[John Young]

I really don’t know that much about NAB, other than that it is where everybody announces their newest flashiest technologies. Is NAB more geared towards larger content producers? or is there good stuff for small one man/two man band operations? or am I reading too much into the name.

John

John Young
Surrounding Media

[John Young]

Are you unable to re-link in the normal way? — In the project window, right click on the offline Dynamic Linked AE comp, then select the appropriate After Effects project.

For me (in CS5.5), Dynamic Linking is not worth it. It slows down performance and can cause all sorts of problems.

If I need to work a specific PP clip in AE, here is the only way I use Dynamic Linking now: I will ‘Replace with After Effects composition’. That sends the clip to AE with the right In & Out points, linked to the correct original media. Then I immediately undo that action in PP so the original clip remains in my sequence. Then after I am finished working the clip in AE, I export a DNxHD file and import it into PP.

John

John Young
Surrounding Media

[John Young]

[Jeff Lent] “saved up a few euro for lenses”

I don’t know what your budget is for this, but I would recommend going high quality glass- Canon L series, Nikon Nikkor. If you do this right, your lens will last a lot longer than your camera will. Keep that in mind when deciding.

If money is tight, try looking for used lenses. Fully manual lenses that are 10-20 years old, but in great condition, work great for DSLR video.

John

John Young
Surrounding Media

[John Young]

Bryan,
H.264 is an intra-frame codec. So a frame of video will contain information that references another frame somewhere else in the file. This is why it is not ‘edit friendly’ to some NLEs and some computers. But if your computer can handle it (CS6 can defintely handle it) than by all means edit natively.
Sometimes when doing motion effects in After Effects, such as rotoscoping or many h264 FX layers, that intra-frame codec will cause sluggishness or blank frames. That is what people mean when they say “a lot of post-work”.

If you don’t experience any of these problems, there is no need to transcode before you edit, just start cutting natively. Transcoding does not give you any image quality advantages either, because like you said, you can’t get any more image data out of that H.264 file once it has been compressed to H.264.
John

John Young
Surrounding Media

[John Young]

Just to put a period at the end of this thread.

Apple reportedly to move Mac mini production line to the US
https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20121226PD217.html

John Young
Surrounding Media

[John Young]

Some features in the second alpha version people might be interested in.
-bit-rate manipulation
-Built in Intervalometer
-HDR bracketing

and all the other goodies from Alpha 1. The bit-rate manipulation is the most exciting for me. It will be interesting to see how this works and how much different the image is with a higher bitrate. With all workarounds you have to do with a DSLR the compressed image is the toughest to deal with If I am very thankful for these guys. They do great work.

John Young
Surrounding Media

[John Young]

Remember to think long term. If you are going to build a rig, build it well. A camera rig (like a tripod, c-stand etc,) should have a very long life span. I know too many people who have opted for a cheap alternative, and then ended up buying that piece of gear over and over again costing them more than if they would have went for the higher quality option to start with.

For me, my professional needs and my budget I have found that buying high quality but used gear is a good bang for buck choice. A year ago I bought a used Redrock setup (follow focus, rails, really everything but the matte box) for $700. I have lugged that thing around a bunch and it is still working great for me and probably will for 10 more years.

John Young
Surrounding Media

[John Young]

Wow. Can you say ‘grasping at straws’? It is funny to me that all these Apple announcements over the past two years all could be interpreted to mean a new Mac Pro is coming, if you only look really really hard.

Reminds me of a Nostradamus prediction that foretells that next year will be the end of the world. You know those predictions that come out year after year after year.

[John Young]

https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/tech-specs.html

You won’t get GPU acceleration with that card, which is one of Premiere’s main advantages.

John

[John Young]

The first thing that sticks out to me is the tripod. I guess I don’t know what kind of Ambico tripod you have, but I know some of those Ambico tripods (the kind you can buy at BestBuy) are barely good for still photography. You are going to want a fairly solid tripod with a fluid head for video.
The good news is that your DSLR camera setup will be pretty light, so you won’t need a heavy duty tripod, and you can save money there. However, good tripods last a long time and I have found success in getting bargains on professional brand solid build tripods on the used market.

John