[David Bogie]

Yar, CC Sphere only creates a flat picture of a sphere. It’s not a 3D sphere. However, it’s easy to place a CC Sphere inside another CC Sphere so you could precomp your particle and use it as the upper layer in a stack of CC Spheres.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Any thoughts? Only one: Media Manager is notoriously ill conceived and poorly implemented. To depend on the output requires careful testing and evaluation of the output. You’re doing fine. Well. you’re doing no better than anyone else.

In the many years I’ve been trying to figure out what Media Manager does, how it does it, and why it’s so messed up I have arrived at at the conclusion that it’s got to be me, simple user error. We know, for a fact, that thousands of FCP users regularly rely on MM to handle backups of mission critical and irreplaceable or expensive projects, and to ship media around to clients and collaborative shops. And it works without flaw. Media manager has never worked for me. Not once. Not ever. Not for simple stuff done as tests and not for complex stuff where I really could have used some protection and consolidation. Maybe it will get fixed someday but more likely is I will someday have someone show me what I’m doing wrong.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

The kids who have their heads unceremoniously impaled at the top of the forums are not “moderators,” they’re the hosts and, presumably, experts with the product featured in the forum’s title. You want to talk to the people who own and run the Creative Cow site.
You can contact the Lindebooms or any other Cow staff member easily and directly.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Right. “Little button.” User error.
We see that a lot around here.
What we don’t see is folks who will admit it. Good on you.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Peter Ralph] “I am not interested in the practical advantages/disadvantages – just achieving a certain aesthetic impact. This is a kind of surreal presentation and I want to capture some of that in the video. I am not trying to “record” the presentation in a linear manner. “

Your OP was presented in terms of “How do I do this?” not “How do I make this surreal?”
Assuming you know more about the project than you do about FCP, what EXACTLY do you want to do?

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Dave Montague] “Where would I find the Motion preferences so I can delete it? Perhaps this will restore my sound issue export.
“

I doubt it will affect the export from Motion since that is a QT function. When you bring a Motion render into FCP, does it come in with audio tracks that are empty or are there no audio tracks at all, just video only?
Have you tried using Compressor to render a Motion project? If the audio fails there, too, we might have more to go on in helping you debug this.

Use Spotlight for motion.plist, Should be in your user library, preferences. Look for com.apple.motion.plist

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Vegas addresses objects in a layer that it calls “contours.” if you have more than one letter, you have lots of contours. It gets even more complicated. If you have a capital R you have a contour around the outside of the letter and one that cuts out the counter. So for the capital R you must apply two copies of Vegas, one for each contour.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[rachel morgan] “briefly discussing how complex the program is, how much time and practice it takes to learn it, how there are several ways to do any one thing, how no one knows every single little detail about the program, how we’re all still learning to a certain degree, how long it took you to learn, how much practicing you did… and/or similar. It would be”

Umm, that’s about it, right there. You answered your own question/problem.

FCP is designed to be everything to everyone in the entertainment business. You can either do it all in FCP or you use the other tools in the studio suite and they’re each almost as complex as FCP. so there’s no end to learning these applications. Can’t be done. But FCP is no different in this aspect of complexity and depth than any other professional level video editing suite that contains Premiere or an Avid product.

Heck, you can’t learn everything about any aspect of television or film production in a year or two. You can tell your students this with a straight face and total honesty: You decide what you want to learn how to do and then you concentrate on it and leave the rest for a future when you have more leisure time.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Peter Ralph] “So I just get some shots of the blank screen with no presenter, and then on the FCP timeline composite the photos on top? Any thoughts or tips. “

No need to try to matte the photos into the projection screen if the photos are up full. That adds an affectation that may not be necessary and it adds a layer of complexity your portable may not be up to: rendering.

[Peter Ralph] “Shooting a presenter using a projector on stage. The plan is to lay in the photos on the timeline…has anyone tried compositing the projector screen and photos in post? “

It’s a simple picture in picture effect. In the manual, It’s rendering intensive and the effect gets difficult or impossible for newbies if the camera moves. Lock it down. If the talent is one of those dopes who likes to keep moving, you’re screwed. When you’re shooting, be sure you expose for the talent, not the screen.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Roland R. Kahlenberg] “Try it with a simple gradient, top-down, black to white. Leaving Gravity at default should be fine for most cases. “

Using a gradient needlessly complicates a simple application of Shatter, especially in this instance.

bogiesan