[Mark Dagostino]

I work on a Mac and occasionally need to encode from PP6 to .wmv. The solution is not to try to convince them to try a better format.It’s a large Corporation in many stated running computes as old as Windows2000. My process is to create an h.264 QuickTime and then run that through Compressor. It works and gives me a lot of flexibility in settings but the Compressor conversion is very slow.

Mark D’Agostino
Video Producer
Creative Media Productions – Exelon
Baltimore, MD
MacPro,2 x 2.66 Ghz Quad Core Intel Xeon, 20GB 1066 Mhz DDR3,NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800

[Mark Dagostino]

Thanks David. I tried nesting because I was having playback problems with my timeline that had up to 5 video tracks. Even after rendering it kept choking, ( before and after my nesting experiment). I turned off the CUDA acceleration so am using Mercury playback software only and that seems to help. My setup = MacPro,2 x 2.66 Ghz Quad Core Intel Xeon, 20GB 1066 Mhz DDR3,NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800. Any thoughts on how I can use CUDA and get smooth playback?

Mark D’Agostino
Video Producer
Creative Media Productions – Exelon
Baltimore, MD
MacPro,2 x 2.66 Ghz Quad Core Intel Xeon, 20GB 1066 Mhz DDR3,NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800

[Mark Dagostino]

I use a DSLR – When appropriate – and more recently the F3 – when appropriate, (it’s a more grown up version of the DSLR:) ). However our workhorse is still the HDX900. When I truly feel shallow depth of field actually advances the marketing strength of the video I’m producing then the DSLR is the choice. All of these are just tools and each has it’s advantages and disadvantages. Recently the F3 died on a shoot. I fortunately packed our 900 and was able to replicate the look of the F3 and complete the shoot. Again, knowledge of how and when to use the tools, but more importantly an understanding of composition and lighting and how they affect a story will always trump the cool technology of the moment. Anyone can “use” a DSLR but a true professional knows when, why and how to make a DSLR work for the client.