[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Jerry,

On making the VHS footage look great, I recommend BorisFX or Topaz Video AI, or both for different tasks – they each have their advantages, and used the in the right combination you can get amazing results. They both have options to try them out, and they also offer discounts depending on time of year that you want to make the purchase.

For audio, my go to is Izotope.

They have a special holiday sale on right now, until I purchased everything, I was a user of their RX10 elements for years. My favourite noise reduction episode, was that the Producer could not hear the London Black cab driving past presenter doing a piece to camera – so we brought that part of the audio back.
https://www.izotope.com/en/products/rx/pricing-options.html

Good luck

Atb
Mads

izotope.com

RX 10 Pricing Options

View pricing options for RX 10.

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Dennis,

Adding to the advice above:

After Effects in a Class Room is a good place to begin.

Latest version arriveing mid-January.
https://www.adobepress.com/store/adobe-after-effects-classroom-in-a-book-2024-release-9780138316488
Can be a bit tedious, but you’ll learn stuff + new stuff.

Do not discount LinkedIN learning.
They (still) have excellent tutors, and as an added incentive, when you complate the self-paced-study, LinkedIN will with your permission add a certificate to your LinkedIN profile.
Depending on where you are at with LinkedIN, you can potentially get the first 30-days free, or you might be lucky enough to work for a company that has got enterprise access.

Atb
Mads

adobepress.com

Adobe After Effects Classroom in a Book 2024 Release | Adobe Press

Learn video compositing, motion graphics design, and animation using Adobe After Effects Adobe After Effects Classroom in a Book uses real-world, project-based learning to cover the basics and beyond, providing countless tips and techniques to help you become more productive … Continue reading

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

I just recently went through the same process of comparing Apple and PC.

PC Portable Workstation won.
(Full disclosure: I do have an Mac Mini M1 that can run FCPX and Adobe).

But both on money and performance the PC has:
I9 13th generation processor
16′ Dreamcolor 4K screen
Latest NVIDIA RTX 3500 ADA developed for A.I. with 12GB
128 GB RAM
9TB Internal SSD with space for another 4TB (6,600+ Mbps).
+ I hang a external 2TB Samsung T9 (2,000 Mbps)
And, there is a 5-year next business day swap-out if something goes wrong (not including 80 countries on the watch-list, but still a large part of the land-based part of the planet is covered by that agreement).

I’ve added Blackmagic Resolve Studio to it, and already use an EIZO monitor for grading.

Money for this purchase was not the issue, but this was still more cost-effective than buying an Apple MacBook Pro, or even stationary one.

On the last broadcast job: Edit, vfx, audio mix and substitles, the system exported a 24 minute master to ProRes HQ in just under 5 minutes.

Even in places where all the other editing systems are Mac based, are the producers happy to work on a PC – in all fairness, they only care when something go wrong. And one thing with PPro, is that you can move the project file quicly to another system.

However, Windows 11 is a pain in the preverbial.

The one problem with most Apple products, is that you can not put more Ram or Storage inside it.

Just giving you a different view-point.
But only one person here knows what is best for you, and that is you.

Atb
Mads

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Benjamin.

There is a handy guide here:
https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/premiere-pro/using/copy-consolidate-transcode-archive-project.html

Although, transcoding footage into smaller files is something that I avoid doing.
Really depends on the future of your project, and whether you’ll return to it.

Atb
Mads

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Craig,

I have just recently captured a 20-year old Broadcast Master from 4:3 PAL Betacam SP.

Client needs it to be full screen in HD (16:9).

To get it to full screen I went through a few passes, including noise reduction, and then upscaling + a bit more. What worked best for me was exporting out of Premiere Pro to ProRes HQ, then into Topaz A.I. for processing.

Have to add that it is a sit-down interview, so not a lot of fast movement.
That project is still going.
But it lead to a test on an old news interview from 1998, with banding and tape-dropouts. To remove those I used BorisFX Continuum, which worked really well. But there is always a trade-off when trying to remove parts of a “broken” image.

Just one example of doing it.

Atb
Mads

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Pawel,

You are very welcome.

There is always a danger of overthinking these transfers between different Post-Production units.

The edl is really only good for them to see where the picture edit falls, and as it normally comes without any major VFX changes included, then it is a dumb as goes.
It is highly unlikely that the ProTools facility will want to auto-conform to your basic edl.
But do listen to their needs, as they have to work with it.

