[Erik Lindahl]

I’m no expert on the particular tutorial, but does reshape simply transform shape A to shape B, i.e. the image more or less becomes a distorted mesh?

Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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[Erik Lindahl]

I’d try something Mocha for Final Cut Pro if the roto and track is complex.

https://www.imagineersystems.com/products/mocha_for_Final_Cut/

Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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[Erik Lindahl]

Do you mean Leopard or Snow Leopard?

I updated our older G5 from Tiger to Leopard and that was a nice boost. Leopard to Snow Leopard in “preserved speed” is even greater.

Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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[Erik Lindahl]

Those effects do look quite organic / optical so it could be they’ve done them with a light into a real camera.

To recreate something similar digitally you’d probably be able to work with a series of masks, different colors, amount of feather and transfermode. A problem with AE in regards to masks is that they have the same feather around the entire shape which in the case of these flares you want something more dynamic.

You might want to look into something like Knoll Light Factor also, given the above effect could be done fully manually I think.

I wouldn’t disregard looking into shooting lights and trying to create the above effect either. Sometimes real-life beats trying to re-create it.

Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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[Erik Lindahl]

The problem is as mentioned above quite complex since FCP uses alot of the core of the OS for it’s operation. But, even if we disregard a full move to QuickTime X (which today might not even be possible even if they wanted to) moving to cocoa and the new features of SL should be. Someone more wizzy than me might be able to answer if the old 32-bit QuickTime can reside in a new 64-bit app, as I understand it it can since all calls go to QTX how then has a “side-kick” (the old QT7) and that means gradually we can see more and more benefits come to FCP.

In regards of using technologies such as Core Animation, no, this should def. only be used when required. But a timeline / UI that is 100% hardware accelerated can do some magic things. I just think porting a huge app like FCP to Cocoa take time since it need to be done right and there are a lot of things to sort out on the way (and probably a lot of architectural re-thinking to be done).

Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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[Erik Lindahl]

I’ve had exactly the same issues with FCP 6.0x / Color 1.0x. Frustrating and confusing as hell to say the least, something I was hoping would be resolved in FCP 7 / Color 1.5 but apparently not. I’ve really only seen it in the FCP > Color > FCP work flow also. We do tons of FCP > AE > FCP with out this issue.

For me the problem isn’t that severe since we edit 30-60s TVC mostly. I can just imagine the head-ache of doing 60 min shows…

Speaking of Color render / output bugs I have quite a few times had it “reset” it output preset from what I want to what… I guess it wants. Input is RED 4K, output is 1080p Uncompressed or PreRes. Very often, after a render or so it will reset and change the output to 2K, screw up my framing and re-linking in FCP. Again, manually redoing the output setting, framing and rendering solves the problem but is a hassle even when I’m only dealing with the odd 5-10 clips (and doesn’t feel very reliable).

Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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[Erik Lindahl]

Does the fact that the drivers are 64-bit affect us in any way other than future compliance when running a native 64-bit OSX 10.6 with the 64-bit kernel active? Or can the 32-bit kernel run 64-bit drivers? Or do we get both 32- and 64-bit drivers here?

Also – the link Gary put up wasn’t correct I don’t think (I got a file-not-found page).

https://www.aja.com/ajashare/AJA_Kona3_7.0.zip

Regards
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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[Erik Lindahl]

I think Color is still very optimized for ATI’s card. Back in the day when ATI was the only GPU developer for Mac Final Touch came and only ran on G5s with the highest end ATI card available. It seems this story continues. Certain features still are ATI only… Can’t find the quote now but the official site for instance states “Renders at 8-bit, 10-bit, and 32-bit floating point (dependent on GPU)”.

On the flip side nVidia’s Geforce FX-series card was first to support 4096×4096 size comps in Motion. I’m not even sure all cards today support up to that (which can be a huge limitation sometimes).

Looking ahead the idea of OpenCL is however that less and less specific optimizations should be made for card or platform A or B. Still we will have performance differences as we do in for instance games today (i.e. one card has a weaker driver and certain effects are much slower on this card because of this).

Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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[Erik Lindahl]

The problem is FCP isn’t a native Cocoa-app or it would have access to all the language and text-features of the OS (spelling and grammar check). Not the best tools in the world but a solid bonus and constant across applications that grow with each release of the OS “for free”.

First I do a base setting for the CH Subtitle generator add it to V2, mass-reproduce it in the timeline where it seems I’ll need to make new lines and after that I add the specific text. I just break down my subs in text edit, spell-check and then do a rapid copy & paste. With the Viewer set to “open” it’s quite efficient.

The only huge setback is you can’t copy and paste attributes from the filter so if you realize “oh, I want to decrease the font size to 18 on my web copies and increase to 24 on my DVD copies” you’re in for some manual labor. This is actually something Apple should look into adding to FCP in general, something like After Effects “Adjustment layers” but for generators and effects. Often I’d like to apply for instance a EQ or reverb to an entire track – this would also work for generators… But this is off-topic and dreaming, sorry 🙂

Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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[Erik Lindahl]

I’ve used DH Subtitle for a few years now for all our burn-in subtitle work. As stated above it’s not a proper “subtitle tool” where it’s more a “text generator with-in final cut pro” (someone very nifty might be able to suck-out the data in this plugin via an XML export I guess but that’s beyond the normal use of the tool).

WHY USE DH SUBTITLE OVER THE BUILT IN TEXT-TOOLS?

Far more options
– The tool overs proper justifications of text, you can lock it dead center or right / left aligned and it will stay with what ever amount of text you add. You are in control so to speak where as the built-in tools are very “flacky” in this regard

– You also have the option of either a “bounding box” behind the subtitling or a drop shadow. These have limited, but decent fine-tune options.

Speed
– DH Subtitle plays back in realtime all the time even with the drop-shadow effect. The FCP transform affect “drop shadow” is very processor intensive this is not. This includes HD-projects output via a videocard such as the Kona 3.

I can only say good things about DH Sutitle for the price of the product. I do miss an “automatic wrap” feature” and a spell-checker but that’s about it.

Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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