Enzo Tedeschi
Forum Replies Created
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And just to add to that, Kevin, if you go back on your camera while you are shooting and play back a take to see what you have and then continue shooting, this can also create tc breaks. After previewing your take, make sure you overlap a second of the last take and go over it. This will help ensure continuous timecode.
And if you leave ample time after your take has ended (as David had suggested), then you won’t stress about losing a second before the last camera-stop.
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Fatty33,
If you want to make a DVD-Video (ie playable from a DVD player), then you only have one option: MPEG2. It is the standars compressor for DVD-Video. Any other compressor will only let you burn the files to a DVD-ROM (ie a data DVD, not DVD-Video).
As a rule of thumb, MPEG2 at 8mbps Constant Bit Rate (CBR) will give you around an hour to a 4.7Gb DVD. Using Variable Bit-rate (VBR) will vary that duration, as will playing with the bitrate value.
If the director is happy to see compressed video, I’d aim for around 2hrs to a DVD – any more than that starts to look a bit dodgy for my taste. Check out http://www.creativecow.net and browse the tutorials and forums for more info. DVD Authoring is a potential nightmare if you really delve deep. You should be able to get your rough cuts compressed and ready for DVD Studio Pro with the above info.
Or you could buy a low-end standalone DVD recorder. It’ll be a helluva lot faster than compressing video in software. 12 hours of video will take you a week to compress. It’ll take you 12 hours with a recorder.
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Convert your mp3s to 16bit 48khz Stereo AIFF format using Quicktime. That will cure your skipping.
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And the decks of course!!
:o)
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Take a look at the AJA Kona LH. I have heard good things, and am considering one myself. It leaves all options open in one card: uncompressed SD via SDI and Component, and also uncompressed HD in most (if not all) flavours. Reasonably priced, but the hard drives are where the expense is.
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I haven’t had any issues on my 15″ Powerbook (the same machine with a smaller screen), but then I don’t really do any intense stuff, like 3D, on it.
The things you are seeing are likely related to the graphics card – AFX is pretty graphics intensive, so I’m not surprised that there’s a lag, or certain elements not displaying all the time. On a system like that, you should expect to take a performance hit somewhere. Even something as simple as your title safe will take a sec to display, especially if you’re trying to display it over a complex comp.
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Depends on the background…
For simple shapes, or something that already has an alpha transparency channel, just use a mask to “crop” it down to size.
If you have a solid background to get rid of, try playing with your keying effects.
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The other thing to look out for is the format of the drive. Have you been using it happily to transfer 2GB+ files?
If your drive happens to be FAT32 format, it’ll do weird and wonderful things with files over 2Gb. I’ve had 4Gb files (about 20mins) export fine, and then when I open it get a message saying “no video content” or something silly like that.
Might not be the case, just something to look out for.
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No sweat, Dale.
Jonathan’s suggestion: Automatic Duck works well – I have seen it go between Avid and AE. It does what it says, but if you can imagine taking a timeline from FCP, and creating a AE layer for EVERY cut, it can get messy going to AE (oodles of layers). You will have the same layer issue coming back. If it’s simple stuff, not really a problem. I’m not sure wether OMF will solve you problem, though.
If you are doing simle alpha stuff, the way I suggested doesn’t really compromise you image quality. If you are doing anything more complex, AE will have to create render files wether you do a QT or an OMF. It simply can’t play back video that doesn’t exist.
One workaround would be to render your files at the highest res possible, and let your NLE do the downscaling, that way you will get a good result that will match the rest of your project’s look.
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The “optimal” size of your images really doesn’t differ from what you would use in FCP.
Avid, though, handles file imports differently to FCP. Avid does not reference the original media (stills, audio, even video if it is IMPORTED not DIGITISED), but creates it’s own media upon import. It converts all media to project settings, and ignores the original files.
There is a workaround with stills called “Avid Pan and Zoom”, it is a standard “effect” in your Avid toolset in the Adrenaline.
In your timeline, you create a filler clip, apply avid pan and zoom, and use the effect palette to import the image. Doing it this way makes the Avid reference the source file, maintaining it’s full resolution, and will only need to create new media upon rendering.
There’s a good book available called “FCP for Avid Editors”. I know it’s back to front for you, but I am not aware of one which is FCP to Avid. It goes into a lot of the differences and similarities.
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