[Jeff Nelson]

Thanks so much! Will back up first, yes.

[Jeff Nelson]

He’s going to try it on his system tonight, thanks…

[Jeff Nelson]

Zap the p-ram?? Could you explain?

[Jeff Nelson]

Hi, thanks. Yes, the DV and NTSC lights are lit, and the picture and sound plays back fine through the S-cable into my monitor. But FCP doesn’t see the deck.

[Jeff Nelson]

Thanks for the explanation. Makes sense. Will try this workflow, reference movie first.

[Jeff Nelson]

Edit in 1080p hdv, then File, Export, to Compressor, then when I change the framesize, this is what I get. I’m going from the timeline, not from a rendered quicktime movie, where I guess I probably wouldn’t have this problem. But that’s an extra step. Don’t know why compressor isn’t changing the size of the titles, just the video picture.

[Jeff Nelson]

Let’s see if I can post some shots. Here is what it looks like in the timeline:

and here is what it looks like after using compressor to make a 720p version:

Note that the graphics of the name look like they were not compressed, they seem to be the original size in 1080 and so they’re messed up. This is a bit of a disaster for a one-hour show with a bunch of these.

Any suggestions?

[Jeff Nelson]

Hi David:

You are probably right, that there are cost-effective transcribers who could do a great or superior job here in LA. But I don’t know where they are.

I do know you’re going to pay $120 to $150 at most transcription shops around town, and when you have 20 hours to transcribe, that’s going to be $2400 to $3000, whereas by going to India, I pay 1/3rd of that, which is a savings I appreciate when my total budget is only $15,000 or $25,000 for the job.

As far as the “extra work” I have to do — what extra work? I guess if I were doing it in LA, I could make video or DVD rushes and mail it to the place here, rather than upload. But the local places accept ftp upload as well.

I just shot 12 hours of interviews over the weekend and it took me one and a half days to capture, put timecode, render a quick and dirty h264, and upload. (All this work took place in the background while I did other stuff on my computer.) By Tuesday, the job was in India, I get the full transcript back this Friday, and start work on Saturday. And the price is probably a fourth of what I would have to pay here, considering what rush charges most places around here add for rush turnaround.

But if you find a cheap reliable transcriber here in LA who can turn things around fast, I’m all ears!

Cheers,
Jeff

[Jeff Nelson]

Thanks, John. All useful stuff!

[Jeff Nelson]

Thanks, guys. This wasn’t for DVD but simply to play a file on my computer out through an LCD projector, and I wanted to convert a 1080p file down to 1024×576, to match the resolution of the projector.

As it turned out, I just played the file at full res 1080p on the computer and they scaled it down to 1024, and it looked like a million bucks. No need to convert to MPEG at all, as it turned out, since the computer was able to play the 35 minute file full res w/no probs.

FCP, Mac Pro, 5 gigs ram, 30″ monitor, Decklink HD