[Ian Johnson]

If you don’t have a girlfriend, wife, kids, dependents, deep roots or responsibilities, go now! The longer you wait the more reasons you will accumulate for not being able to move and eat ramen while living on someone’s couch. It can be a hard beginning, but there is the potential to earn $65/hr and more. If someone else depends on your income or has an established local career of their own, it will be very hard to make the transition.

Ian

[Ian Johnson]

I considered, that. I have seen changes disappear from a master clip when an copy was opened up from an older bin. I think if you are working with a clip from a locked bin over the unity, it is possible for the original clip to wipe out changes in some instances if you haven’t Saved As yet.

However this on isn’t on a server, and the only other place it could have been referenced is from Media Tool. There was a force quit yesterday, but that was days after the locaters were added so there shouldn’t have been an older “clean” version.

Ian

[Ian Johnson]

So here is what I have been trying to do that is so much trouble-

I have two shots at 720×486, and want to do a horizontal camera move from one to the other. I have a very wide QT of some glowy, partially transparent particles that I want to superimpose over both shots, floating a little in front of them in z-space. I also want a soft vignette that will key out the particles completely in the center of each shot.

The particle layer needs a face alpha for the particles, which I have rendered as a separate QT and applied via pixelchooser. At each end there should be masks to create the vignette which I have created as bitmaps which could be blurred and scaled as needed.

I’m having 2 problems. The first is that any media that gets applied to the face track of the particles gets scaled to match the dimensions of the face media. When I drop a vingette onto the downstream key it works fine because the bounding box of the track is the size of the frame, no matter how big the media it contains. If I drop the vignette into the face itself, it gets scaled to match the bounding box of the face media itself which is the full dimensions of the clip.

I could adjust the size and position of the vignette so that when it gets scaled it ends up about where I want it. However it doesn’t really matter because the face can only contain one mask, showing which ever one is on top. I can display the vignette, or the particles alpha, but not both within the mask track.

I tried combining the alpha QT and the vignette together in a container to create a single matte image. When I applied that to the face mask I ran into the scaling problem. The container properly displayed the oversized media, but its bounding box is defined by the frame. The frame sized bounding box got scaled to match the oversized bounding box of the face media.

Is there a way to create a new comp that is the size of the particle layer with a corresponding bounding box and then drop that comp into the face mask? I don’t think I can do that while in the Avid because everything is limited to 720×486. If it is possible running standalone, would I then be able to open that project into a sequence within the avid?

The only thing I can think of doing right now is to precomp the particle alpha with the vignettes in after effects, but I wouldn’t be able to adjust it once I start compositing in Boris.

Fortunately this isn’t for any real job, I’m seeing what I can do in Boris to have in my bag of tricks. Applying multiple adjustable masks to a single upstream key is fairly basic and something I do with animatte all the time. However animatte won’t let me work beyond the frame like Boris.

Ian

[Ian Johnson]

Since you come from a promotional background, don’t forget about TV Promo. There are far more TV promos than movie trailers and many small companies doing them in addition to the networks themselves. Even though you don’t have movie trailers on your reel at this point, you probably do have promos so that is a good place to start. Here are a few more places to look up-

Ant Farm (trailers)
Cimarron Group (trailers)
Craig Murray Productions
New Wave Entertainment
Lussier
Storm Studios
Stun
Studio City

Hopefully the economy will be turning around a bit before you come out here. Last month Trailer Park let go of 50 editors and gave pay cuts to the remaining ones. I don’t have any advice I can give you for getting into a place. The most important things I found were a couch to live on for free for a few months, some savings, and a producer that I had worked with in Kansas City that moved out a year before and found work.

Since networking is so important, and you can’t network very well remotely, one option is to try and begin where you are. I was able to find work thanks to someone I knew who had moved out here. He found work because one of his local clients moved to LA before him. That guy found work the same way. At one time there were a half dozen of us from Kansas City working in the promo department at the WB Network because of this “pipeline”, and in fact there is an informal organization called the “Kansas City Connection” in LA dedicated to helping out people moving from KC to LA to work in the entertainment industry. Another place I worked seemed to have a lot of people who happened to go to Emerson College in Boston. I’m sure that wasn’t a coincidence either.

Find out if anyone in your market ever moved to LA and found work. Even if they don’t know you, they might be willing to help out another local who is trying to make the same move they did. Find out if anyone from your alma mater within a couple years of your class moved to LA after graduating. Is anyone else thinking of doing the same who can go with you and pool resources?

