[Jeff Brown]

I can address #2:

The best theoretical upload likely if you have a Verizon FIOS account (better than cable modem) is 20 Mega-bits per second; about 2.5 MB per second.
My math yields 6.6 min. per GB, or 55 hrs per drive. 22 days for 10 drives. That’s if you can get the full upload speed, which is unlikely.

I’d buy some outboard HD enclosures.

-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

If you have the disc space, try QuickTime with PNG compression. At 100% quality, it is lossless. You will need to render the files once in Premiere for RT playback.

-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

Here’s my guess:

Open up the movie in QT Player. Try this:
Window -> Movie Properties
highlight “Video Track”
click “Visual settings” tab. Take a look at the lower right. Turn on the “high quality” checkbox (leave single field & de-interlace off).

If you have QTPro, you can save these changes. For some reason, QT files will often default to “high quality” off.

-Jeff

[Jeff Brown]

AVI and MOV are software “wrappers” for a number of different CODECS. The CODECS and compression are largely what determines the quality of the file output. Without knowing which flavor of MOV you are using, it’s hard to say why the quality is low.

For a broadcast commercial spot your client should be requesting ‘uncompressed’ (even that is open to interpretation) files of some sort.

My suggestions: give them an AVI (uncompressed) and an MOV (PNG at 100% quality, = uncompressed), see if they have a preference. The PNG will be smaller; but it is lossless compression.

-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

Maybe — but a 1.7% time difference? I think there’s something else going on. Don’t know what. Anyone? Buehler? Anyone?

-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

Will AJA’s main office in California (US) help you? I don’t know how “regional” they are.

-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

Unfortunately, they have not given you enough information to be meaningful. Is this the first time this festival has happened? Because they sound inexperienced…

-Jeff

[Jeff Brown]

Cathleen,
If this is going to a festival (congratulations!), they should be able to provide you with _very specific_ requirements. If the first person you speak with can’t, keep asking. A *.mov file can be pretty much anything: any size, any codec, any framerate. Try and find out how they are presenting the media. For example: Maybe they will play back from a DV tape? Then it’s easy: QTime DV.

-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

I’ve tried difference mattes in a few different software packages over the years (though not Premiere), and it has never really worked. Rotoscoping is probably what’s needed.

-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

In my workspace (CS3), double-clicking on a clip on the timeline opens it in the “source” window, with in/outs shown.

-Jeff