Jeff Meyer
Forum Replies Created
-
Motion does have a more robust text engine, so it’s a good step to be heading there. There are a few things that might help you out.
If you want to have a Motion file on your timeline:
You can pull up a slug in the viewer and drop that on the timeline and trim it to length. After that, right-click on the slug and send to -> Motion. By doing it this way the Motion file is created for you and has the correct length and project settings. No guess work this way.
Personally I find having .motn files on the timeline leads to instability, so I export a ProRes4444 out of Motion and then reconnect the slug-turned-Motion-file to the corresponding QT movie. Final Cut will want to render, but with a decent hard drive you should be able to play it in Unlimited RT mode. Check the RT dropdown on the upper-left of the timeline for Unlimited RT. If it isn’t an option your sequence settings are non-standard.If you want a still image on your timeline:
The slug method may still be what you want to get into Motion, but from there you can select File -> Export and change the export type to Current Frame. From there export a PNG or a TIFF file. This isn’t dramatically different than what you’re doing, but I prefer to have files for the items on my timeline rather than a freeze frame trapped inside of the FCP project. -
Do your sequence settings match your media?
-
How much space do you have left on the Drobo? I’ve heard they fill up the effectiveness of the “BeyondRAID” technology breaks down and the data transfer rates drop.
Running the AJA System Test on a G-Speed ES in RAID5 I just scored a 158Mb/s write and 175MB/s read. On a nearly full G-RAID connected over eSATA I got 196 write and 241 read.
-
Glad to help out.
Since you’re working on a Mac USB3 is next to useless. USB3 is a BluRay kind of scenario. It’s an industry-standard technology that Apple hasn’t supported because they want you to use something else. We’re getting to the point where their stubbornness is becoming an annoyance for the end user. All Macs still ship with USB2 ports exclusively. The new port that Apple wants to see you using is called Thunderbolt Because it’s a very new technology, Thunderbolt drives are still rather expensive. My advice is to stick to firewire 800 and daisy-chain drives if needed.
-
With a Mac Mini you SHOULD use an external drive, as there’s only one internal drive.
The main don’ts of hard drives and video editing:
• Don’t use the system drive. Whichever drive has Mac OS, Windows, or whatever platform you’re using shouldn’t have your media on it.
• Don’t use USB. USB sends data in bursts, but video is a stream of data.Buy a firewire based hard drive and put your media/projects on the drive. Don’t forget to buy a backup drive. With hard drives the question isn’t if they will fail, it is when.
-
As Shane said, use Progressive.
I’ve found with our XF cameras Final Cut is more stable if the footage comes in as ProRes422 instead of the native XDCAM format in which it was recorded. On the log and transfer window there’s a gear button where you can go into preferences and change Canon XF to ProRes422. With XF cameras and a web deliver ProRes422 HQ is completely overkill. For more on Log and Transfer Shane Ross made a fantastic tutorial – Google can get you there pretty quickly.
Since the last post you made here about web formats Firefox has announced support for H.264 in future builds, which leaves Opera and Chrome as the oddballs. Convert to Flash for its legacy value and near universal support, then use H.264, and WebM for the HTML5 options.
Frame sizes and bitrates will vary widely based on usage. Beyond desktop versions it would probably be wise to encode a version at no more than 500kbps for mobile users. In 4G and good to mediocre 3G 500kbps won’t be a problem, but in low service areas 500kbps could involve some buffering. Encode to H.264 MP4 for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone 7 and 3GP for not-so-smart-phones.
-
You can certainly get it down to 1.5-2GB, but it isn’t going to look the same.
Given a specific length you can calculate what bitrate you can use to hit your 2GB target. ( https://www.3ivx.com/support/calculator/index.html )
Once you know the bitrate you can do some sample conversions of a little bit of the footage (pick the most motion/fastest action portion) to see what it will look like. For this kind of file size reduction you may need to reduce your frame size to retain a satisfactory result.
-
Lacking a broadcast target and heading to web I’d say your sequence settings should match the media.
Right now your sequence is set for 1080 HD in America, Japan, or other NTSC countries. Your media is widescreen PAL (Europe, Austrlia, etc) that has been conformed to square pixels.Because you’re working with mismatched frame rates (24fps timeline, 25fps media) it’s probably best to start with a new timeline. When you drag the first clip down to the new timeline pick YES. That will make your sequence settings match the media.
If you intend to make a DVD/Blu/broadcast delivery for use in NTSC countries you’ll need to convert the 25fps into 23.976 or 29.97.
-
What are your sequence settings and your media settings?
-
What codec(s) are you working with?
Hit butterfly-9 to check the media and butterfly-0 to check the sequence – let us know what is in the “Compressor” field.