[David Johnson]

Well, it is his damn yard after all. ;~)

In all seriousness, I’ve often felt the same frustration and anger with kids who clearly feel entitled to everything people twice their age have and more, but are thoroughly unwilling and unable to do anything at all to earn it … what I call the EZ-button generation (if this one is “Y”, is the next one the last one or do we go back to “A”?).

Even so, I try to remind myself that, when I was a 20-something 20 years ago, I wrote, directed, shot, logged, edited and built graphics for a college project long-form documentary with one other person only somewhat helping with writing and a few on-screen stand-ups because the other half dozen 20-something “team” members either didn’t show at all or showed only enough to say they were present, yet contributed literally zero. I later got the show aired locally, won a few minor awards, got a few small grants, and am still in the business (like the one other contributor) … within 10 years after, I encountered several of those other “team” members working in restaurants, a dry cleaners, a drug store, etc.

My point is that, my personal observation has consistently been that the “entitlement attitude” Nick refers to has indeed spread wider and deeper with more recent generations, but it has always been there and the individuals with above-average work ethic, drive, etc. have always been the exception, rather than the rule.

So, as someone already mentioned, the real problem is that the odds of finding the good ones aren’t on our side. In other words, perhaps you shouldn’t give up on an entire generation, Nick … just most of it.

Best of luck in your search for good people. Cheers.

[David Johnson]

Does the render queue say the render completed or failed? If it says it completed, most likely you made an error somewhere … for example, is it possible the output module somehow got changed to only render a range of timecode that only represents two frames or to only render the work area, rather than the whole comp?

[David Johnson]

You can buy software discs from Apple or Adobe independent of buying another software license. Most big software developers do this nowadays since people simply lose their discs sometimes, but losing a disc doesn’t mean you’ve surrendered your license (you’re paying for the software/license, not the $2 DVDs). I don’t recall exactly how much they cost, but it’s not much ($20?).

My opinion (developed by learning the hard way) is that a clean install is always best when installing a new O/S or large professional software suite like FCS or CS. At the same time, down time is obviously bad so one way to get around it is by installing the new software on a second drive whilst leaving the already functioning installs alone … hard drives are cheap, down time isn’t.

[David Johnson]

Peter,

Sorry for jumping to conclusions and ranting earlier … it just sounded very much like your intent was the do-it-yourself approach since you said you were asked to “create an in-house studio with the ability to send out a live HD video feed to TV stations around the country”, then asked “what hardware needs to be purchased”.

I’m not familiar with companies in the Mid-Atlantic, but you might try reaching out to a local TV station (or, ideally, someone you know at one). You may have to sit through a pitch about just sending your people to their studio every time (for a not-so-nominal fee, of course), but you should be able to pry out a few names of the big integration companies in your state. For example, here in central-Florida one of them is owned by the same parent company that owns one of the TV stations (Media General). That’s a fairly common thing nowadays so folks at stations like that are more willing to refer you elsewhere if it’s to a partner company.

As far as a ballpark estimate, no one on a forum can really offer you that since there are way too many factors and many of them are totally dependent on your specific facility and needs/wants. For example, we recently spent $150k on two camera packages alone, which are actually low-end HD cameras. Can you try passing off a $10k HDV camera signal as HD? Sure … just depends on how lucky you’re feeling and what you really mean by “TV stations around the country” (low-power locals, network affiliates or nationals like us). By the way, in our situation, the camera packages are the cheapest part of the whole equation … except my salary, of course.

You’ll also need to consider recurring costs like service contracts and equipment leases to get signals to a fibre network or satellite. Those often run several thousands per month depending on your facilities and needs. I mention equipment leases because it’s often impractical to buy all the necessary equipment since some aspects can run into millions and, if owned outright, you’re in a heap when it breaks or needs to be updated.

Figuring out those things and much more for a particular facility, then pricing it all out is what systems integrators do … I’m forced to do much of that all by my lonesome and, trust me, that is not a situation you want to put yourself or your client in.

[David Johnson]

I wouldn’t say I’ve “moved” from Adobe to Final Cut, but can still offer opinions since I’ve used both for quite a few years now and still do on a daily basis.

The fact that I haven’t “moved” relates to my main thought on your question … I wouldn’t think of or approach it as “moving”, but as expanding your tool set … especially since you seem to be asking in terms of marketability / employability, which in my opinion, is the only worthwhile reason to consider it (as opposed to the common questions of to either work faster or on a more stable system).

On that last point, in my humble opinion, both platforms and NLEs are pretty much equal nowadays, although each, in both cases, has its own unique pros and cons. So, it’s really about your specific needs, wants and skills. Some will argue that one is faster or more stable than the other, but that hasn’t been my experience. I’ve deduced that hasn’t played out the way some folks said for two reasons: 1] about speed, I’ve found most comparisons to be of apples-to-oranges type (a MacPro compared to a $500 Dell or HP) 2] about stability, while it’s true that maintaining clean / stable Win systems requires more diligence since there aren’t many viruses, etc. aimed at Macs, I’ve found both occasionally have their issues and 95% of those issues are user-error (obviously not a number from controlled scientific study). By the way, traditionally, NLEs were kept away from the internet so that was much less an issue, although few people seem to do that now.

