[Erik Pontius]

If you don’t already have one, build a reel. No one that is not a close friend or relative will probably hire you for good money without seeing examples of work you have done. If you don’t have a reel because you haven’t been hired to do anything (the classic catch 22), I’d recommend creating some fictious examples (commercials, promos, corporate talking heads, etc…) along with a disclaimer that this is promo to showcase your abilities. The idea is to sell a potential client on what you are capable of not who you’ve worked for in the past.
Don’t sell yourself short. Many folks think it a great idea to do stuff for next to nothing, and you might gain a few clients at first. Problems come later when you discover that you can’t eat, can’t sleep, put a roof over your head, and pay off equipment with your rates. When you raise your rates to what they need to be your client base will balk and run to the next guy who’s cheaper. Also, these kinds of bottom feeder clients are usually the worst to work for, often wanting the most without wanting to pay for much. Expect long hours, short deadlines and a lot of nitpicking from your client…all for your extremely cheap rate.
Networking is a fine way to find clients…Cold calls are tricky. Be extremely polite and be patient. You might approach a business and ask to make an appointment to speak to whoever is in charge of video related services. Leave a business card and a DVD with your reel. Do NOT call or visit everyday asking if they’ve looked at your reel, if you can have that appointment now, etc… you’ll just piss them off. Things like that just take time, often businesses already have production houses they may already be working with, have their own in house production department, etc…
The company I work for has their own in house and a good percentage of work is done totally in house. But occasionally when the workload deems it we’ll farm out jobs to local production houses, and we’ll look to our rolodex…

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Isn’t the auto-trace just automatically creating and animating a mask using keyframes on a new layer (if you choose to)? So the solution might be to create a new layer in your new comp, then copy/paste just the mask(s)?

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

“NAB” stands for “National Association of Broadcasters”… the NAB referenced here is their annual tradeshow and convention, this year it starts April 14 through the 19th. Many new video products are announced by companies during this time. So if you buy a camera now, you might regret it since there could be something bigger/better/cheaper announced at the convention.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Sorry to confuse you… You didn’t mention specifics as to what you were looking for, either ENG pro cameras or the more compact and less expensive cameras. The Z1u camera is switchable from 60i (which can be downconverted to SD NTSC) or 50i (which can be downconverted to SD NTSC). There are limitations as other posters have noted…it has a fixed lens, it requires more attention to lighting since the chips are higher density and smaller than that of other cams.
I don’t see anything in the specs for the DVX100b that indicates that it is switchable between NTSC/PAL. These are excellent cameras, but most production houses and shooters are moving to HD for new equipment even though most of the work done is still SD. Future proofing yourself when making an investment in equipment is something to consider. You might look into the HD version of the DVX100…the HVX200 which can record to P2 cards or tape.
One other thing to consider is getting a camera that can shoot 1080p23.98 which is a so-called “universal” format that can be converted to PAL/NTSC SD relatively easily.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

I can let you know. We just had a 1500 installed and a brand spanking new Adrenaline. We already have a M25u, however it only has component/HDMI output or HDV/DV over firewire and no RS-422. We have the HVR-1500 mounted side by side our DSR-1500a DVcam deck. Both have rs-422a according to the specs. What scares me a little is that rs-422 didn’t work so well with the DSR-1500a and Xpress Pro, in fact the machine template for it in Xpress specifically suggested switching the deck from rs-422 to 1394 for machine control. We never had much problem with it. We have had issues with the M25u and the Z1u cameras doing batch captures and attempting to do insert edits with pre-striped tapes…hoping the that HDV-1500 is not plagued with those problems which I think are more to do with Avid’s way of pre-rolling, seeking and reading TC. Other NLE’s don’t seem to have these problems.
We were especially interested in the HDV-1500 because of the HD-SDI, since the rest of the studio and router will be wired that way. We’ll also be installing a HDW-1800, which also can upconvert the HDV footage to HDcam.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Depending on what you are looking for…the new Sony Z1u is HDV or DV or downconvert HDV to DV and can shoot NTSC or PAL.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Are you exporting to an external hard drive (usb, 1394), etc..)? I’ve seen this error occur if I have Avid up and running and plug in an external drive and try to export to it. Quiting and restarting Avid or plugging the drive in prior to starting Avid will allow you to export.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Try Adobe After Effects. You could add labels, stop footage, all sorts of things.

[Erik Pontius]

I guess you missed the note on the download page:
“Owners of Avid Xpress Studio Complete and Avid Xpress Studio Essentials should not upgrade to this version of the software, as it is not compatible with the full suite. Full compatibility will be offered in a future release and customers will be notified when this is available”

As you’ve found out, the consequences is the interoperability of the various other applications associated with Studio.
5.2.1 is the latest official release, though 5.2.4 can be used following a specific installation procedure.
A newer (very delayed) release is in the works and supposed to be released soon.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

continuous rasterization only applies to vector art, in other words they are mathematical representations rather than actual pixels. Just importing bitmapped (scanned) images into Illustrator and exporting them does not make it a vector. Importing bitmapped graphics in AE exported from Illustrator would have the same effect as it would had you exported them out of Photoshop.
If you were to trace all of your artwork in Illustrator using the scanned images as a reference or using an automated tool like Live Trace, then removing your scanned images. This would then import nicely into AE and could be continuously rasterized without pixelation.
Also, AE uses 72dpi.

Erik