[Mark Suszko]

https://youtu.be/0EiHJBvXJ3M

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[Mark Suszko]

I’m probably the wrong guy to ask, having attended nary a single NAB. It was all because it was in Vegas. Anywhere else, I might have talked the admin into subsidizing the occasional trip. When you work for a government department, there’s en extra layer of scrutiny to everything you do, and for decades, our management would not allow us to go to NAB on the public dime for fear of a muck-racking columnist making a cheap shot headline out of it: “your tax dollars wasted on employee junkets to Vegas“. So… we could go… but only if we took vacation time and funded our trips out of pocket. Never could afford that. So actually finding and using the COW back in the day was how I first got to vicariously see and learn about what you folks got to actually experience in the Real. Only without the foot pain, the heat, the crowds getting in the way of you getting a better look. Was I jealous of you all? Yes. Did I still end up learning enough to advise my bosses on future purchases? Yes.

I love the TED talk format for making presentations. I am also a huge fan of Pecha_Kucha Night presentations, which are timed talks linked to 20 powerpoint slides. Each slide is locked in at a 20 second length. 20 slides, 20 seconds each, no stops, no do-overs, no extensions, and you are done. It’s fast, it promotes efficient communication, it’s like presentation haiku, and it’s fun. Check out https://www.pechakucha.com

So, if I was building a portal site for a virtual NAB booth-crawl, I’d standardize the format for maximum info in the minimum time, to say, two minutes of overview and key features. I’d also have a rule that I reject demos made with just a shotgun mic on the camera or phone. This is NAB and you have to have SOME standards. It amazes me how many demos I find on Youtube where an engineer who should know better is demoing with hollow, echoey, off-mic audio.

But I digress..

So, standardized format, short short run time with links to expanded versions. Keyword-searchable, by maker/brand as well as type and function. So If I’m shopping for a switcher I can see all the switcher-related clips in one bunch. Links to a discussion thread for Q&A and detail if you want it.

And I want all the panels open to view, all the keynotes, white paper presentations, round table discussions, no paywalls. NAB is not just the hardware show floor but also the experts talking about the industry and where it is going. That’s the simplest part to share online.

[Mark Suszko]

Can you make it in VR so I can put on a pair of goggles, some too-tight shoes, and watch it on my treadmill? 🙂

[Mark Suszko]

I can imagine holding a virtual NAB show floor right here on the COW. Come on, Tim!

[Mark Suszko]

Why? “Sunk costs fallacy” and FOMO. “dammit, we laid out all that money; we wanna see some return on it”.

With major competitors out, some smaller companies might figure it this way: they get more mind-share of the ones that still attend, and have less competition for their particular products from major rivals.

It’s just a theory.

[Mark Suszko]

Maybe try this: highlight the clip with the effect, right-click, choose “make compound clip”, then try to move the compound clip around with the Transform tool of the x,y, and scale sliders.

[Mark Suszko]

XML sent to you/ hope it does what you need.

Let me walk you thru how I do this, anyway. Excuse the style: I’m writing it in a way that any beginner should be able to follow me, so this helps more people over time.

On video track one is your full program, ending in a full-screen graphic with text. You didn’t send a still of that, so I just grabbed a screen grab and made that a still.

On video track two, above the first track, you will put the track of the talking guy that is going to be turned into a circle, and set the timing of it. At the point of the desired transition, use the blade tool on that track to define where the effect begins. Highlight the half of the clip on the right side of that blade mark.

Next, search the effects bin for “shape mask” (you can type that in the bottom search bar of the effects bin) and drag that onto the highlighted second half of the clip.

Shape Mask defaults to a rounded-corner square, but dragging the little dots on the edge, or using the effect sliders for “radius” and “scale” will make your circular cutout. You can also add feathering here if you like a soft edge. Using the transform tool, drag the now-round window around onto the guy and scale it to taste. Do not set any keyframes yet.

Next, import a white screen. I get these in the “solids” section of the Titler. Drag the white full- screen video into the magnetic timeline and sandwich it *between* the top layer and the bottom layer. Now you’ve got three layers; make the speaking guy clip layer and the white background layer the same length.

Highlight the upper talking guy track again with the “shape mask” circle cutout, hit “copy” in the top drop-down menu, highlight the white track, and go to edit > paste attributes. Click on all the video attributes that need to be copy-pasted into the white clip, and okay it.

