[Gary Hughes]

If you have, or know someone who has some of the saphire or tinderbox plugins for After Effects or FCP, they each have a plugin that produces trails, like video feedback. I’m sure there are others, but I just don’t know off the top of my head (maybe boris).

If all else fails, reshoot and close your iris and slow down your shutter. If you can’t recreate the scene, worst case scenario would be to play back the video on your TV while shooting your tv with your camcorder while leaving the shutter open longer than normal. Be sure you’re in the dark to avoid any light spill. I’ve never done this, but I bet the long shutter would look pretty cool while doing this.

Have fun,
Gary

[Gary Hughes]

Slow Motion: I completely agree. If you’re going to limit me to one way of doing a speed change, then make the in point sit still on the clip and the sequence, then make the out point of the clip move so that the out point on the sequence doesn’t change. Otherwise, changing a preference to one way or the other for your default choice would be nice. There could be a simple check box right inside the motion tab, right beside the speed value. Just let me choose which way it works by default. That way, I can choose to have it slip the out point of the clip, while someone else can choose to have it slip the out point of the sequence by default. I agree that having to click the option every time I change speed would be extra effort, however I also agree that most of us would agree that having the option would be nice.

Slow Motion (gripe number 2): I went from 5 years on Discreet Edit to Pinnacle Liquid Edition to FCP. A few years ago, Discreet Edit had slow motion that looked at least as good if not better than FCP. Pinnacle LE’s version 5 (I think they’re on version 7 now), believe it or not, has INCREDIBLE looking slow motion. Where FCP has frame blending, LE has field blending and it looks great. I intended to sell my LE system, but it didn’t take me long at all to realize that FCP was lacking in comparison, when it comes to slow motion. I still haven’t gone back to LE, but if I really need nice slow motion, I will. It looked almost as nice as pixel interpolation. I know this is an issue that they will eventually work on, but I wish it were sooner rather than later.

Ignoring transitions on cut and paste: I agree that this needs to be worked on.

Mark out includes an extra frame: I understand both ways. Discreet worked the way that FCP doesn’t, so I was used to that. I do feel that having to back up a frame is extra effort that I shouldn’t have to do, but I got used to it real fast. It doesn’t bother me now, although I would like to see that change as well. I can’t remember how LE worked, or media 100 from years ago. I’ve only worked on an Avid occasionally, so I can’t speak intelligently about it, but I seem to remember other Avid editors claiming that it worked the way FCP does. If so, I’d guess that that’s why FCP works the way it does.

Paste attribute shortcuts: Good idea. Never thought about it before. Keyboard shortcuts are so easily changed in FCP, there may be a way to do it now providing you custom make it. I don’t know.

As for making the program user friendly and not too customizable, that’s a crock. User adaptable is the way to go, and obviously Apple agrees. You can completly customize the keyboard shortcuts to emulate an Avid, or a Discreet, or whatever other NLE, AND there are multiple places to go to set preferences and options and settings. In these days of flash memory, customizing and moving to another system just shouldn’t be a problem. I haven’t done it yet, but I believe you can store all your settings on a jumpdrive and carry it to another system making resetting a system so incredibly simple. I have emailed a custom capture preset to a producer so I know that much is simple.

I love threads like this. It really gets you thinking. Thanks Bob for posting the issues and thanks to all the rest for giving your input. By the way, other than Pinnacle’s (now Avid), better slow motion, I couldn’t imaging editing on anything other than FCP now. I really love it. That does’t mean it’s perfect. That just means it rocks.

Happy editing,
Gary

[Gary Hughes]

That’s one too many for me. Why not just take 2 seconds to swith the preset?

I just finished a job where the footage came from photogs from all over. Some were 32k and some were 48k. The producer has an iBook and he captured the linecut from the multicam shoot, plus all the testimonial footage from all the different photogs. He did everything at 48k while I captured everything with the same setting it was recorded at. His stuff was often out of synch while mine was dead on. Between the tiny effort to change the preset and the huge benefit of peace of mind, I’m always going to capture 32k at 32k and 48k at 48k.

Have fun,
Gary

[Gary Hughes]

I completely follow this logic, as I have for years with other NLEs, but you said that the project should be saved on the Macintosh HD. Do you mean that drive exactly, or is any internal drive just as acceptable? I’ve seen posts and articles from others, Larry Jordan for one, that made the same claim, and just passed it off as “they really mean any internal drive”. So here it is again, so I ask for clarification.

