[Matthew Abourezk]

Hi David,

Since this is to be a web video for kashi, I am monitoring in the canvas. Keep in mind that I have dropped the DVCPRO HD 16:9 footage into a Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) timeline at 4:3. This means that any clip I drop into the timeline needs to be rendered.

When the playhead is sitting, the footage is saturated and beautiful. When the playhead is moving, the footage is unsaturated and the colors shift a bit. Exported movies all have the same bland color saturation as in the canvas.

The sequence settings are as follows:
General Tab> Frame size 640 x 480 NTSC 4:3, Quicktime Video Settings are Apple ProRes 422 HQ with Quality set to 100%.
Video Processing Tab> I have tried all of the sequence precision rendering options (RGB, 8 bit YUV, and the 10 bit options. All look the same.
Render Control Tab> everything at 100%, Codec set to “Same as sequence codec”, Always use Best Quality when rendering movies” is checked.

The RT Tab in the timeline is set to Full Quality playback.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks a bunch.
Matt

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617

[Matthew Abourezk]

Wow…. okay then…
I have been on a shoot in Scotland for the past 8 days and had no internet access. Interesting to see how this thread has unfolded. Somehow Bob and a few others has painted me as specifically looking for an “$800 piece of crap”.

Reading through some of the posts in this thread are actually quite funny. I got a kick out of how quickly the intent of this thread spun out of control. But unfortunately, the bottom line is, it really got out of control.

Bob… count to ten dude. I’m guessing that you have high blood pressure, make sure you take your meds.

Jeff… you defend Bob’s aggressive attitude then tell me to lighten up?…. hmmm…

Anyway, I am not logging on to continue with the silly arguments, I am only logging on to address those of you who actually tried to help. Thank you for your help.

I am absolutely not trying to buy crap, I am trying to find answers to questions as fast as possible (because I have a lot of tight deadlines) by leveraging the experience of those who are farther down the road that I am on. If any of you truly think that I am doing something wrong by asking for help IN A FORUM, you need to ask yourself why you are in this forum to begin with.

As a matter of fact… why are ANY of us in this forum? It has been suggested that I should do a google search rather than ask questions in this forum… hmmm… Seems like a google search would lead me directly to this forum. But that is a conversation for another time.

As I said before, I find myself in a difficult situation, in a panic due to four projects that are stacked, and in need of quick help. No different than many or most of you that have posted in these forums.

Maybe Bob gets a free pass from those of you who are accustomed to him being an ass, but that doesn’t mean it is okay for him to rant and make accusations toward those that are here to find some level of assistance.

I clearly stated in my second post that it appears to me that I might need to pony up the cash for a true HD monitor, and somehow that caused Bob to go ballistic. Since that point, it seems as if my original intent has taken off on a tangent, mislead by Bob.

Anyway, I seem to be heading into argumentative mode so I will stop myself.

Thanks again to those of you who shared your experiences, your help is greatly appreciated.

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617

[Matthew Abourezk]

Joey,

Thanks for the info. Much appreciated.

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617

[Matthew Abourezk]

Yo, Bob,

It is good that you are working your ass off. I am doing the same. 18 hour days are getting the best of me, and I just tried to take a shortcut and ask for what was essentially a review by you as to why you suggested the equipment that you mentioned. Do you read reviews about equipment? If so, does that mean you should get out of the business because you are lazy? Not at all. It means you are smart to get the input of others who have used the equipment. My guess is that you do not just buy a piece of equipment after having read the manufacturers specs, that would be dumb. And although you need to learn a lot about being polite, you don’t seem dumb.

All I was asking for was your input about what the benefits were of the equipment you mentioned.

I was making a joke about falling asleep with my eyes open…. relax buddy, we are all in the same boat. Maybe time for you to take a vacation eh?

Regarding me getting out of the business…. uhhh… I’ll bet you a thousand dollars that I made more money from HD this year than you did, even though I am still learning about the hardware to drive it all. I am an expert FCP editor, I was an engineer for Apple’s Mac OS Engineering team for four years, and have been shooting professional video for 18 years.

One thing I have learned in all of those years is that a little bit of knowledge goes a looooong ways, but being a jerk to those around you will cut your career short.

Puh.. puhh puhhhlease don’t bother responding to this thread anymore, your input is not appreciated, or respected.

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617

[Matthew Abourezk]

Thanks Bob,
I appreciate your input. As I mentioned, the world of HD is new to me and I am having to ramp up quickly. Quite an alphabet soup.

I started looking up the equipment you told me about, and I think I fell asleep with my eyes open. Not out of boredom, but out of confusion.

