Don Greening
Forum Replies Created
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[Zane Barker] “3 beeps means that the computer is having a issue with the ram. So it is ether the ram itself or it is the slots the ram plug into.”
Didn’t know that. Thanks Zane.
– Don
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[Katrina Mann] “I’m not sure what it means to “flag””
Simply put, it means to notify. When you’re working with pretty much all standard definition stuff, whether it’s 4:3 or 16:9, the frame size is always 720×480. If it’s a 16:9 image it’s still squeezed in to that space. This is known as an anamorphic image. By “flagging” the image as widescreen or 16:9 you’re telling other programs and eventually a television how to display that image. The widescreen image ends up with a PAR (pixel aspect ratio) of 853×480 instead of 720×480. Make sense?
[Katrina Mann] “Does this just mean choose 16:9 in the Geometry in Compressor?”
Yes, When you encode your project to MPEG2 in Compressor just choose to encode at the 16:9 aspect.
[Katrina Mann] “Also just make sure I’m burning a 16:9 DVD?”
When you bring your .m2v file into DVDSP you can highlight it either before or after you drag it into a track and down in the lower right window you’ll see the properties for it. Just make sure it’s set to 16:9 letterbox. Sometimes DVDSP gets it right because your movie has already been flagged as 16:9 but sometimes it’s not. Just make sure. The other important thing is that the actual track even when empty also has to be set to 16:9. Click inside the empty track and change the track properties to 16:9 letterbox. This is important, too.
[Katrina Mann] “Also, will this play right on a 4:3 TV? Is there any way to make that happen? “
All set top consumer DVD players have a menu where you can tell it what kind of TV it’s hooked up to. If it’s a widescreen TV that’s what you set the player to. If it’s hooked to a 4:3 TV set the player to that. Now when you play a widescreen movie using a full screen TV it will be letterboxed. If you play a full screen movie on a widescreen TV it will be pillarboxed.
[Katrina Mann] “And finally, why are some folk suggesting first a quicktime export at Currnent settings, then dragging that into Compressor. I think you’re just suggesting straight to Compressor, right?”
Actually, I’m not. I like to export a self-contained QT movie and drag that into Compressor. This way you’re not tying up Final Cut Pro and you can continue to use that program while Compressor does your encoding. Also, with self-contained, you don’t need to keep the media afterwards, but if you export a reference QT movie you do. It’s whatever works for your particular workflow. I’ve also found that exporting self-contained is a more reliable way to do it. Reference movies are rather, shall we say, fragile. But that’s just me.
[Katrina Mann] “And how big can my MPEG export be? Only 4.7 gigs?”
Once you’ve exported and dragged the project into Compressor It’s important that you encode your audio to the industry standard AC3 file format. This takes up far less room on the DVD (about 10 or 20% of the original audio) and also the bit rate is much lower, which helps to create a more reliable playback in set top DVD players.
4.7 Gbyes is what it will say on the DVD-R but in REAL Gbytes it works out to a little more than 4.3 something computer Gbytes. Also very important to consider when building a DVD. A good rule of thumb is to keep your .m2v file size down around 3.8 or 3.9 computer GBytes. When you bring the .m2v file into DVDSP the disc meter up at the top reflects the space used on the actual DVD and is not based on computer GBytes so you’ll see a jump in the .m2v files size. Remember that your .ac3 encoded audio will take up space along with DVD menus, etc. so all your asset file sizes have to be taken into consideration when you build your DVD.
What else. Oh, encoding bit rates for the video:
Don’t exceed a peak bit rate of 6.5 otherwise you run into possible playability issues with some set top players. Remember that it’s the combined bit rate of both the audio and the video that is the concern. With AC3 audio and a 6.5 max video bit rate you’re making a DVD that will play smoothly in just about any DVD player. NOTE: Really high bit rates do not make a better encode.
Since I don’t know the length of your project here are some generic encoding numbers:
video length is an hour or less: use a CBR setting in Compressor with a straight 6.5 bit rate.
video length over an hour: use the VBR setting in Compressor with a peak rate of 6.5 while the “target” bit rate is determined by the file size of the video.
I better get another thank you for all this 🙂
– Don
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[Paul Bosch] ” is there any way I can add the handles beforehand to make them accept transitions right away without having to edit every clip?”
Yes, you probably can if you want to use Apple’s Automator app. and are willing to write a script for it. Otherwise, no.
– Don
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[Graham Ella] “Why have I not had to remove the frames before? Is it because it came in from Color?”
No, it’s probably because some of your clips already had enough media at the beginning and end of them that the applied transitions pulled enough frames from the master clips to cover the time needed to make the transition work.
[Graham Ella] “Will removing 30 frames then applying a transition not lose too much of the footage?”
Well that all depends on how the video is shot and editied. A good camera operator will realize that if there is a certain scene that’s important enough that it all needs to be present in the final product then they have to shoot enough footage before and after the shot to allow for editing, Transitions will always eat up some of your footage and the duration of the transition will always determine how much footage it needs.
Hope this helps.
– Don
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[Inacio Nehme] “I’ll try to turn the machine on using ram after ram, one by one, so I might eliminate the bad guy…”
Yep, give it a shot. That’s about all you can do at this point. Otherwise it’s off to Apple Repair.
– Don
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Try to start your machine with the system install disc. Get the DVD tray to open up, put your disc in and restart while holding down the “C” key on your keyboard. This will force your Mac to start up using the Install disc. If it starts up this way then your startup drive may have failed and you need a new one. If your Mac won’t even start up using the Install disc then your newer RAM or mother board may have failed and your next step is to take your Mac into an Apple repair centre.
You can test your 3rd party RAM to see if it might be the cause. Remove the new RAM and put the original RAM back in. If the Mac starts up then you’ve got one or more bad RAM sticks. Putting the new RAM back in one or two sticks at a time and restarting may reveal which one is bad.
– Don
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In order for any transition to be applied you need to have enough media “handles” for the transition to use. Let’s pretend you want to apply a simple 1 second cross dissolve between two clips. With the razor tool count back 15 frames from the end of the outgoing clip. Make your cut and delete those 15 frames from the timeline. On the incoming clip do the same thing: delete the first 15 frames. Close the gap between the two clips. Apply the transition.
– Don
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Yes. Highlight your audio/video track and hit Command – L. This will unlink the audio from the video. The keyboard shortcut is a toggle which will alternately link and unlink the tracks.
– Don
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Is it a 2.7 G5 dual?
– Don
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Get DiskWarrior to repair your startup drive’s directory and for any media drives you have connected. No Mac owner running an edit suite should be without this program.
https://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html
Use a utility program like Cocktail to perform system maintenance for peak efficiency and reliability. The program will clean bloated log and cache files which contribute to general system slowdowns.
https://www.maintain.se/cocktail/index.php
How often you run these programs will depend on how much you use your system.
– Don