I follow the save everywhere method, however, the project file that I actually work on is saved on a second internal SATA drive. My autosave vault is on the system drive. I use Folder Synchronizer from softoBe to synch my projects folder to my powerbook. Do I need to change something?

Thanks,
Gary

[Gary Hughes]

Not true. Not completely true anyway. Yes, it takes really long clips before you see the out of synch issue, and therefore you can go for years without ever noticing it, most likely. Therefore, go for it, if you want to. I like to think of myself as a detail oriented person when it comes to my work. It’s just simple logic for me. If something was recorded at 32k, then capture it at 32k. Anything else is not correct. If you choose to ignore this, you will probably never have a problem, but that doesn’t make it correct, in my opinion.

Thanks,
Gary

[Gary Hughes]

According to Final Cut Pro’s error messages, chapter markers must be at least 1 second apart from each other AND at least 1 second past the start of a timeline. If exporting chapter markers from FCP, it will not cause a problem, it will simply ignore them and not export them.

Thanks,
Gary

[Gary Hughes]

I use other software to do this, but I saw this article that might help. https://larryjordan.biz/articles/lj_credits.html

Thanks,
Gary

[Gary Hughes]

I don’t know what you mean by “smashed down to a few pixels”, and I don’t know which version of photoshop you’re using either. I also don’t know why you are creating the “registration pixels”. I’ve never needed them.

I assume that by “1. Open a new PSD at 720 x 480, D1 pixels”, you are working on graphics to be used in a DV timeline (which is 720×480 with a pixel aspect ratio of 0.9). If you are truly working on a D1 timeline, you should be creating files at 720×486 with a pixel aspect ratio of 0.9.

In CS2, create a new file using the preset called NTSC DV 720 x 480 (with guides) for DV timelines and NTSC D1 720 x 486 (with guides) for D1 timelines. These assume you are wanting 4:3 aspect, not widescreen. Photoshop will default to showing you the pixels in a corrected view so that a circle is truly a circle, just like you’ll see it on TV. This will show you the pixel aspect correctly, but it will not show the full quality of the file. To see the full quality, you’ll have to turn off aspect correction (which will make your circle look like an oval, but that’s OK). To do so, under the View menu, uncheck Pixel Aspect Ratio Correction.

If this is helpful, but you are using Photoshop 7 or prior, let me know and I’ll give you my old workflow for that as well. I skipped CS so I can only assume that it handles pixel aspect correction the same as CS2. If not, it handles it the same as 7.

As for steps 2 – 6 of your workflow, like I said, I’ve never needed “registration pixels”, but otherwise, your right on track with what I do. I use keyboard shortcuts as much as possible and it really cuts down on the time in steps 4, 5, and 6. Merge visible is Shift+Command+E, then save a copy is Option+Command+S, then Undo is Command+Z, and Step Backward is Option+Command+Z. It goes really quick after you get the hang of it.

I have several friends that simply bring their PSD files right into FCP, and that’s OK I guess, but I like this way best.

Hope this helps,
Gary

[Gary Hughes]

I know you didn’t mention After Effects, but there is an After Effects plugin that does exactly that. It’s actually quite powerful.

Here’s a link to the info: https://trapcode.com/products_soundkeys.html

Here’s a link to a flash demo of how to use it: https://trapcode.com/in_action/soundkeys_intro.html

Here’s a link to a couple of their user gallery movies: (Watch her pupil) https://trapcode.com/gallery/ss1.mov https://trapcode.com/gallery/ss2.mov

Check out their user gallery to see clips from their other plugins too: https://trapcode.com/gallery.html

Have fun,
Gary

[Gary Hughes]

I assume you’re talking about 12-bit audio. Simply capture all the 12-bit reels with a 32kHz setting and you’ll be OK. It’s fine to use 32k audio on a 48k timeline. If you don’t capture it correctly, you may never see the problem, but on a long clip, it will eventually slip out of synch. It has to be a long clip before you will notice it, so you may go through a lifetime capturing it incorrectly and never see a problem, but why take a chance.

Here’s what I do, since I work in primarily DV, I simply duplicated the default DV NTSC 48 kHz capture preset and named it DV NTSC 32 kHz, then I edited it and changed the audio format to 32kHz. I can choose that when I’m capturing tape that was recorded with 32kHz audio.

Hope this helps,
Gary