Gabe Strong
Forum Replies Created
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I have a review of this camera that will be on Ken Stone’s website
tomorrow night. Look for it at https://www.kenstone.net for my early impressions
on this new camera.Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
Hmmm….well I have the FS-100 so let me try a couple of these.
First, I don’t know for sure about the white balance thing, other than
to say, go into the menu, WB Preset/Manual WB temperature. You can
actually adjust the white balance, and it will show you the number as you adjust it, as well as the video updating live on the LCD. So if
you are outside, you can manually adjust that number, and see the
effect, changing the number from 3600 – to 6500K has on the image.
It changes in 100 steps….so from 3600 to 3700 to 3800 and so on.
Going to this menu will also display the current color temperature
the white balance is set at.As for the timecode thing, mine came preset from the factory to behave as you WANT yours to behave, so I haven’t messed around with that at all.
Thirdly, I have the kit lens. It does NOT look soft at all, wide shots
look VERY nice and lots of resolution. However, I don’t think it has
quite as much resolution as the EX-1 does. It is also amazing in
low light, much better than the EX-1. Did you have some setting
on automatic, where the camera was adjusting the shutter speed or
iris even though you were gained up?Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
I have to tell you, that from experience, I know that FCP 4.5 and
the new version of FCP do NOT ‘play nicely’ together. Problem
is, FCP 4.5 was the last ‘PPC only’ version of FCP. After that,
we got the new ‘intel’ computers and everything changed to
‘universal’ versions and such. I actually am someone who does NOT
upgrade every time a new version comes out, and I had FCP 4.5 until
I upgraded to FCS 3 and a new MacPro. I found that the version
of Livetype that came with FCP 4.5 did not really work with FCP 7.
A couple little things did, but mostly it did not. I was able to
get a cheap version of Livetype 2 from a guy who was selling an
older version of FCS (either FCS 1 or 2) and THAT version works
just great with the newest Final Cut Studio….
As an example of what I am talking about, if you created a project
with the first version of Livetype, textures would not animate in
FCP 7. You could create a project in Livetype and export it but if
you brought it into FCP as a project instead of a quicktime file, the
texture would just be a still frame. Some of the text animations
worked though. I’d look around and see if you can get ahold of a
Livetype 2 version cheap if possible…..I think Livetype 2 comes
with some of the later versions of Final Cut Express which you can
find on Ebay really cheap.Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
Nice job, I really like this tutorial….always meant to learn how
to do that ‘type’ of TV spot that you always see nowdays, after
watching this tutorial I now know how. By the way,I’ve got both your
‘Money Making Graphics and Effects’ and ‘Moving with Motion’
DVD’s and they are both really good as well.Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
What version of Livetype do you have and what version of Motion?
I have found that the FIRST version of Livetype (the one that
came with FCP 4.5) does NOT work well with Intel Macs and
Motion 4. Livetype 2, works absolutely great with Motion 4,
and you can just create projects as I outlined above for all
objects, textures, and such and access them in Motion just
great. If I remember right, there is even a chapter in
Patrick Sheffield’s book ‘How to Cheat in Motion’ that explains
the whole process much better than I can….but again, I think
you need Livetype 2 not Livetype 1.Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
Just to offer a little helpful info instead of the ‘tough luck’
response……you CAN still use your Livetype stuff….and even
better, Motion recognizes Livetype projects in a manner of speaking,
even in FCP 7/Motion 4. If you want an object or texture or
something in Livetype that isn’t in Motion do this….1. Open Livetype and drop the object or template or whatever
on the timeline. Put it above the black ‘dividing’ line, or
go into the ‘edit project properties’ menu and
you will need to check the ‘render background’ checkbox.2. Save your Livetype project.
3. Go into Motion and import the Livetype project. It will treat
it just like a quicktime file! If you need to loop it, you can just
go into their properties tab under ‘timing’ and set the end condition
to ‘loop’ and make them as long as they need to be.4. Because these are Livetype files (pointers to the media) they
are VERY small….about 4k each. You can just make a folder
called ‘Livetype media’ or some such thing, and put EVERYTHING
from Livetype into the folder (it will take a little time to
do a project for every object, template and so forth in Livetype)
but once you have done it, you have access to EVERYTHING that you
had in Livetype, right inside Motion 4!!I hope this helps someone…..
Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
Well there is ‘Toonit’ by Red Giant and ‘Livetoon’ by DV Shade, both are third party plug ins, so you will
have to pay for them, but they work right inside Final Cut Pro.Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
A couple things here from someone who has been EXACTLY where you are. I too did not sign a no compete and started doing some ‘on the side’ spots on my weekends using my own gear (PD-150, portable greenscreen, merlin steadicam, FCP, After Effects, the typical one man production studio.) The problem was, I got a couple clients (including a couple politicals that got me a bit of a name. including a spot that helped a candidate win a state house bid by 60 votes in what was widely seen as the ‘upset of the year’ in our state) …..well, not a problem for me, BUT a big problem according to my employer. They saw me as ‘competing’ with their ‘free production with airtime’ deals they offered clients, because clients were hiring me, and then they weren’t obligated to air on my station as they would have been if they accepted the ‘free production with airtime’. My full time employer ordered me to stop……I told them they couldn’t tell me what to do with my personal gear on my free time (probably not the smartest thing I’ve ever done) and that if they wanted me to stop they needed to give me a raise as I needed the extra money to make a living! They responded by firing me.
Now the timing sucked as my wife was pregnant and had to quit her job as she was put on bed rest. Then my station tried to deny my unemployment compensation claiming I was ‘fired for cause’. I ended up winning that case as they obviously had no paperwork on this fact (I felt I had been a great employee, even saving them by using my gear on their projects when their gear was being repaired). Anyways, as much as it sucked at the time, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me as I ended up HAVING to make a full time business of it instead of doing it ‘on the side’.
I found that I was taken more seriously as it was my full time business. I could meet with clients during real business hours while my competition had to wait for evenings and weekends as they were doing it ‘on the side’. And at least where I’m from, business owners appreciate not having to come in on their time off to meet with you! I had a lot of other things break my way and was extremely lucky.
Anyways, as I started this bold new adventure, I had a rough introduction to business 101. I learned a lot of hard lessons. Imagine my surprise a couple years later, when I decided to get the Creative Cow Magazine to continue my education, and find out that pretty much EVERY lesson I learned was in the pages of the magazine. Things like “Don’t lower your rates for volume work, get paid BEFORE you turn over any tapes, DON’T DON’T DON’T compete on price as the only logical result of that will be doing something for nothing! Don’t be afraid to walk away from a ‘grinder’ client and so forth. I am telling you, if I would have been able to read some of these articles, I would have been saved a TON of trouble. Lucky for me, my wife’s job is running a business for the business owner, and she taught me a bunch of this stuff as well.
Now to your question, I can honestly tell you that I NEVER cold call anyone. I DO a lot of networking/socializing and talking to people about the huge benefits of video to marketing their business and try to personalize it to show them how it could help their business, hand out business cards and volunteer teach marketing classes for our town’s small business development center but I don’t have to cold call. I get people calling ME all the time. Many times I call back and they will be too busy to talk and ask me to call later. I have a ton of clients who took 6 months to a year from when they told me they wanted a spot until they got around to actually doing it. I start out calling them back once a week, and then after two weeks, go to once a month calls to check in on the status of their ‘store renovation’ or whatever is holding up the project. Many times they are just busy or want video of something very particular that won’t be happening for awhile. I am lucky enough to have enough other projects that I don’t depend on only commercials. I get about 1/4 of my income from commercials, I also do weddings, events (sports, music performances and such), freelance news for places like CNN and The Weather Channel, freelance shooting and editing for the local PBS station, live webcasting of government events for the state, and many many other things. Basically I tried to be THE person to go to for anything video related in my town. Sorry, this probably doesn’t help, maybe I should just say it’s better to be lucky than to be good.
Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
Hmmmm….as to the point…..I don’t know there really wasn’t one. I was just trying to see if I could even get close to a look that for some reason has been used in some TV spots and things recently. As you say, the black lines were ugly. I couldn’t get the find edges lines to be wide enough, I then tried to dupe the lines layer a couple times and move it by a couple pixels one way or another and use the multiply mode again to drop out the white…..the purpose of this was to make the lines wider. I just went back in and used masks to mask out parts of the shot where there was too many lines (around the nose, mouth and eyes) and on the wall behind her. It looks better, but a lot of work for a 10 sec clip. Anyways, thanks for the comments, I think this is one of those times where I’ve done something silly just to see if I could, because I’m pretty much a video editor and not too good with creating effects.
Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com -
Ron,
I had two layers…..on the bottom one I use Re Visions smoothkit diffuser filter to keep the colors from shifting too much, and I used posterize from Pete’s Plugins (you could use the normal posterize, but the one in Pete’s Plugin’s lets you set a blending mode which I set to luminosity). Then I put another copy of the filter on top, treated it with the etch plug in and changed the composite mode to multiply to drop out all the white…..does that sound like the right way to go about it???
Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com