seem to accomplish much.

With that said, note that copyrighting something is not really difficult at all. However, my observation has been that most content creators outside of Hollywood don’t bother … probably due to the reality that it makes no difference whatsoever unless:
[1] you catch someone using your material without your authorization
[2] they have gained enough money from use of your material to make going after them worthwhile
[3] you can afford the legal costs of pursuing a case against them

[Dave Johnson]

Your question is a little confusing since you seem to use the terms “export” and “convert” interchangeably so I’ll answer to both …

If you want to export a batch of sequences from FCP to WMVs, select all of the sequences, select Batch Export from the FCP File menu, press the Settings button at the bottom of the Batch Export window, change the Format to Windows Media, adjust the Options to your liking, then press the Export button.

If you want to convert a batch of existing MOVs to WMVs, you’ll need to use compression/conversion software such as Compressor, Squeeze or Cleaner since QuickTime can convert MOVs to WMVs (with the help of Flip4Mac), but not in a batch process. I’m sure it would be possible to write a script to make QuickTime do that, but I’m not a programmer so I can’t help with that.

[Dave Johnson]

Hey Rusty,

I’ve actually never tried it by creating an entirely new PSD from scratch since, for me, the whole idea has always been that there were enough similarities between the PS artwork and/or AE animations that I could avoid starting each one from scratch.

My guess is that, even though everything we see in PS may be identical, there are things that we don’t normally see within the file (metadata, etc.) that tell PS & AE that this is a completely different file and, when we try to force the software to believe otherwise, it simply knows better and AE gets confused and ends up doing unpredictable things with the contents of the file.

That’s the only thing I can think of, but I am curious to know why it doesn’t work since, in theory, it does seem that it would. Perhaps one of the Adobe folks that frequent the COW will see your post and explain.

[Dave Johnson]

I can’t answer your question as to why, but I find it helpful to know that something strange that happened to me also happened to someone else … just to let me I’m not going crazy, if nothing else!

For the first and only time, about a week ago, I got the exact same error message under very similar circumstances (capturing BetaSP through an AJA using EXACTLY the same process as always).

I’m 100% certain that I didn’t accidentally change something about FCP, my deck or the source material to cause the error. I dealt with it the same way Naiche did and haven’t gotten the message again since.

If anyone has any idea what could cause this, I’d love to hear it.

[Dave Johnson]

Just to clarify, the “over 98% of internet users has installed” actually refers to the Adobe browser plugins that allow viewing FLVs through web pages only, rather than Adobe’s standalone FLV player for which I’m not aware of the install stats, but my guess is that they’re currently way below 98%. What that means is that, yes FLV is a good web video format and most will be able to view FLVs posted to a web page without doing anything they haven’t already done (install those plugins), but it is also important to note that most people on any O/S will have to install Adobe’s standalone player in order to view FLVs on their local systems since neither Macs nor PCs natively have the ability to play FLVs independently (i.e., if you want to email or otherwise share the file, in addition to posting it on a web page).