[J. Tad newberry]

it looks like some of my RAM has died. the computer is only seeing 4 GB of my 8 GB, so i’m heading to the Apple Store…

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

Thanks for the reply. That’s too bad that this is the reason, since batch export is very handy utility to render out several sequences at once (like, for overnight), unless there is some other way to render several sequences without it (and thus keep chapter markers intact?)

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

Viewing on an NTSC monitor…the same as what most of the final viewers will be viewing on, via DVD.

I thought i had a “Eureka!” to report here a few days ago on this. I rendered a QT out of Motion with the field-rendering option selected. After a very short test, it looked like it might do the trick (that is, play super-smoothly in a DV timeline). But, alas, after a 20 hour render over the weekend – for a 24 second QT, it didn’t look much better. Certainly not worth the extra rendering time.

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

i’ve also found that animating a graphic with a shadow in this DV codec causes much nastiness…especially on this one photo i have that grows in size as it comes close to the camera and blurs out. with a shadow, there is a terrible flicker. without the shadow it blurs out fine…

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

i should also add here that the graphics created within FCP (Boris text) look very good, even when rendered in DV and put on a DVD. it is the Motion stuff that ends up getting jerky and pixellated. also, just animating a hi-res still photo in FCP ends up very bad (in DV). i had it slightly rotating on the z-axis as it came forward, but that looked terrible. i deleted the rotation, and just have it move forward (on the z), and it is better, but where there are words on the photo (it’s a scanned image of a magazine cover), it still looks pretty bad in DV.

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

still chasing this monster!…

doing some DVC Pro HD tests seems to possibly be the answer…and it will give the client a letterboxed (though still standard def) final project, which looks kind of cool…BUT –

all my footage was captured in the DV codec, so the field dominance is “backwards” (at least, compared to the HD codecs), so i would have to end up re-capturing all my footage. of course, if i merely change the sequence settings (of a current timeline) to DVCPro HD from DV, all my clips go funky…BUT when i drop new clips onto that new timeline, they are adjusted properly (save for the field dominance question).

hard to know what to do. when you mentioned keeping the graphics sequences in the animation codec, i’m not following you on how to keep the graphics in one compressor type, yet having the final render still be in DV – wouldn’t that end product still crap up the graphics?

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

thanks Rafeal, i tried going all 8 bit NTSC on this and it only changed a tiny bit (probably not worth the rendering time). i wonder if there are any other alternatives? i’m going to try to go ahead and send it through the Compressor for DVD SP and see what happens, but i’m guesssing it will only pick up a few more artifacts along the way…

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

delivery format will be DVD. it was shot in BetacamSP and brought into FCP as DV files, but i guess i could re-do it in NTSC 8-bit if that would help the graphics. i’m wondering if i did the Motion graphics at an even higher res (say HDV or better) would that help? so far, the best i’ve found is to render a DV QT out of Motion at the “best render” quality, import into FCP (on a DV timeline), and render – rendering “twice” here because the Motion project is keyed over the video in the timeline.

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

ah, i hear ya. yes, that’s how i usually do it as well. DV project in FCP, so DV project in Motion. ya, DV…ooh aah! : )

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

the only thing is that to render a Motion project in FCP (that is, NOT exporting the Motion file as a QT, but just importing the Motion project into FCP) takes a HUGE amount of time to render in FCP…but maybe the quality would be better? i’m testing that right now…we’ll see.

thanks again!

mh