[Del Holford]

Ditto!
and using Wingdings or Carta you can actually create some decent graphic elements. I use the build your own stars for debates opens. Render time is nothing compared to more complex systems.

Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS3
Charlotte Public Television

[Del Holford]

You’re right Mark

I know that Bob is aware of the 18 included formats in the ATSC domain, but for the thread originator, the point is to pay attention to the client. We are often the client but have a wide variety of analog, digital and HD digital tape machines because of the PBS stations and local stations we interact with.

We did our transition to digital 7 years ago and decided at that point to feed 4 channels during the daytime and 2 from 7 pm to 1 am. During the evening we carry HD and one compressed SD, while daytime is various compressions of SD.

We bought DVC Pro 50 for most tape based playback (recorded from PBS satellite feeds) but have a DigiBeta for archiving our smoke NLE and playing the occasional delivery or recording the occasional output for clients. For HD we acquire on HDCam but master to D5. For our studio we have a Philips DD-35 Seraph switcher, a 2×2 DVEous and a 2 channel Pixel Power Clarity CG. The four studio cameras are Philips/Thomson/GVG LDK-6000 Mk II. We also bought a Philips Media Pool Server which has been relegated to Production now and has 2 HD channels. Master Control now has a GVG K2 server run by Louth animation. It has several HD and SD outputs.

We still have legacy BetaSP machines for outputting projects for outside clients or ingesting from impoverished post houses that don’t yet have a digital format. If a client brings in a quad tape we send it to SC ETV and get it dubbed to DigiBeta and while we have one leftover 1″ type C machine and one Sony D2 machine, we don’t fire them up very often.

Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS3
Charlotte Public Television

[Del Holford]

Hi Matt

I just tried this in CS3 on Mac. I typed a phrase in Word and then selected it and cut it out. Then I went to PS CS3 and chose the type tool and then pasted. The phrase pasted into the PS file using the last font attributes selected.
In Word I used Papyrus but Hypatia was chosen in PS so the phrase pasted in Hypatia. I had a little difficulty getting the Mac to cut from Word, but once it did PS did fine. HTH

Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS3
Charlotte Public Television

[Del Holford]

You didn’t say if this was a live show, live to tape, or all post production. In a live show such as Bloomberg, CNN, etc. they actually use a couple two channel character generators and a four channel DVEous or Sony video effects box to position the boxes with talking heads. This gives you excellent quality but is rather expensive (think 7 figures). To do this in a NLE takes a lot more time after taping the segments but is less expensive. If you’re going to do this HD you will need several upgrades: Premiere to current version + upgrade hardware, and Photoshop to CS3 Extended for the cool video things it now does. You might want to chat with Lyn Norstad in the Discrete Edit*ors forum as he is a resident expert on Premiere Pro and Axio hardware.

If I were you I would seriously consider hiring an experienced producer from Baltimore or Washington (Philly would work, too) to coordinate all the elements of such a show. You are walking onto the Titanic and the end result will be disaster. Asking advice here is a good start. My advice is worth what all free advice is worth but other COWntributors will add their comments to help you.

On just adding the tickers/zippers – use a large oversized wide tif file from PS and use progressive rendering to move it across the screen on the x axis. This will keep the file sharp and reveal a portion of the message like a ticker/zipper. AE can do this but so can Premiere.

Best of luck.

Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS3
Charlotte Public Television

[Del Holford]

I just had the same experience. The text would have been OK but the original background was captured at 1920×1080 at 72 dpi so the background wouldn’t uprez well. Your graphic designer should redo the image (making it 2000 pixels or so) at a minimum of 300 dpi and save it as a Photoshop eps. Better yet have him make it in Illustrator and start with vector from the beginning.

Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS3
Charlotte Public Television

[Del Holford]

use a square marquee, then select gradient tool, then select opaque to transparent, then make a gradient you like, then command+T to rotate it and the erase tool to shape it. You can adjust opacity to soften the opaque part of the gradient. Do this as many times (layers) as it takes to make the effect you want then put the layers under the main guy. The gradient can be white or color depending on what’s in your color selection. Scott Selby has a good tips & tricks book available from NAPP and several other authors as well that can give you ideas and ways to do things.

Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS3
Charlotte Public Television

[Del Holford]

You may not have noticed it, but the pop-up window that comes up when you make a duplicate layer is highlighted so you can immediately rename the layer as you make the copy.
I make my duplicate layers in the layers folder on the right with channels and paths by right clicking the options there rather than the layer pulldown. In that same layers folder you can double click the title of that layer and call it anything you want. If you do this as you create the layer copies you won’t go nuts.

Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS3
Charlotte Public Television

[Del Holford]

try rwilson@ctvn.org
They have some Hitachi cameras (not sure which model) but he might be able to help.

Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS3
Charlotte Public Television

[Del Holford]

I loaded this on my Sony BVM 24 monitor and it truly sings a happy tune!
The thought that occurred to me was to perhaps add a black stroke of 2 or 3 pixels.
Truly problematic are those thin lines.

Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS3
Charlotte Public Television

[Del Holford]

Don’t you just hate it when such an oddball problem takes up so much time?
Glad you found it. 🙂

Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS3
Charlotte Public Television