Start looking on craigslist for roommate wanted ads to see what that market is like, since that will be your next best option after a free couch. You will need to make your savings go as long as possible. Can you do motion graphics work on the side to earn extra money before you go? That is how I saved a few thousand dollars to make the move, and then once I was in LA I continued to do some projects for those clients until I had a steady income from editing.

Ian

[Ian Johnson]

I had it in a 3d container because I want to use a camera to do the move. Can I put the spline in the downstream mask, precomp it with 2D rendering, and then place that precomp within a 3D container? Will the precomp remain 2D inside, or does everything get turned to 3D?

Ian

[Ian Johnson]

Thanks, I hadn’t thought to apply filters to vectors. I’m still having some trouble with something, and I think it might be a bug. If I make a spline shape, blur it, and drop it into the face mask of media that is the size of the frame it works fine. If I drop it onto media that is larger than the frame it doesn’t work. I have a clip that was rendered at 3000 pixels wide so that it could be panned across. When I drop the blurred spline into the face mask the whole layer is keyed out. If I drop it onto the downstream mask it works like it should. However the downstream mask doesn’t do me any good because it goes away when I nest it inside a 3D container.

Ian

[Ian Johnson]

The Z-Space uses for its planes the track as it appears when it is monitored by itself. Suppose I have a title on V2 (first below the filter). When I monitor V2, I see the title keyed over V1, and that is the image in the plane. If I move the title to V1 then it appears in the plane as a title over black, and if I put it in V3 (on the filter layer) it appears as the title over V2. The plane never uses the alpha in the target track however it is created. It only shows the resulting composite.

In the pdf for Z-space it shows text as one of the planes casting a 3D shadow onto another plane. How is this possible? I can’t find any way for a plane to make use of transparency in any way other than the opacity slider.

[Ian Johnson]

What is the difference between the background in general controls and the one at the bottom of the plugin?

Also, how do I get one of the planes to key without showing another layer as a background within it?

[Ian Johnson]

[Lars Fuchs] “Its possible to get close, but not completely, emulate your avid layout, because somethings are just plain different (like audio scrubbing: toggled on/off in fcp, activitated by shift or caps-lock in avid, just to name one), and that subtle difference threw me off. I now prefer to keep the FCP keyboard almost in its default configuration.”

My Avid keyboard is actually setup to emulate a Grass Valley, so it has little in common with the default. It works well for me, but I can’t jump on a system and hit the ground running without loading my settings. I’m not going to make the same mistake with FCP even though it might make it easier.

[Lars Fuchs] ”
Don’t bother with FCP’s trim mode, its not worth the effort. Use the rollers. Asymmetric trimming is a bit tough in FCP, and can have odd results.”

This is the part I dread. I can get some complicated multitrack trims going when cutting a :30 promo down to :15, or turning two :15s into a :30 combo. Or pulling up a few frames here and there at the beginning of a spot to free up 15fr at the end.

Mostly it’s like trying to learn to write left handed. The letters are the same shape but they are drawn differently, and I have remaster what I already learned with the right.

Ian

[Ian Johnson]

[Shane Ross] ”
[Ian Johnson] “In Final Cut I can delete with the marks but for some reason I can’t ripple delete”

The DELETE key, above the RETURN key, is the LIFT. The DEL key, above the arrows, is the EXTRACT key. It will close the gap.”

The DEL key will extract a clip that is selected, but it won’t extract a marked region, even though it will delete. I thought that was a litle inconsistent.

[Shane Ross] ”
[Ian Johnson] “Also, does FCP have an equivalent to Avid’s Apple-M?”

Press-Z. Then hold the SHIFT key and drag a box around the area you want to zoom into. Then press A.”

Thanks, I thought I had tried all the modifiers with the magnifying glass, but I missed SHIFT.

I have a keyboard shortcut reference card from FCP 4, but it may be a little out of date. I looked for one in the box when I upgraded to 6, but I’m not sure they print them anymore.

[Shane Ross] “[Ian Johnson] “And I really really wish I could move the playhead by clicking in the timeline and not just that skinny little timecode bar. ”

Can’t help you there. This is how FCP works. Open segment mode on the timeline. Something you gotta get used to I’m afraid.

Heck…Avid is really cheap now…$2500. Why not get that for home?”

Maybe there could be an option-click or something. I do have Media Composer for home, but there are plenty of FCP only job postings out there.

Ian