[David Bogie]

[Ben Roche] “I thought this would be best because the speed of the scroll is going to determine if there is any flicker (from what I have read in the forums). “

Generally this not true in After Effects. The motion algorithm that renders the sub-pixels interpolations is far superior to anything you will see in NLEs like Final Cut. If you have 4k horizontal lines, there is no way you will see vertical flickering.

However, you really want o be talking directly to the lab technician who will be doing the print to film. Not only do you want to know EXACTLY what the lab needs, you should ask for some offline help. Get some reference contacts from him/her and talk to those individuals who have supplied files to the lab.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

You select a layer, precompose, and send that new comp to the rendering queue.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

After Effects is a tool designed for special effects, motion graphics, and compositing. You make content in After Effects from content produced in many other applications and from other sources. After Effects mostly makes movies.
Your investment in the top-of-the-line Adobe packages will include Flash, Premiere, After Effects and some other stuff, everything you need to help you break into a market you seem to know little about. Then you need to spend a few months learning AE. It is not an applicaiton into whihc you simply jump and start making money.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

also see kenstone.net for the definitive explanations for your FCP workflow to YouTube.

DV Event magazine recently published an article by compression überwonk Jan Ozer on how to get the best video images up on some of the other video sites besides YouTube.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

I wish I had better advice or a magic button. Many of us have had corrupt project files at one time or another and I cannot recall anyone being able to identify a specific cause.

A corrupt autosave only means the autosave was being written bad (or it is being read bad). Since you were NOT starting each day by launching the last autosave, you had no way of knowing any of them were possibly bad. However, it’s not logical that your project files were working okay as live, open files but were at the same time writing bad autosaves. Nor is it likely that the corrupt autosaves had anything to do with the live file eventually going bad.

Your fear that every new project will eventually go corrupt does not follow from this present situation in the least. You have a catastrophic issue that may or may not be related to your drive media but it’s not at all likely to be related to FCP in the least.

I’m afraid I don’t understand your opening remark but no, I’ve never used XML for anything (although I’ve got tons of XLRs). I’m a Media Manager and Time machine kinda guy.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Brandon Young] “What changed in the last couple of months? Is it FCP? Is it Quicktime? Both?
I just want to go back to my under ten minute exports like it was back in November and earlier. “

First you’d have to tell us what your sequence settings and export settings are before we could help you out very much.

However, most such inquiries end up being the result of a major change in workflow; your acquisition format changed, your output format changed, your settings have changed but you didn’t know it?

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Tim Young] “We’ve tried without success….
1. opening on another system without the media files
2. we’ve trashed preferences
3. someone from apple forums has checked it out and said that it was a corrupt file
Is there anyway to rescue this project?
How can you avoid this project in the future? (Remember we were backing it up) “

If the backups form the AutoSave vault are also crashing the application, there was ALWAYS something wrong with the file or, and this is big, your drive (or the bus talking to the drive) where the AutoSave Vault is held is bad.

You see the logic here? The file was good or it was bad. if it was good, then it should still be good. If was good and is now bad, something has happened to the previous versions of the project files and that’s not possible unless it is being read improperly. A file can be read improperly because the disk is messed up or the bus is having trouble with that sector.

You could try any of many data recovery utilities but your success rate is going to be much less than 50/50.

Avoid it? You do that by saving your autosaves to a separate system and by backing up your project files every one cone in a while. On major mission-critical projects, we stat a new day by incrementing the project and saving it with a new name.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

There are some kickbutt real time encoders for the PeeCee/Winderz users but not much for useful codecs on the Macintosh. Try google for REAL TIME ENCODER, there may be something that has come on the market recently. Whatever it is, it won’t be cheap and it won’t be the codec you want.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Tom, creating synced multiclips from camera restarts is a simple matter or either exporting the clips as separate QTs, as mentioned, or nesting them. I prefer exporting new media because I can always go back to the original for other work if necessary. You line up your second and third reels with sync points, set the sequence timecode at the sync points os they are all the same, and export. when you import, you align the new sync points into the multiclip. One of the tricks you will see mentioned here often is to fill the gaps in the syncing sequences with black but I use color solids and then use a label to help identify the camera.
Umm, let me try that again. For reel two, you create three sequences, one for each camera. It doesn’t matter that the reels all start at different times, what you’re after is establishing a sequence starting timecode that includes all three. Since each camera starts at a different time, you simply fill the space from the sequence’s start to the camera’s start with a slug.

It’s easier than it sounds and it’s direct. It’s jsut impossible to describe succinctly and a quick search for multicamera threads will get you many workable advice and procedures.

Back in the olden days, we edited multiple cameras exactly as you describe by removing stuff form stacked layers. However, you are probably faced with much more difficult editorial decisions than I was. In most of my pre-multiclip-enabled FCP days, the projects usually had a dominant camera. it was fairly easy to cut away and discard (and then lock) everything that was unusable. That just left a bunch of holes. A quick run through the next dominant camera easily displayed useless shots and they could also be discarded. Then it was just a question of choosing which of the three cameras made the best image at any point where I had three choices but even then, at least one of the cameras was not a viable choice. for instance, I really needed a closeup so the wide shot could easily be discarded. Making very fine editorial decisions in dramatic work is a bit more complex, I realize that. You need to insert cutaways that are out of sequence, you may need to extend a scene to allow for audience noise to diminish, you may need to change the timing of a scene to enhance the comedic element or to build dramatic tension. This is difficult using the ancient three layer technique. Heck, fine tuning like that is difficult with even the best multiple camera cutting tools.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Contact Adobe or whoever you bought it from and start thinking replacment media.
.
See adobe.com, navigate to discussions/forums/support and see if the CS4 folders can be searched for install issues.

bogiesan