It will not look like anything happened yet, because it’s identical in proportion at the beginning and hidden by the guy clip above …until you highlight the white track, go to the “scale” slider of the now-copied shape mask, and expand the scale of the white layer’s mask to taste for a thin or thick edge, and feathering, if desired.

Now you have the effect stuck probably smack dab in the center or close to it. But we want to make it move and scale. We’re going to compound the two tracks, welding them together into one, so we can animate its position and scale.

Highlight the two top tracks, (the guy and the white,) right-click, choose” Make Compound clip”, name it something understandable and the two clips collapse into just one. Now you can move the single compound clip around the frame and scale it. Here’s how we do that:

Set a keyframe on the compound clip for x and y position and scale, go 7-15 frames along and set another one, without changing anything, then go another second down the line and NOW scale and place the compound circle clip with white rim where you need it, in the final desired position, and scale it to taste. FCPX will remember all the changes since keyframing was turned on. I use the transform tool for this alignment process, which is a tiny box-shaped icon to the left of the small timecode display.

Last step: drag and drop to add a dissolve at the point the blade was made. Drop the dissolve on the – non-effected side – of where you bladed everything. Preview the effect; if you did everything right, the centered circle dissolves in, takes a beat, then smoothly moves to final position and size. Because you didn’t move the underlying source, only added a mask, the dissolve transition should be smooth, without any jump-cut effect. it’s dissolving between the un-modified original track and the same track with masks applied over it. Once the transition’s done, the masked part is free to go anywhere.

It appears at large scale and then will fly to the spot you need, reducing in size as it goes. Adjust timing and position keyframes to taste. You could try a wipe or other canned DVE move instead of a dissolve as well, or a straight cut or just keyframe the opacity of the compound clip. You can also spice it up by adding a drop-shadow effect to the compound clip and keyframing its parameters.

What if, instead of a dissolve-into the built circle, you want the circle to close in from a full-frame, like an iris? You do everything the same, but where on the compounded track you want the circle to start contracting-in, keyframe the initial radius value of the shape mask to a much higher number to get it outside the full video frame. The radius slider stops a little short of full-frame, but dragging on the numbers next to the slider will get you there. Just match the starting and ending values and keyframes to the white circle layer’s mask at the same time, to get the border to come along with identical values (except for the scale offset that makes your white rim), and it works – I tested that.

To get under the hood of a compound clip for adjustments, double click it. A very, very tiny little caret symbol next to/ to the left of/ the time code display, will re-collapse it when the adjustments are done.

Highlight the compound clip. Go to file> “save effect video effects preset”. Put it in the effects bin wherever you want. You should now be able to drag and drop that onto any raw video. But I didn’t test that.

[Mark Suszko]

Unfortunately no, but they all work on the same general principles. The AJA KiPros have XLR’s right on the back so I can use analog audio inputs from hardwire or wireless mics or cameras, separate from the embedded audio in the SDI cable from the camera.

If you are using SDI, there will be an internal menu setting regarding how your audio is accepted, which channels, etc. You might need to run an independent mic just to grab the entire room for synching purposes, or grab specific channels from specific cameras or mics or the audio mixing board. You’d have to consult the manual to know how to set it for your specific device.

[Mark Suszko]

Huge hardware convention in Chicago cancelled… college sports teams are dropping away games… Japan took all their schools off line for a month… the Hadj seems like it’s been cancelled this year… Airlines have cancelled new pilot classes, sensing an oncoming glut of pilots with fewer runs to make… Italy is asking people to stop kissing…

The disruption is wider than just our industry.

If I had to make a prediction, it’s going to take a year to get a handle on this health crisis and get prophylaxis and treatment worked out to a point where the general public is no longer in a panic about travel. Travel and hospitality is one of the largest industries in the world and a lot of low income people depend on it for their livelihood. That’s going to to really strain the social safety net.

I’m guessing there will still be an NAB convention next year, though it might be smaller. Or, it might transform into a fleet of smaller shows in major cities, where the vendors come to you, instead of the other way around. It would be cool to have an NAB back in Chicago…

I agree that this situation will provide a stimulus to development of remote editing hardware and software as well as changes in production practices. But it’s only an acceleration of an existing trend.

[Mark Suszko]

Well tell you what; I think you still have my private email. Mail me a 2k still grab or mpeg 4 of 3 seconds of the full-frame shot, and a frame of the targe imaget where it has to end up, andI’ll see if I can whip up the effect and mail it back to you as a “published” effect plug-in. Just for kicks, no money. I wanna see if I can do it.