[John Davidson]

I bet every single person that read this post at one point or another considered him/herself a rock star when others didn’t. The real question might be, how to you recognize a rock star in a sea of sheep.

9 times out of 10, it’s probably the guy making comments that piss most people off, including the boss.

Sheep hate rock stars because they make them look inept. So perhaps the better question is, how do you identify the rock stars you already have, and how do you manage them in ways that keep the sheep from burying them in bureaucracy (which is the ultimate weapon of sheep).

I’ve been to a dozen networks and what I’ve seen time and time again is the operations people (aka sheep) are the backbone of the company, but the rock stars (aka genuine creatives) are the ones that get the glory. This leaves the operations people resentful. They are the ones that handle the grids, excel sheets, accounting, and all the background processes that are absolutely necessary to keep things running.

The most effective system I’ve seen consists of someone creative at the top, and they rule with an iron fist. 90% of scripts have to get kicked back. 90% of cuts have to be criticized and sent for revisions. 90% of work can not be good enough. The result? The operations people see the creatives suffer (it’s a good suffering though) and back off. Suddenly they’re thrilled they’re NOT the ones doing the creative. When a genuine rock star comes along and gets things through on the first pass, the sheep flock to them because this person solves the creative problem. Other creatives try to emulate that person with some success. Other rock stars come through. And for a while, the sheep and rock stars live together in harmony.

How to you find rock stars? That’s the million dollar question. It’s almost always the person you don’t expect. How many people didn’t recognize you for your skills early on? Most of the time, the real rock stars aren’t the ones with the cool jeans, the great hair, and an award winning smile. It’s the nerd in the back room playing with a new plugin or watching old films for ideas. That’s the one I want, anyway.

John
Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Last week I was having an issue with my Kona card. Jim in support walked me through a few ideas and after that didn’t work sent me a new card the next day. Problem solved. Best…Support….Ever.

Thanks guys!

John
Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

As an Atlanta and Georgia refugee going on 8 years, I still have nightmares that I live there and this whole California experience has been a dream.

John
Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Quick Update –

Turns out this issue wasn’t really related to CS4. AJA is sending me a new Kona 3 as this problem is still occurring even when not using CS4. Looks like I’m that one in a million guy who’s card is funky. Many thanks to Jim in support for helping me out!

John
Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Hank, your profile doesn’t show what system you have, but you know that newer mac pros don’t use the expansion slot utility, right?

John
Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Hey Bert,

One of my first questions when I started. It’s a little weird and if you have multiple layers going at the head or tail then you’ll be annoyed because it won’t fade up correctly with a dissolve (like if you have a 2nd graphic layer partially masked out and want them both to fade up evenly from black).

Do this:

Click on the film strip icon under the viewer and select ‘slug’. Add about 10 frames of black slug (for a 10 frame fade) to the TOP layer of your timeline at the beginning of video. Add a simple dissolve to the tail of the slug. Assuming you have multiple layers going on at once then this will achieve the correct fade up look you’re going for. It feels a little hacked coming from Avids simple ‘add fade’ that blacks out everything below the top layer of video correctly. Trust me though, once you start working with graphics built in another program you’ll be a happy camper in FCP.

Hope this helps. If you’re not working with multiple layers, then a cross dissolve as referenced above would work. Another option may be to do a ‘dip to color’ dissolve, but I’m not in front of FCP so I can’t make sure that works correctly for multiple layers.

John
Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

You’re right, Gary. I just assumed that it worked with CS4. I’m terribly sorry for wasting everyone’s time because I didn’t read all my documentation. I now know also that ProRes is 10 bit and won’t put out that false information anymore.

Best,

John
Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Hey Bob/Gary,

Thanks for the feedback – I will be upgrading to a new blackburst generator asap. I am running CS4 which must be the problem. I wasn’t aware that AJA drivers didn’t work with CS4 yet. I will be keeping an eye out for those new drivers and shutting off AJA external monitoring in AE until drivers do come out.

Thanks again guys.

John
Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Opened after effects to check to make sure I’m rendering out at 29.97, closed AE, opened final cut, and now, like herpes, it’s back.

This project isn’t due on Monday so I can deal with it as is for now by flashing PRAM and staying out of AE. The only other wildly unlikely possibility is that I need an HD blackburst generator? The reason I ask is that I went to a friends post house the other day and he had a blackmagic one that had multiple switches for working in 24p and other frame rates. I have an ESE blackburst generator that’s been fine for SD, and I don’t really see how that would affect playback whilst editing and previewing on an external monitor.

By the way guys, I took your advice and got the 42in Panny pro plasma (the one with 1080p HDMI inputs). It really is gorgeous, even for SD footage. Thanks for the tip.

John
Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

1080i 29.97.

John
Magic Feather Inc.