[Jeff Markgraf]

Hi all.

Here’s another vote for Playback Pro. I just used it on a show, based on Walter’s recommendation.

Worked great.

Used my older MacBook Pro 17″, with the media on an external Firewire 400 bus-powered drive. Motion graphics & video clips (including audio) that were saved as standard def uncompressed 8 bit quicktime movies. The projector was fed via DVI from the MacBook. (50 foot DVI run, no less!) Ttransitions were mostly set up as fades in & out. The transitions started with the keypress. Cuts were instant. Fades had a slight – but absolutely consistent – delay of about 1/2 sec. I just let the black segments in between the videos loop until the next transition was needed. So it was running continuously for 2 1/2 hours each show…no hiccups.

I’m an editor by trade, so I get your desire or a timeline interface. This program’s playlist style made perfect sense and worked perfectly. Even the not-too-bright lighting board operator got it in a few minutes.

Buy the program. Then move on to your next problem.

[Jeff Markgraf]

Just thought I’d follow up.

We decided to put everything into ProRes for the edit. The HD material looked great. Lots more upconverted PAL Digibeta source than originally thought. Plus a fair amount of ripped DVD footage. (Not for broadcast or sale or public exhibition, so no copyright issues.)

Everything worked well. Monitored in downconverted PAL, as this was going straight to DVD for presentation.

Big kudos to Westside Media Group in LA. Good rate, good people. Repeat after me- fast storage and plenty of it. There is no substitute. These guys get it. Nothing fancy, but everything worked. You can’t believe how rare that is these days.

Thanks to all you Cows for the pre-edit advice. I’l know more for the next project.

[Jeff Markgraf]

Turns out the HD footage is PAL HD, 25p. Which makes the upconvert easier. Now on to the edit (first time in PAL for me!). Fortunately, the facility I booked has its technical act together and can handle everything.

Thanks for the good advice.

[Jeff Markgraf]

Looks like Playback Pro is going to work just fine. Pretty useless manual, but I figured out how to do what I needed it to do. Thanks for your help.

[Jeff Markgraf]

Hi Walter.

I looked at the Playback Pro site yesterday. think it’s pretty reasonable. But I have to keep in mind that the producer (who is self-financing this show) almost choked when I insisted that he spring for a proper Countryman B3 mic for his lead actor/singer/dancer. So over a grand for the software + the nifty USB controller box may cause him to faint.

Sigh. The drama of low-budget theatre.

If he won’ go for it, what are your thoughts on the really cheap (under $500)/free options?

Keep in mind, it’s one projector, and the changes don’t have to be perfectly synched with the light cues (they can de done manually with a second or two of wiggle room).

Thanks in advance.

[Jeff Markgraf]

Well, the 40 hours of footage is shot in whatever the DP chose. I presume that will sort itself out. The final tape will be in the same 24p format, and DVDs will be burned to distribute.

As far as the PAL upconvert, the facility will do this through a Terranex to make the same 24p HDCam format as the main footage. They’ll have to do the upconvert at some point, so may as well get it taken care of now. I know it may be a little ugly, but archival footage is what it is, and probably important to the final documentary.

Thanks for your help here. We’ll see how things go Monday 🙂

[Jeff Markgraf]

Thanks, Bouke.

What about issues like 24p A or N or whatever? I presume that’s what the easy setup take care of, but I don’t know if these guys actually know what they’ve shot.

And I’m sure I’ll end up mixing in other footage at different frame rates. Would it be best to convert 29.97 stuff to 24 for the edit, an let the chips fall where they may when it’s all converted to the final output format?

[Jeff Markgraf]

Well, as you’ve discovered, there really aren’t any set in stone standards. I can tell you that at the network (ABC), legal could get pretty cranky about disclaimers & rules.

We rarely went below 18 points (as in an 18 point font on a Chyron) for contest rules and other disclaimers. Otherwise it gets pretty hard to read. They didn’t usually specify a font, but a sans serif like helvetica or futura was more readable at that small size. 90 or 100 percent opacity, with a 1 or 2 line drop shadow or edge to make the text stand out a bit.

The goal was “plausible readability”- almost no one was expected to read the stuff, but they “could” if they really wanted to.

The bigger fight was usually to reduce the required info to a bare minimum. 4 lines maximum for anywhere from 3 to 6 seconds seemed to be the best compromise. The phrase “for full rules, go to abc.com” made life much easier and covered a multitude of sins. Because if it’s a contest, they WILL get sued if there’s even a hint of not following the rules to the letter.

Car spots and other actual advertising seems to play by different rules. There’s no way anyone can hope to read those disclaimers, and no one seems to mind. Stations (and networks) want the ad dollars, so they look the other way. I’ve never heard of a spot getting rejected because the legals were too small, but i’ve never seen a spot with legals much smaller than that 18 point limit.

One last point: most stations run breaks from a server (small markets still use tape playback). These servers use lots of compression, and the spots generally look pretty bad. Text, in particular, degrades very quickly. So that mouse type turns into a blur of pixellated text. As do small graphic elements. Not pretty, and kind of calling attention to the too-small font.

So your best bet is to try to reduce the word count as much as possible, and make what has to be there at least minimally readable, even when compressed. Make the legal department your friend, and you may surprised at how muck slack they’ll cut you on disclaimers.

[Jeff Markgraf]

Hi Shane. That was one of the first things I checked. I did some tests and it happened on each 3-5 second test capture I did, whether “capture now” or log & capture. See below, though, where trashing the prefs seems to have fixed the problem.

[Jeff Markgraf]

Well…trashing the prefs seems to have fixed the problem. So I guess the immediate panic is over. But I would like to know what people think about this behavior. Anyone else had this happen? Any thoughts on just what went wrong?