[Greg Nosaty]

[Shane Ross] “I have a tutorial on this topic, Stills used in a 720p project. “

Thanks for that Shane. But I noticed when you opened your images in Photoshop they were at 300dpi and not 72dpi. Why?

I also have an unrelated question. What software do you use to record the screen image for your tutorials?

cheers,
Greg Nosaty

Cinemontage Productions Inc

[Greg Nosaty]

[walter biscardi] “It’s not the resolution, it’s the frame size. 72dpi is all you need for resolution. “

Ok fair enough but when I set the scanning software to 72dpi I get a 522×421 image. If I scale it up to 400% the image is 2089×1686. But when I scan at 300dpi the image is 2176×1756 which is in the ball park that you are recommending.

So should I scan @ 72dpi and scale up the image or just scan @ 300dpi resolution?

I’ve always found this size vs resolution thing a bit confusing. Especially when you compare print, screen image and video. Thanks for enlightening me.

cheers,
Greg Nosaty

Cinemontage Productions Inc

[Greg Nosaty]

I recently had a similar problem. I had bad greens screens that my compositor fixed in Shake on a unix box. he gave me targa sequences that I needed to convert to single movie files with the alpha data intact.

Although it looks as if FCP will export to codecs with “million+” colors (alpha channel) it doesn’t work. I tried exporting uncompressed animation files from FCP using “quicktime conversion” and when they were re-imported ther alpha was not there.

I used Quicktime Pro to open the image sequence and then exported the media in an uncompressed animation codec and everthing worked fine. Imported back to FCP to key them over background plates and they worked perfectly. And for some reason they rendered faster than native media files as well.

FYI avoid round tripping anything to Motion. Again I’ve found that if I export an animation file from Motion and import it to FCP it renders in a fraction of the time. i.e. a 5 second lower third rendered in 1;30 as a Motion file and as a animation file it took 5 seconds!

cheers,
greg

[Greg Nosaty]

[Imagine Video] “It’s a 3 second clip- amazing! Anyone encounter the same problem? Tips?
“

Is the media 3 seconds long or the clip in your timeline? I believe that Smoothcam references and analyzes the entire clip and not just the segment that is in your timeline. Try export a QT reference movie with handles, import and edit it in to your timeline and then add Smoothcam. I bet this cuts the time dramatically.

cheers,
Greg Nosaty

Cinemontage Productions Inc

[Greg Nosaty]

[Jeremy Newmark] “Is anyone having trouble rendering ProRes HQ Motion projects inside of FCP?”

I’ve had many problems rendering in FCP6.

Was your project started in FCP5 and moved to FCP6? If so prepair for all sorts of surprises. I finally did a clean install of everything from OSX to FCS2 and that sorted out many of my problems.
Maybe you should try rendering the Motion files out of Motion and re-import them in FCP6. Other than that I don’t have any magic bullet for your issues.

cheers,
Greg

Cinemontage Productions Inc

[Greg Nosaty]

[JeremyG] “Were these projects started in FCP 5 and upgraded to 6?”

All of my projects started in FCP5 as offlines in NTSC DV codec. I onlined one in AJA KONA 10 bit uncompressed which was a just a bad dream. Now I have 3 x 46 minute docs that I’m finishing with Apple ProRes 422 HQ NTSC and it’s a nightmare.

I have filters and transition that don’t look the way they did in offline. There are clips that say they require rendering that don’t have any effects on them. When I match frame and overwrite the clip again they play fine.

If you can wait a while I would. I’m in the process of doing a clean install of everything from the ground up to see if it might correct things.

cheers,
greg

[Greg Nosaty]

[harry323] “Is this a version 6.0 problem or just v6.01?”

I’ve experienced this from the first day I upgraded to 6.0 and it continues with 6.01. I’ve talked with my equipment supplier and Apple Canada reps and nobody has any answers.

cheers,
greg

[Greg Nosaty]

[Wayne Carey] “This is really starting to p*** me off. FCP 6.01 seems to keep loosing my render files everytime I open a timeline.”

Hey Wayne

I’ve had the same issues…

One workaround that I’ve discovered is to restore my project to the last autosave file and it relinks my renders.

cheers,
greg

[Greg Nosaty]

[Dr. Crestwood] “Anything but lacie. Almost anyone who tells you lacie drives are reliable is a sales rep for them. “

We had 10 Lacie raids, 500GBs & 1TBs, on a documentary series last year and 75% of them failed. Some even failed twice. They seem to use the cheepest components possible, especially their raid controllers.

I would recommend G-Tech or Sonnet eSATA raids.

cheers,
greg

[Greg Nosaty]

[Jim Watt] ” Still seems pretty long for this length show and a simple timeline.”

I’ve been experiencing very long render times especially with Motion files. I’ve posted on the Cow to find many others are having render issues as well. I’ve contacted Apple Canada as well as AJA but no real solutions yet.

I have done all the latest upgrades to OS and Pro Apps and that seems to have made some of my render problems even worse. My shows are all in Uncompressed 10 bit so I was really hoping that ProRes would be the answer but by the sound of your problems ProRes doesn’t help.

I think the issues are in the programing and Apple will have to figure them out.

cheers,
greg