[Mark Suszko]

Fifty bucks is a “sweet spot” for me regarding things like templates and plug-ins. That’s low enough that you just roll it into the cost of one job that needs it, a client’s not likely to complain, if it makes their product awesome, and then you have it available for future jobs.

I’m only sorry I wasn’t able to jump on the discounted price in time, and I have projects in mind that would be well-served with this tool. But they’re home hobby projects, paid out of pocket, so now I’ll have save up for a little while, but this looks way easier to use than the puppet tools in AE.

[Mark Suszko]

Can I do this FCPX upgrade -without- upgrading to Catalina?

[Mark Suszko]

A no-cost option is to change the camera-to-subject distance, change your focal length. But obviously, this isn’t always compatible with the needs of the shot.

Have you tried “de-tuning” the camera sensor at all? Sometimes, an artificial sharpening feature might be left on from another job, make sure that’s off.

[Mark Suszko]

You should check the closet or bench to see if this prompter didn’t originally come with a cheese plate or a sled. That’s usually part of a package, but they may have gotten separated for one reason or another… or left off the original order as a budget move…

If you have to cobble something together, look at the rod systems used for attaching matte boxes to the front of a camera… instead of the matte box, the rod system would just attach to the base of your prompting head. The prompter might use a VESA mount bracket, or a single-point threaded insert with a threaded knob that attaches from the underside. You’re basically playing with erector-set parts… and it’s still fun.

Here’s a couple of sled ideas… this first one looks like it will hold rods from the front end, but I can’t tell for sure from the one photo…

https://www.prompterpeople.com/sled-accessory-for-flex-plus-models/

Another kind… https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1474031-REG/vocas_0350_1382_cheese_plate_for_sharp.html

Another kind… maybe more like what I’d want…

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1311220-REG/axler_cp_815_15lws_15mm_cheesplate_with_clamp.html

[Mark Suszko]

Sounds gouda to me!

I’ll be looking at cheese plates over by Craft Services.

[Mark Suszko]

A system of rods would normally be used to hold that prompter head. The rods need some way to attach to the base plate. Zacuto is one supplier that offers a plethora of this kind of stuff.

https://www.zacuto.com/vct-baseplate

Another way to do this is to buy what’s called a “cheese grater plate”… a piece of billet steel or aluminum that has had a series of holes drilled and tapped into it, such that it looks like… well, a cheese grater. You place that in a “sandwich” between the camera’s base and the quick-release plate of the pan head.

The variety of holes helps you in mounting the camera’s attachment plate , as well as attachments for your prompter head, onto the quick-release of the actual pan head, while being able to adjust the fore-and-aft positioning to achieve balance.

Finding an affordable cheese grater has been a quest of mine for some time now. I even looked into just paying a local metal shop to make one for a custom purpose of mine, but it’s too small a job to get them interested. If you know a teenager taking metal shop, though, this could be a goldmine opportunity, since they need practice drilling and tapping holes in metal plates all the time. Win-win!

Some prompter companies offer what’s sometimes called a “sled”: a plate that again is the intermediate interface between the pan head and the camera, with attachment points for the prompter head, and the ability to adjust foreword-aft balance point. Sled attached to tripod, prompter connects to the front, dedicated quick-release on the top for the camera.

Some sleds can only work with one associated prompter head system. Others are kind of “agnostic” and will accommodate a lot of options.

[Mark Suszko]

How about this one: the client told us all our dubs were “defective”, because they had no audio.
I run over there and find that someone had patched stereo and mono cords wrong on their machine, using some jank adapters and cords from a dollar store, and phase cancellation was muting the audio output. I re-connected the cables to their proper positions, set the stereo/mono switch, and our dubs now sound fine. I go home feeling pretty good.

Then they call me back to say I’ve”broken” their machine.
I run back to see what’s wrong now… The guy who owned the machine was mad because he came back and couldn’t hear whatever he’d been watching; the crazy way he originally patched the stereo/ mono audio into his monitor was the only way he could hear the sound, on whatever programming he usually watched on this system. I didn’t want to ask what that was. By connecting the cables and configuring the deck’s audio outputs to the conventional setup, I’d made his home-made media unlistenable.

Then there was the high level administrator who asked me to show her how to play an mpeg4 file off of a thumb drive attached to her PC so she could approve my work… Went looking for her media player, there wasn’t one installed. So I suggested we go to the inter-webs and download a player app, in this case, VLC.

So I ask her to do a web search for the player so we can download that.

…And she opens a blank Word document.

Sit down for this…

instead of using a web browser, she did all her web browsing by manually typing a URL into a blank word document, waiting for Word to turn that into hyperlink, then clicking the hyperlink. Then after viewing the web page, she’d close the window and trash the document.

I (redacted) you not.

I explained that it would be more efficient if she’d just use Internet Explorer. She had no idea what that was. She was familiar with Explorer as related to the file system, but not as a browser.

About an hour later, finally was able to play the video for her.

They do not pay IT help desk people enough money.

[Mark Suszko]

When you set the properties of the source clips, there’s I think an option on the scaling – i know FCPX does this, and I think PPro might too – that tells the NLE you want everything scaled to fill the frame size… or not. If you’re planning to make moves on these stills, you definitely want the “fill to frame” or whatever they call that option – turned off, right from the outset. The once your clips are nested into a container, you can do the XYZ moves and scaling you need on a global basis.

[Mark Suszko]

H.265 is more recent and offers the same or better quality at half the bandwidth/file size. It’s great for streaming from a bonded cellular system, for example.

But the installed base of suitable players for it out in the wild is still relatively small. If you’re looking for maximum potential playability on unknown local equipment, right now I think your two best options are mpeg4 and high-data rate mpeg-2.

And maybe bundle a copy of VLC Player for mac and windows with the memory stick:-)

[Mark Suszko]

You can make that 2 gig Mpeg 4 file still smaller by adjusting the date rate down when you compress the render, but there’s always going to be a a quality/size trade-off involved.

You might also want to look at the audio encoding when you compress because, if you’re not actually going to be feeding a 5.1 surround system, you can slim down the file size of the audio as well.