[Mark Suszko]

The answer here is to track the footage and apply a patch to it, or paint it out, one frame at a time. I’ve done it both ways and tracking is going to be easier. I’m not going to tell you to dump seven. I will tell you to go buy Apple Motion. It’s cheap and will turbo-charge everything you are doing in seven. It as an easy to use tracker that will track the dust spot from frame to frame and let you apply a patch a few pixels wide to that spot.

If you ae a glutton for drudgery work, you could do everything in seven. How I’d do it back then was, Make a second identical video track. Offset it in time by maybe 1 or 2 frames. Apply the multi-point or shape mask tool to the dust spot area, tight as a you can, but feather the edge of the mask to blend it into to the layer below. Because the track below is a frame or too off, it is exposing clean pixels from almost the same region. If the subject isn’t moving too much, this could work fo ra very short shot. I had to do the same thing to get rid of a shmutz in someone’s hair.

The other way I used to do it was to export the frames of the shot as a “frame movie” of stills and bring that into photoshop, where I’d hand-airbrush each frame. Export the altered frame movie back out and drop it back over the original layer. You need zen master patience and the ability to stay focused fora long time, to do “roto” work like this. If time = money to you, upgrade… or buy Motion. or get Resolve, which is free, and it has these tools as well as a tracker. Some folks say it feels a lot like what Seven’s next upgrade would have been.

[Mark Suszko]

My friend Larry Jordan does a lot of specific FCPX tutorials online, including on good keying. You can find some of his lessons free online; others, available inexpensively at Larry’s web site. Others here will probably mention additional video tutorials they like as well.

[Mark Suszko]

The video’s not bad, it could be tightened-up in the editing and narration, the wording could be more active voice.

This looks like something that could be 3-d printed in sections to make as long a stalk as one wants. But I may see a design problem in that you’re putting all the weight and leverage of the system on these independent screws, tightened by hand or fingers… the screw hinges at the base and lower units are taking a heavy load – and holding it only by friction. This is a place where splined rods or some kind of built-in adjustable hooks and latches, based on zip-tie teeth, might help.

I tried imagining your design scaled up to a floor lamp scale, either with a handful of large modules, or a snakier thin one with many modules. I think it would need a thin guitar string or piano wire running along the curve to hold it together in tension, or it will want to just snap and fall over at one of the hinges when the grip fails.

Have you thought about pitching these, scaled-up, as prop stage lighting? I’ve seen weirder things at a Peter Gabriel concert.

[Mark Suszko]

What I find with a lot of people starting out in green screen keying is, they throw the shots into the keyer without first grading them, and that’s a recipe for trouble. Your first step in editing the key is to color balance the footage against an actual scope (turn on scopes in FCPX).

When I shoot greenscreen I bring a MacBeth color chip chart along to shoot thru the lens; built-in camera bars don’t relate to the actual scene and lighting. Bring a color bar chart to the next shoot and you’ll see a huge difference when you adjust to that reference in post.

Get the whites at 100 and the blacks at zero or seven point five IRE units. Adjust the mid-tones until they look good and still retain detail. Look at the saturation and skin tone ranges. I like my greenscreens to peak at around 80-90 IRE and be well-saturated. Saturation is actually more important than brightness but evenness is most important over all.

Only now are you ready to try the keyer.

FCPX does have additional greenscreen tools in it. You’ll want to play with light wrap settings and the greenscreen compensation which applies an artificial magenta backlight – that works, sometimes.

I’m unaware of what you’re shooting on, but in the FCPX inspector, make sure you have “spacial conform” set to “none”. Now you’re working with the full native pixels you shot.

[Mark Suszko]

I’m curious about what you’re doing – it sounds like you’re doing stop-motion animation. Is that the case? Adding dissolves is kind of a round-about way to do it. We can probably com up with a better workflow for you that is more efficient and fast and gets you the look you need.

[Mark Suszko]

I’ll buy your drinks Bob; you can pay me back with BTS stories:-)

[Mark Suszko]

That’s high praise, thanks Ron. I have to admit, while I think I can sing a little, I’m the worst player by far in my club AND my bands, I can’t pick yet for beans – but my secret is, I surround myself with the ukulele equivalent of The Wrecking Crew, and THEY make me sound better.

The lead on our cover of “Something, is my Friend and bandmate Roger; I’m playing rhythm, there’s a U-bass and 2-3 other soprano ukes also strumming rhythm and singing background harmonies. That was recorded on just an iPhone on my music stand – I had a good feeling about the song after one warm-up take, and I caught lightning in a bottle. The others at the party had no idea until after I played it back.

[Mark Suszko]

Bob, I only play 4 strings:-) Actually the next one on my wish list is either a Seagull electric uke or Eastman Archtop.

I have a youtube video up with the Jazzmaster right now and it is here:

https://youtu.be/zZDB_yt6E8c

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[Mark Suszko]

Lot of great suggestions already. Mine is, if there are multiple people in different locations, use skype and headphones or a hardline phone to conduct the conversation, but have each remote participant record themselves locally on something like a Teac or Zoom audio recorder, (inexpensive, mailable to people that don’t have one) then FTP you their locally grabbed audio files. You can hand-align them, but FCP or Premiere I know will automatically align all the tracks by waveform for you, then you can run thru to edit, sweeten, and do mixing, etc. and this will sound like you’re all in NPR Studio B.

[Mark Suszko]

That’s high praise from a former KISS crew member, thanks. You missed my other band; BB Ross and the Happy Accidents. This was from a jam party: I had just taught them the song and this was all one unrehearsed take. https://youtu.be/EL2k9c31NKE

Last one, I promise (for today)… again, first take, they’d never heard the song before, I taught them the chord progression and let it rip. https://youtu.be/39PILbegLlU

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