I don’t know what your project is, or if the ProTools facility are adding sound like Foley to the final mix. But the more you try and change the locked edit to make one facility happy (the one that you are handing over), the more likely it is that everybody will be upset with you.

If this is a big project, with multiple stakeholders, there are every chance that your edit will be re-opened, and you will need to put everything back to an earlier version of the sequence to make that change. At which point the ProTools people on their pick-up, might have to spend a day just trying to find out where everything has gone.

Keep it simple – your edl only have max 4 audio tracks, so that is what you will give them.
If they want more, they can ask for it.
You could also throw in an XML – but the AAF is the best you can give the audio-mix, with a video-file that the can check sync on.

BUT DO NOT REARRANGE YOUR TIMELINE!
As this will potentially cause alot of pain later, or shortly.

Hope that this is helpful.

Atb
Mads

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

DropBox is a pain in the preverbial when working on large scale projects.
Constantly had it conspiring with FCPX to download random files from a client’s very large DropBox folder (We are talking PBs, not TBs..!).
And when you put them back to be in the cloud only, DropBox would keep those files on my Mac SSD for three days in secret location as temp-files type files.

DropBox support was excellent to give me a fix. But a button on the interface could have resolved it.
Yes, to keeping your working Library well away from DropBox, and have it on your local drive.

Atb
Mads

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Gabriel,

The Samsung T5, T7 and T9 portable SSD drives do not come in 3TB versions.

And the addition of the Samsung 4TB versions are very new – I have purchased a bunch of them, and they appear to be happy.

SanDisk on the other hand, is a product that you’ll want to Google before purchasing.
One article from August this year:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/sandisk-extreme-ssds-are-worthless-multiple-lawsuits-against-wd-say/

Having said that, I regret Googling Samsung just now – but then my old T5 SSD is still happy, so I’ll continue to work with it.

Atb
Mads

EDIT: Neil “beat” me to it, but is absolutely right in that Samsung brought out a firmware upgrade, whereas the SanDisk reportedly lost the data with no option for rescue.

arstechnica.com

SanDisk Extreme SSDs are “worthless,” multiple lawsuits against WD say

Ars cited in two SanDisk SSD failure lawsuits filed yesterday.

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Bob,

You can come across to Premiere Pro from Vegas, but the question is whether is will make a difference to what you want to do?

Yes, you are likely to find that you can do vastly more in a combination of Premiere Pro and After Effects, but you are also on a steep learning curve.
Adobe CC is available with good rates for students and/or you have the option of a month only subscription. But you still need to either buy or do a month on Boris FX too.

Out of interest, have tried the free stand-alone version of Particle Illusion?
That might generate the particles that you want and import to Vegas.
Looking up the latest version, you should be able to make particles interact with a “logo” (text).
https://borisfx.com/products/particle-illusion/

The other alternative is Blender, which can also do text to particles. Here you should be able to import video or animated still-frames to Vegas. (free + if on Windows, it can be found as an windows app for download)
Plenty of tutorials to choose from, including:
https://youtu.be/Kih9djbvvKE?si=Z_s6DDGr1doYeTVd

Hope that this helps.

Atb
Mads

borisfx.com

Particle Illusion Fast & Easy To Use 3D Particles Generator | Boris FX

Particle Illusion is an easy-to-use, powerful, high-end particle generator that gives editors and artists instant access to photorealistic particle effects for motion graphics, visual effects, titles, lower thirds, and background graphics.

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Pawel,

A bit concerned that your ProTools facility are asking for an old fashioned edl!?

There are 3 simple things for you to do:

1)
Insert a 1 frame white Sync/Blob in front of sequence and cover all audio-tracks with it too – this is the good old fashioned way of delivering audio + the ProTools engineer will be confident that they are in sync. And, they can check the track up against the other deliverables.

2)
Export 1 x MP4 with mixed audio (Stereo) and Burned In TimeCode so they have a reference.

Export 1 x ISO Wav file of each audio track on your time-line. Make sure that the files are appropriatedly named. Do not call them Peter 1, 2, 3 and so forth. Instead something relevant to the mix like V.O., Dialogue, Nat, SFX, Music – you get the idea.

3)

Export a AAF that comes with media, Maybe do a small test to make sure that your ProTools facility can read them.
There is more info on how to do that here:
https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/premiere-pro/using/export-aaf-files.html

Please note that the AAF file can be quite big.

Hope that this helps.

Atb
Mads