Jeff Carpenter
1
COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
-
Do you have iLife ’06? (Look in iDVD, see if it’s version 6.)
If so, you can use your Mac as a stand-alone burner…it will take a firewire input from a video camera and capture that right to a DVD without menus or chapters.
https://www.apple.com/ilife/idvd/features/onestepdvd.html
If you want some chapters without much more work you can do something called “Magic DVD.” You would capture the video with iMovie first and then make a magic DVD in iDVD with the footage. It does some automatic chapter points and an automatic menu. Nothing fancy…more work than the one-step-DVD but a lot LESS work than making the menus yourself.
https://www.apple.com/ilife/idvd/features/magicidvd.html
-
1) DV-NTSC and DV-NTSC Firewire Basic are really the same thing. The “Basic” one has more to do with deck control…it’s kind of a generic setting and should work with cameras that Final Cut doesn’t know about. It knows what a VX-2000 is, so plain old DV-NTSC will be just fine for you.
2) DV50-NTSC is for DVCPRO50. That’s got nothing to do with this, ignore it.
3) And finally, what is this project going to be mastered to in the end? IF you’re putting this back to BetaSP then I would suggest capturing this video over an S-Video cable to an uncompressed format. The video ITSELF won’t look any better, but all of your titles, effects, transitions, and color correction WILL come out a little better.
If you’re going to go back to DV in the end then all that extra quality will be for nothing. In that case, use firewire in, edit in a DV timeline, and go firewire out. That’s the best quality you can get in that situation. But if you’re going to master to some other format, capture it uncompressed and from then on work like you usually do.
-
Go to Apple.com, click on the “Store” tab and then scroll down and look for the big red “SAVE” tag. Click on that and then click on “Apple Certified – MAC.”
Scroll down to the G5s and find the cheapest one there…it’s $1,599. For DV work that will do just fine. You’ll need to add 3 things to it:
1) Final Cut Suite, obviously
2) More RAM. Don’t buy from Apple. I suggest Crucial.com, although there are many other places online. Buy 4 one-GB chips if you can afford it and add it to the 512 already in there. If you want to save some money, just add 2 GB, but that’s the least I would do. Be sure to follow the instructions, in the G5 machines it matters WHICH slots you put the RAM in:
https://www.apple.com/support/powermac/doityourself/memory.html
3) A scratch disc for media. I don’t know how much video you need to work with, but I’d suggest buying an internal 500 GB SATA drive from any computer store and putting it in as a 2nd drive. Set Final Cut to use that as the scratch disc and you’ll be good to go.
-
In Final Cut, go to the FILE manu and pick EXPORT > COMPRESSOR.
What you have to do is drag the compression you want from one window onto your video file in another window.
It’s possible to make your own, but scroll through the pre-made Apple ones. You’ll probably find something that fits. Drag the video compression over and then find the “DOLBY 2.0” audio compression and drag that over too.
Pick the destination folder for all that and hit ‘submit.’ You’ll get an audio and a video file that you just import into DVD Studio Pro.
There’s a ton of ways to customize this and get exactly what you need, but I’d just start with the pre-sets and see if they make you happy.
-
I had assumed (always a bad idea, I know) that Powerpoint could just tap into Quicktime and play anything it could. This is the Mac version she’s talking about, after all, not the Windows version.
But you raise a goopd point, Rennie! Can you test this, Laura?
I could test this for you tonight if you need, and report back. (I only have Powerpoint on my home computer, not here.) Let me know.
-
Glad it worked.
I didn’t say earlier, but just so you know…the animation codec is the exact opposite of what you wanted. It’s very good at preserving quality…it keeps each frame intact. It’s not concerned with saving space at all, that’s not what it’s made to do. That’s why you were having such bad luck!
H.264 is very good at saving space…it’s actually a version of MPEG-4. It only plays in Quicktime 7 or iTunes, however. If you’re dealing with Quicktime 6 then go with H.263. It doesn’t look as great, but it’s more compatible with more systems.
-
Select the music’s audio file that’s in the timeline already. Not a double click, just one click so it’s highlighted.
Then go to the “MODIFY” menu.
There is an option in there called “Stero Pair.” Is that checked? If not, select it.
(I’m not looking at Final Cut right now…this is from memory…if that option isn’t in “MODIFY” then check the menu item next to it, my memory might be a little off!)
-
You can run Windows programs but you have to buy a copy of Windows.
Once you do that, you have to ways to run it.
One way is to buy a program called Parallels:
It lets you run Windows inside of OS X. That’s simple and easy, but you’re splitting computer resources…it won’t run as fast.
The alternative is to get Apple’s boot camp:
https://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/
That’s free AND it runs Windows at full speed on the hardware. The one downside is you have to re-start the computer…you can only run one OS at a time that way. Going back and forth between OS X and Windows takes a minute and you have to shut down all your programs.
I use Boot Camp because I use it for some processor-intensive Windows programs and I want the full speed.
If I was running simpler programs I would have gone with Parallels. Not having to re-start is pretty cool.
-
I usually find that this complaint means they’re watching the video in a room that’s not very dark so the projection looks pretty faded and washed-out.
Use the color corrector to correct the color as best you can, lower the black level (slightly, not too much!) and raise the mid-tones a little bit.
You’ll end up with video that looks WAY to contrast-y and colorful on a TV screen, but should look a little better on their projector.
The trick is to make sure they don’t then go and watch it on a TV because then they’ll be complaining that it looks bad there. Where I work I can go and play the altered version for them in our meeting room and then take it right back. If you’re GIVING them a disc it might not work out that way. Probably best to label the disc as “for projector only” or something like that.
-
Check to see if your client has Quicktime 7 on their machine.
If so, use the “Export -> Quicktime Movie” right in the Final Cut menu and give this a try:
=========
Video:
H.264
480×360
Quality = MediumAudio: AAC
Mono (unless stereo is really needed)
Bit rate 128 kbps
Sample rate 44.1
=========That’s just a starting-off place. You’ll probably have to re-adjust settings once you see how that works out for you. If it’s way too big, take the size back down to 320×240. But I’d try it with the slightly larger size first.
The final size depnends on the motion in the video, but you should be able to do pretty well. Here’s an example of a 40 second video (at that frame size) that comes in at 2.5 MB.
http://www.penguintail.com/parrot