[Jimmy Brunger]

I would personally render out all GFX as progressive (it looks more like film and you can get better stills off it), unless you have any awkward semi-fast scrolls, who’s ‘judder’ can sometimes be fixed by rendering with fields (if motion blur on progressive doesn’t work instead)

DVCAM is lower field first, but digibeta is, I believe UFF..I *think* you want to be rendering UFF if indeed you want your GFX fielded, but do a pass of both to be sure and check. We usually shoot on digibeta if it’s ending up on digibeta for playout, so I can’t remember, but I’m pretty sure you render out for the format you’re going TO rather than where it’s come FROM. If however you are diectly treating the DV footage itself in AE then you’ll need to render LFF, or de-interlace the footage first and render progressive.

*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Aye, what Aharon said…tis best practice.

*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Interlacing a still is impossible..interlacing is something that happens to video – if you take a still shot from a video sequence and it is interlaced, you will probably see lines in the still.. this is the combinaiton of the 2 fields that make up that frame. de-interlacing a captured still in Photoshop can sometime fix this, but not always.

If your still has NOT been created via video (ie: it is a still photograph, a scan, or something you’ve created from scratch in PS/Illustrator or whatever then you dson’t need to worry about interlacing.

Stuff to look out for though:-

– Make sure it is in the correct colour space, size and aspect ratio for the intended video type it is going to (Photoshop CS1/2 have presets for this when you create a new document)

– Make sure any type is more than 17 pixels high (measure the height of a lower case ‘x’) if your video is to be broadcast and it is legal type.

– Keep your colours/luminance values between 16-235 for NTSC broadcast, or 0-255 for PAL.

– Make sure you don’t have any very thin horizontal lines or fine type, as these will ‘dance’ on a TV screen and look really ugly.

– Adhere to the title and action safe guides in your photoshop document, as a varying percentage of the outer frame will be cut off on TV screens. If your video is for UK broadcast you must use a tighter title safe to protect blow up of the picture to 14:9. Search the BBC website for info on this.

– Your best bet if you’re creating graphics for TV alot is to get something like a Blackmagic Decklink card and then you can monitor your output on a TV or a boradcast grade monitor if you have access to one. you hit a hotkey in Photoshop and your output pops up on your TV/monitor. A cheap way of doing this is via firewire in Photoshop CS2, but you’ll need a TV with a firewire input of get a converter.

PHEW! Hope some of that was useful.

Jim.

*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

I’d like to know this aswell!! Why isn’t there a numeric pan behind in the timeline?

*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

You can transfer your Trapcode plugins over to your home addy AFAIK, as long as you’re not using them on both machines at once. I asked Red Giant a little while ago if I could easily move my plugs and serial numbers over to another machine at some point and they said yes, as long as you take them off the old machine. you can’t use both at once…that would require 2 x licences my boy 😉

Likewise with Production studio – Adobe will let you install it on 2 PCs at a time – one for home and one for work, but you may only use one copy at a time. Pulling out your ethernet cable may hide it, but I wouldn’t risk it as they might log IP addresses on install (you NEED the internet plugged in to install, so if they both machines have same IP, like 2 PCs at your workplace for instance) then you *may* get into trouble..

*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Cheers Mike! That worked…it made PS stutter like crazy when I tried moving it around the document, but how much of that is my cr@ppy old PC is in question!…

*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

I always work to 17 lines high (I thought 17 was the legal height the BACC stipulated?)

On a Quantel Paintbox, which is what I worked on before PS & AE, I zoomed up to pixel/line level on a lower case ‘x’ at the intended size and counted how many lines high. It is recommended to use an x because how the anti-aliasing effects diff characters and x is the constant.

AFAIK counting pixels in a PS document or AE comp (as long as the file is broadcast dimensions) is the same as counting TV lines on a broadcast monitor? …Please tell me if I’m wrong!

I’ve not had anything kicked out for the last 7 years, so the BACC are pretty slack if I am wrong!

*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Are you in the UK Adam? If so, you’ll need an additional safe area to protect 14:9 for broadcast in the UK..I’ve got one if you need it.

*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Thanks, sorry that was a bit lazy of me.

*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Sorry, what’s SSE2?

*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0