When you encounter folks who want to sway you in one direction or the other, you might ask yourself (or them) how much experience they really have with each NLE and platform (ie, did they really work in Adobe for 10 years and try out FCP once for a week (or vice versa). Both are great software packages that are widely used in our field so you simply can’t go wrong having both in your tool set.

You’re right that FCP is very common and knowing it will most definitely increase your marketability. At the same time, you’ll probably find that it’ll be a while before you master both a new platform and new NLE to the level you’ve mastered the others so I’d recommend against letting your skills on one side slip as you study up on the other since I don’t suspect Adobe is going away any time soon either (don’t forget marketability / employability).

Again, I say these kinds of things as someone who has worked on both platforms and with a dozen or so different NLEs for nearly 20 years now so I have no loyalties to any platform or NLE other than need-specific strengths. Personally, neither Bill Gates, Steve Jobs nor Adobe’s founder pays my bills or has done anything else for me. In other words, you won’t get any platform or NLE wars, nor unfounded biases from me. However, I haven’t forgotten that you posed this question in an Apple forum so, if I’ve offended anyone, I apologize.

I hope you find my long-winded opinions helpful. Good luck!

There are some related comments worth reading in this string: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/870421 Particularly, COW founder Ron Lindeboom’s second post about half way down the thread.

[David Johnson]

I just stumbled into this forum for what might be my first time even though I’ve been on the COW for years and just thought I’d mention that there are also a number of related options mentioned in the new Digital Delivery forum, although most are more about delivering finals rather than roughs.

[David Johnson]

Hi Daniel,

I’ve worked on both platforms and with a dozen or so different NLEs for nearly 20 years now (including all of those you mentioned) so I have no loyalties to any platform or NLE other than need-specific strengths. In other words, you won’t get any platform or NLE wars, nor unfounded biases from me.

With that said, the limited info you provided sounds like your PC may do the job a little faster for two reasons:
1) it seems to have twice the processor power (although the number of cores alone doesn’t necessarily equate to overall speed)
2) you would be working in the NLE you’re already most familiar with (working with unfamiliar tools is often the slowest part of any video work)

Even so, any of the NLEs you mentioned can handle the need you described (and far more) so the weakest link is really the available resources of the computer you choose to use (processor power, RAM and drive read/write speeds are the most important factors), but both sound like they can easily handle the job.

It’s unclear why you expect a lot of rendering since you mention “No special editing, just put them all back-to-back and render”. In any NLE, you usually only have to render if you work using a different codec than the source footage or make significant changes to the footage, both of which sound unnecessary in this case. If you use transitions between the clips, you may or may not have to render only the areas where the transitions are, but that should be a pretty insignificant amount of rendering since it sounds like it’ll only be something like 27 transitions that are each one-second or so.

In other words, all you should need to do is bring the 27 clips into your NLE, drag them all into a timeline that’s set for the same codec as the source footage, place transitions between the clips, possibly render just the transitions, export the timeline out as a file of that same codec and either burn that to a DVD or convert it to a web video file of your choice (H264, WMV, MP4, FLV, etc.). In fact, all of those NLEs are capable of generating some types of web files and other formats directly.

By the way, I referred to limited info because you didn’t mention the codec(s) you’re working with (DV25, etc. … both source & delivery, if different) or what your intended delivery medium is (DVD, web video, etc.) … each of which could be a bigger factor in how long the job will take than file size, which is generally only a consideration when it comes to having ample drive space (for input, possible render and cache files, as well as output).

I hope this is helpful. Good luck!

[David Johnson]

https://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7e98a.html

[David Johnson]

As Grant said, using an adjustment layer is the best way.

There are occasions when an adjustment layer won’t accomplish what is needed though (if there’s a layer that needs to remain under the layers with the effect, but that the effect shouldn’t apply to). So, another option is to precompose the layers you want to apply the effect to, then apply the effect to the precomp layer. As with using an adjustment layer, one advantage is the effect only has to be applied once and can be adjusted once instead of multiple instances.

You can also copy and paste not only effects, but also any or all of their keyframes and/or parameters among layers by selecting the parameters you want to copy in the timeline (even if they don’t have keyframes). In fact, you can adjust the same effect parameter on multiple layers at once by selecting just the parameter you want to adjust on each layer.

[David Johnson]

Have you tried using the render queue instead of exporting?

If that doesn’t solve the issue, more detail will be needed for anyone to help since there could be issues in any one of many places such AE settings (is OpenGL off?), RAM (do you have enough?), other machine specs (can you’re machine handle the render you’re trying to do?), codecs (are you working with some wonky codec?), etc., etc., etc.