[Mark Suszko]

Do you have real scopes? Waveform monitor and vectorscopes, I mean? What is your experience in using them? If none, google up some how-to’s as a start, it is a dense topic and one already well-covered.

[Mark Suszko]

You often start with the thing assembled and then take it apart, then just run that in reverse. In 3-d CGI apps it is really easy to set up keyframed motion paths for every individual object. Start with it assembled, copy-paste the same setup keyfram to the end of the timeline, go back to the beginning of the timeline, grab each item and drag or otherwise position it to taste, render.
Parts then fly into place at whatever rate you’ve set.

For really complicated stuff, there are additional tricks. You wouldn’t want to keyframe every particle of glass in an exploding windshield, for example, maybe just one or two important ones, so a procedural animation or specialized plug-in applies physics laws to the group of items and makes up it’s own keyframing for you, for each piece, out of millions of calculations and algorithms. That’s stuff I have not played with yet, I am just beginning to dabble with particle systems.

[Mark Suszko]

Se Eran Stern’s “Digits Man” tutorial on the COW, maybe that will help. His is with AMtrix styles numbers, but imagine using somethign else adn amyeb the same technique will work for you.

[Mark Suszko]

Can you give some more detail, i.e. specific system, software, apps?

[Mark Suszko]

Thanks, Walter. Any final details in that regard?

[Mark Suszko]

How picky you are is partly a function of your finances, age, and how free your life is. Young bachelors and bachelorettes with few attachments or debts can try the most variety of things with fewer consequences if they stumble. If you’re older, with more responsibilities and ties, you should focus on things that best align with the path and goals you’ve figured out you want.

But who’s to say you wouldn’t love some detour you stumble upon and make that the new goal? I thought my career out of school was going to be news broadcasting or working in advertising agencies somewhere, but after a short stint as a freelancer and corporate guy, I wound up in government doing public service work… where essentialy I do news and make advertising, but from the client side.

This is a hard time in the business, with economic trials, an oversupply of talented people and a shrinking pool of jobs… in the conventional areas. On the entrepreneurial side, in the New Media areas, and in niche markets, opportunities may be sweeter. If I was just starting out now, I’d find a niche market where I’ve built up expertise, find a need that’s not being filled, and exploit the heck out it, probably thru direct marketing and the internet.

You may have such an opportunity right in front of you with your current gig as a springboard. Ever think about making some salable products for use by churches?

[Mark Suszko]

Australia’s copyright laws are, if anything, more barbaric and restrictive than America’s, even if you add in the free trade agreement modifications I think you’re refering to.

But where the folks from Down Under so far has us beat all to heck is, they have THIS:

https://www.apra-amcos.com.au/MusicConsumers/MakingRecordingsBusinessUse/Videographers.aspx

Pay one reasonable annual fee that you could offset in one or two gigs, use anything (within certain limits) without fear of a black-bag team from the RIAA coming to waterboard you.

This is an exceptionally civilized and sensible approach, and that’s what I was getting at about things we can emulate from the Aussies. It is one-stop shopping and you’re free to use the music creatively without having to secure separate rights in all the categories like mechanical, synch, etc.

We need to champion this idea in the states. I would bet you most event videographers would LOVE the peace of mind they could get from this simple system.

[Mark Suszko]

Now I will not sleep until I know how the trick is done:-(

[Mark Suszko]

People are not necesarily supposed to look in perfect skin tone at all times under those conditions. Sometimes they are meant to have too much of one color on them for effect. Peter Frampton’s hair wasn’t really pink on the cover of “Frampton Comes Alive“. Are you trying to take away too much of what the point of the lighting was about?

[Mark Suszko]

Simply call the station/ broadcaster’s engineering department or traffic department, tell them what you’re doing and ask what their standards are. They may even post them on their web site.

At very least you are going to have to put up proper color bars and tone, a slate with program info on it, and a countdown. If you have final cut, it can automatically generate the bars, tone, slate and countdown for you when you tell it to lay the program to tape.

Permiere does this too.

Or you can build a countdown, its just a string of one-second clips of numbers counting down to the “2-pop”, then Black. The 2-pop means, your count goes like this, 10,09,08,07,06,05,04,03…each of those lasting exactly one second. For number 02, you only make that last 15 frames, a half of a second. It has audio tone for those 15 frames. There IS no 1 or zero.

After that half-second of the “02”, you add in black with silence for one and one half seconds, then the first frame of your video. Technicians use that spot where the “02” disappears with the “bloop” of tone to cue your tapes up with, so than when they press “play”, the switching gear makes a seamless-looking transition to your program from whatever came on ahead of it. Sloppy cuing or inaccurate countdowns often explain why you sometimes see spots “upcut”, or airing missing a second or two of their beginnings, and thus ending a second or so early as well.

A couple things to be careful about: bars on the front of a program countdown are worse than meaningless unless everything in the program and your edit system and recorders is referenced to them at the same levels.

Beginners doing broadcast material for the first time may just drop in a random jpeg of bars in the front of a program while the program itself was shot and set up according to some different-level bars, or none at all.

This is worse than useless to the technicians setting up the program for broadcast, because they calibrate levels and color phase to the first bars and assume they mean something. Same for audio tone. An engineer would rather have to shuttle thru the program and set levels by eye to actual program brights and darks than calibrate to bars that are not in relation to that program. Things like this get your program rejected and sent back for a re-do, which is very bad for you.

Depending on the station and use, they have precise rules for what the time code should read at every point in a show, especially the beginning. Be sure to find out from the station what their particular rules are. They also will almost assuredly require drop-frame time code on the master. They might require closed captioning as well. Ask how they want the audio in terms of channels, mono or stereo or 5.1 surround or SAP for a foreign language track.

If you think this is harsh or complicated now, don’t even try to submit a tape to PBS Boston:-)

Ask, Ask, Ask. There is no shame in not knowing, only in not learning.