[Mark Laslo]

Have you tried rendering those sections? I’ve had issues where things will seem slightly out of sync until a render.

[Mark Laslo]

Hey Tom

I’m having a similar issue. Did you find any solution?

Thanks,

Mark

[Mark Laslo]

How many audio tracks do you have in your project? I believe the default settings only allow for 8 tracks of audio to be played in real-time. If you are at 8 or more tracks check user preferences and change the option “Real-Time Audio Mixing” to a higher number. Most newer computers can support a large number, I rarely work with more 4 tracks with a max being 8, so mine is set to 16 just in case a larger project comes along.

Hope that helps,

Mark

[Mark Laslo]

Hi Walter,

I wanted to get your opinion on a system that I use. I keep the project file with all the source media on a media drive, but I have autosave set to make a copy of the project every 5 minutes with the autosave library located on the system drive. I also have time capsule back up ever hour so technically most of the autosave files and the original project files are backed up to the timecapsule as well.

I’ve found this prevents me from losing the media and the project files in almost any circumstance.

Thoughts?

Thanks,

Mark

[Mark Laslo]

Steve,

Thanks for the reply and I will check out the keyframe option.

As far as safe title zone – when I am working for the web there is no clipping that is experienced when using a traditional TV so it seems to me that the there is therefore excessive headroom and space below the title if using TV screen safe. Would you recommend accounting for this and then cropping during the final export for web?

[Mark Laslo]

Bret thanks for your response.

Here is the settings I’m using in compressor

File Extension: mov
Estimated size: 322.56 MB/hour of source
Audio Encoder
AAC, Stereo (L R), 48.000 kHz
Video Encoder
Format: QT
Width: (100% of source)
Height: (100% of source)
Pixel aspect ratio: Default
Crop: None
Padding: None
Frame rate: 29.97
Frame Controls: Automatically selected: Off
Codec Type: H.264
Multi-pass: On, frame reorder: On
Pixel depth: 24
Spatial quality: 75
Min. Spatial quality: 25
Temporal quality: 50
Min. temporal quality: 25
Average data rate: 0.717 (Mbps)
Maximum data rate: 0.717 (Mbps)
Hinted for QuickTime
streaming server

I’ve been using a similar version except it’s been converting my 720p prores to 640×360 for our website and we’ve had no issues so I’m confused why I would be getting all this distortion when converting the DV file.

There are some issues coming out of FCP with the graphics – we have a semi-transparent logo in the corner that gets slightly distorted which is why I was wondering if it would make sense (or if it was even possible) to convert to ProRes so at least the graphics would be clean. My biggest concern however is making sure the video doesn’t get increasingly blurry or gain artifacts during the transcode.

Thanks,

Mark

[Mark Laslo]

Thank you for your reply,

The problem I’m running into is that the footage looks fine in FCP but when it gets converted to h.264 I get artifacing and distortion especially around the cross dissolves. I understand that I can’t make the footage any sharper, but I was hoping that I could change a sequence setting to atleast get the graphics to be sharper and maybe prevent this distortion from happening during the conversion process.

Sorry if i wasn’t clear in my original post – I think i gave too much detail.

Thanks,

Mark

[Mark Laslo]

HI Austin,

Your best bet as far as I know is to create an alpha channel through the actions tab in photoshop. The steps are as follows

1) Create your graphic with a transparent background in photoshop
2) Hide all layers you don’t want visible in the final graphic
3) In the Actions tab navigate to “Video Actions” and select “Alpha Channel from Visible Layers” (use inverted if working in Avid) – If you don’t have the action tab go to Window –> Actions
4) Save your image as a PNG, TIF, or you can import the PSD file into FCP (though all the layers will follow). JPG does not support transparency.

You should be all set. Just note that if you change something in your graphic you have to delete the Alpha Channel and run the action again.

[Mark Laslo]

Thanks all for the recommendations and health concerns.

I’ll admit I’m probably already in trouble in that field from listening to loud music and even louder concerts. It is definitely something I will take into consideration.

I’m glad to know a lot of you use these in the field as well as it will allow these headphones to serve double function when at work. I’ll let you know how I make out and what I decide upon later on. Any other recommendations before I start my shopping?

Thanks,

Mark

[Mark Laslo]

Hi Declan,

It sounds to me like the problem is with your HD footage. When I work with 720 30p ProRes 422 from the HMC 150 it works out to about 1 GB for every 2 minutes of footage. From testing I believe 1080i was about 1 GB per minute.

[Declan Smith] “If I had the time, I would do it again, but it takes two hours to render this thing out.”

Unless you used a lot of effects in your piece it sounds to me like your footage doesn’t match the sequence. Check the HD footage and make sure it’s not in the H.264 codec or another compressed HD codec. With no effects I can’t imagine this long of a render time.

I hope that helps.

Mark