[Martin Curtis]

I had to rotate my screen 180° in order to read it.

[Martin Curtis]

I don’t have Keynote handy to check, but first thing you’d need is to export the animation in a codec with an actual alpha channel. What comes to mind is Animation or ProRes 4444.

Just for kicks, I’d try putting, say, a green background on the animation and keying it out. I’m no expert in these things, but I’d have a go at that.

[Martin Curtis]

[Kevin Ryan] “I believe corporate production will be completely dedicated to internet/intranet.
“

I’m sick of little silver/purple spinning discs.

[Kevin Ryan] “High production value will become less important. The message will be short and sweet.
“
That’s important now, yet people still insist on “can ya film my riveting 2 hour PPT presentation – it’s so great everyone will want a copy”.

[Martin Curtis]

Creating or separating stereo pairs.

[Martin Curtis]

[Mark Suszko] “Surgical videos are an obvious case where higher resolution is what you want and need.
“

Agreed and since this one will be ENT (small surgical area, need to get in close) I’ll probably use my little Canon HFS10 in 1080. This is only my second go at surgical videos in OT so I am learning as I go. Lucky I have a strong stomach.

[Martin Curtis]

I’m in the same boat and I’m still using SD for much the same reasons: 1 DV camera and 1 HDV camera, 2 iMacs with never enough space, 1 Panasonic CRT monitor, delivery on DVD or intranet and I have never seen a BluRay player (in order to get HD out of one you have to go HDMI and none of our projectors have that), material that mostly doesn’t benefit from HD, material that will be outdated next year – never mind next decade.

I’d love to do HD, but that would involve replacing basically … everything. “Clients” don’t pay me or my unit.

I did see some sweet surgical videos shot in HD by Greg Ondera. I do have a surgical series coming up. Hmmm…

[Martin Curtis]

Amongst its many talents, MPEG Streamclip exposes all the settings that QT Pro has, it just puts them right in front of your face so they’re really easy to see.

I use it for batch converting anything (with Perian’s help) to WMVs every day. In my dock I have Finder, FCP, then MPEG Streamclip.

For WMVs, I find the preset “Presentation, High” to give good results with not much pain. As others have pointed out, that odd size may cause problems.

[Martin Curtis]

While the frame size suggests HDV, it seems to have been re-encoded using H.264. Is it a BluRay? I’ve had zero experience with BR, but the “BDAV” suggests that’s what the files are.

I’ll start looking for a surgeon to sort out my “mumps”. Recommend any? 🙂

[Martin Curtis]

If it’s MTS or M2T, try something like Clip Wrap. Clip Wrap has two functions:

• It can simply put a QuickTime wrapper around the files or
• It can re-wrap and transcode to ProRes (and others)

HTH.

[Martin Curtis]

[Andy Crowson] “Can I use FCP6 Pro to put an image into a static text title, modifying its size,”

Yes. Place your white background on V1, your Black Text on V2 and the image on V3. Double click the image clip in your timeline to load it in the viewer, resize it either in the motion tab or using the wireframe.

[Andy Crowson] “Would it be better done in Photoshop?”
No. Doing it this way lets you edit the text really easily and move the image as needed.

[Andy Crowson] “Also, what format should the image be in (I’ve been given them in pdf format, which I don’t think is going to work…) “
JPEG, PNG or PDF all work. I think PSDs have to be the same size as your frame size. Unless you need a graphic with the background knocked out, you won’t need Photoshop

If all else fails, open something in Preview and take a screenshot. You can even open a PDF in Preview, select it using the Select tool, Copy and create a new document using New From Clipboard and saving that as a PNG.

Finally, if $$ are an issue, Photoshop Elements does plenty and costs a lot less that PS.