[Mark Suszko]

Because nobody is paying me to write:-P

[Mark Suszko]

Ditto Primatte, also use the feature in that same collection in Motion (if you have it) that adds in spill killing correction to the edges. It will add magenta to edges on green screen and yellow to blue screen, to kill spill. Don’t overdo it.

Use garbage mattes so you don’t have to worry about a clean key wall to wall but just around the body and hair.

A trick I have done before on short 30 second spots with troublesome footage is to pull the keys using photoshop. Export>quicktime conversion> sequential stills> targa format to a folder. Open the folder in photoshop, under the tools for the magic wand and selection, use selection by color. You generally only need to do this to the first frame in the stack. If you record the actions and save the action, you can apply that to the entire folder automatically and get something pretty amazing back in minutes. Re-import the stills to your timeline, back in business. Targas contain alpha channel info, at least in 8-bit, you can leave the alpha blank or fill the cut-out with a better overall chromakey color and then do the keying in FCP again… or whatever.

(addendum-dum: you can get in trouble importing the stack of stills two ways: by not using leading zeros, i.e. frame 0001, frame0002, etc, which can put some frames out of order, and by forgetting to set the preference in your import dialogs to a duration of just one frame per still you import.)

Something that happened to me once: We found it impossible to blue screen a lady with blonde hair one time. Asked her if she’d just shampooed and what brand. Some brands add a bluing agent to the soap, it turns out.

Unless specifically using Ultimatte, next time you shoot, use a real gelled backlight on the set to help kill spill contamination and I bet the key will work easier even in DV’s 4:1:1 color space.

[Mark Suszko]

Mary’s problem pretty much describes a similar one I have. One thing I have noticed with mine is the dropped frames problem is worse if you have audio tracks and better or non-existent if there is no audio in my timeline, which makes me think I have something set wrong in where audio is assigned to my external RAID media drive set and scratch drive assignments. I’m still troubleshooting and waiting to do some diagnostics, I don’t dare until the current project I’m working on is approved and moved off the drives. Never do high-level maintenance or system repair work in mid-project unless it is absolutely borked and will not work at all or if you also like playing chicken with freight trains. Long as it is still working, even thoguh shaky, I’m going to just hang on and stick with it as-is until the project is signed off and archived off the system.

I turned off the warning for dropped frames and this lets me continue to keep working, then I mark the in and out of the whole timeline, render that out, and it is clean and plays clean using Preview, plays out to tape fine that way and burns to DVD fine.

My system is brand new with several gigs of ram, and a terabyte of RAID space. Which doesn’t mean there may not be something wrong with the system drive anyhow, but my guess is, with an octo-core, large RAID and plentiful RAM, the issue on mine is pilot error on my file structure and where things are being put. Hopefully next week I nuke everything and start from scratch the right way, and all will be well. Other expert opinions right now include suspiction my Aja IO is befuddled with a bad driver. But the AJA is not in charge of rendering my timeline, so I have doubts on that front.

[Mark Suszko]

Again, the bits don’t change, you’re making a digital clone of the file and sending it by firewire. That’s how I’ve always understood it. Unless you do transcoding or rendering, it is the same 25mbs data stream at either end of the chain. This is something that has always been kind of amazing to me, a guy that goes back to the time of analog dubbing.

Then again, I am always stunned and amazed in my grocery store, standing there contemplating a pallet full of ripe bannanas in Illinois in mid-winter, selling for pennies.

“What’s wrong, honey?”

“Contemplating the bannanas again.”

“Oh crap, not again with the bannanas…”

“… Their chain of their existence, the networks and infrastructure and technology that provide them here at their low price, the socio-economic and geo-political and historical aspects of how they end up being here like this, and the implications of those links. When you start to think about all that goes behind this simple banna…”

“I’ll be in the cereal aisle. Don’t forget to pick up the salad dressing”.

[Mark Suszko]

How do you feed the machine? We use SDI to feed into and out of our DVCpro decks, never composite if we can help it. Going SDI, bits are bits, you’re lossless.

[Mark Suszko]

I just want a law that says a decision-maker will fully read and comprehend the Springsteen lyrics to “Born in the USA” before stupidly suggesting it as a $%#%^$ campaign song or 4th of july fireworks backing track.

And there goes my blood pressure again…

[Mark Suszko]

I did a much longer post on this a while back, you might want to dig it up. Short answer: they can be useful, particularly early-on, to get some validation and impress clients, to show your bosses you know what you’re doing and others agree. Also good PR material for promoting the shop and your services. The low entry fee/ pay for the award fi you win it system makes it easier and more cost effective to enter more things moer often. The larger ones are quite legit, you don’t always win just by paying and entering. You compete only with similar level/class efforts, so your local car spot doesn’t go up against Boeing and Universal Studios.

Some folks don’t care a bit for any awards, and that’s okay too.

[Mark Suszko]

In my older version of FCP, I did export>using quicktime conversion> make mpeg 2. Open Apple DVD studio pro, import that asset as separate video and audio files, drag them into the timeline below the graphical display pane; from there you can add an easy menu or make the DVD video “first play”, choose the loop to front feature in the inspector or not, as you like, hit the “burn” button up top, done. Looked okay and went fast.

My new system doesn’t work quite the same way: in FCP I mark the in and out in the FCP timeline, hit Export> quicktime movie> set whatever I want there, but usually leave it the same as the format that’s already on my timeline) and save it to a folder on my video scratch drive. Open DVD Studio Pro, import the .mov, drag that to the graphical layout window, it automatically becomes first play, hit burn, done, and pretty fast too. At no time did I know if Compressor was involved, but so far it hasn’t been used (or missed) in this process. 🙂

Another way to one-off a sample quickly is to feed it to idvd with a drag-and-drop to the iDVD icon in the dock, or the import dialog within iDVD. Less control of settings, because it is designed for consumers and such, and you may not want to fiddle with the fancy premade menu optinos, but easy to do for a quick check or approval copy.

Probably not the best ways to do this, and I’ll get scolded by some authoring expert, but so far it is working for me very well. I made a highly interactive DVD as well as several more common types usign these methods and they look and work well.

[Mark Suszko]

I adore the Canon lenses as a rule, and generally dislike the Fujis, which usually are cheaper, but in past years have been harder for us to get serviced than Canon. Generally I find when a vendor bundles the glass with the camera body, they go with Fujinon. That said, I saw a demo of JVC’s new HDV camcorder which had a very impressive Fujinon lens on it. I think the gap has closed quite a bit, neither maker is a stinker. Might boil down to cost and if you have a good service place for it available in your area. generally, you can’t afford a long wait to get the lens back from servicing.

[Mark Suszko]

When I archive a “done” project, I always try to save off various versions without music, flattened graphics, supers, etc, to make it easier to change some of those things later if needed, without re-doing everything from scratch. Some things like multilayer comps may stil have to be rebuilt and re-rendered, but luckily I have rarely had that kind of problem with my clients. Thank God for SDI lossless transfers!

But I try to make it clear to customers; in the case of a mix-up or typo that I make, I eat the cost to fix it, but if they supplied me the stuff wrong or misspelled, that’s on them, and they have to pay in cash or time for a fix.