If it isn’t too much trouble, could you give me a sentence about why these pieces of hardware exist and what benefits (besides just converting my Apple cinema display) these would give me? On the surface, it seems like I shouldn’t bother paying out $2,000 to convert the signal to a $1,000 computer monitor… maybe I should just pony up the $2,700 for a regular HD monitor???

I know I am missing something here… but I don’t know what I don’t know. (Like maybe I don’t know that there is no way to output an HD signal from my computer to an HD monitor without installing one of the cards you mentioned?)

Thanks Bob.
Matt

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617

[Matthew Abourezk]

lol Jeremy, that was funny as heck. I needed a good laugh…. been a long day.

Thanks for the information, MUCH appreciated.

I will probably end up doing just what you suggested.

wait… if the remote solution doesn’t work well, can I bill you for my extra time in post? Works both ways.. no?

Thanks again Jeremy, I really appreciate you taking the time to spell it out for me.
Matt

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617

[Matthew Abourezk]

Hey Jeremy,
Thanks for the reply. No, as I said in my previous post, I think the girls are going to stop and start a lot. That is my biggest concern. I shot six of these videos for this group a while ago and it took three editors six months to edit because we didn’t have time code sync. I am not going to make that mistake again. I was amazed at how much trouble a frame or two out of sync could be. Keep in mind, this is not a music video or a typical dialog edit where you have freedom to fudge things a little. This is a workout video where the viewer is doing high speed step aerobics with the video. A frame or two out of sync from one edit to the next means that suddenly the person exercising to the video is slightly off.

Here is what I learned…. (I’m trying to be a bit festive)
Exercise Music sounds like this = Thump…Thump…Thump…Thump…Thump…Thump…Thump…
oops, the girls made a mistake, CUT!! back up the tape… start music… Thump…Thump…Thump…Thump…Thump…Thump…Thump… etc…..
Now YOU try to figure out which thump is the right one to manually sync to the music.
I learned this the hard way.

I talked to an owner of a HVX-200, who is my audio man on the next shoot. He said that he runs a tc signal into one of the unused audio tracks. I have no knowledge of how this works so I have to take his word for it.
Still open to suggestions as to how to sync the cameras…

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617

[Matthew Abourezk]

argh…. I am running into a nasty, vile, unacceptable problem with the render files. Not sure if this is the same problem you are referring to but it sounds like it might be. I have an elaborate graphically heavy video that is pretty much complete (3 months worth of editing). I have as many as 16 tracks of video (flying graphics) and I started nesting tracks, sometimes to affect a group of items in unison, other times just to clean up the main sequence. Suddenly I started getting a problem where the Audio track would randomly decide that it needed rendering, even when there was no indication of rendering needed, and with only a few tracks of audio in the timeline. (Real time audio set to 8 tracks). I never had to nest the audio tracks since there was only a music bed and a 48khz narrative track. This problem would show up randomly, even when I was not doing anything with the audio tracks. I would go to render a small video segment which would only take a few second, then I would notice that the render dialog would say it was rendering audio and that it would take as much as 10 hours to do so. What I eventually learned (the hard way) was that the erroneous audio render was re-writing the audio tracks (which were not nested) and slipping the audio signal by as much as a few minutes. Even worse was when it would slip the audio by just a few frames. The funny thing is, after the audio render would screw up a segment of a song or the narrative, the waveform in the audio track still showed the correct placement of the audio signal….

This caused me to have to watch the project about a hundred extra times to make sure that nothing new had happened.

The other interesting thing is, I eventually mixed down the audio to a stereo track, and once in a while it would still slip a few frames (or up to a few minutes) starting from the beginning of the audio track.

I tried everything, including tossing all render files, pitching the preferences, etc…..

This is a totally unacceptable problem that needs to be addressed immediately by Apple.
I have posted a bug notice to the FCP Apple feedback page, I suggest that anyone else who is affected by this does the same.

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617

[Matthew Abourezk]

Hi Alan,

I have resolved a huge portion of the problem. I was watching a tutorial on text manipulation in FCP. The host talked about issues with blocky text and how to fix them. He also talked about combining HD and SD footage into an SD timeline.

The light went on in my head, so I tried some of his text manipulation suggestions on my keyed greenscreen footage and the difference was dramatic and immediate.

Here is what I did…
1 )In the Motion Tab of your clip viewer…. Check the scale, and coordinates. Make sure they are all even WHOLE numbers, nothing goes after the decimal point. (I.e. if the center of your image is 13.88, change it to 14, if the scale is 25.69, change it to 26… etc.

2) If you are mixing hd and sd footage, double-click your blocky clip to open it in the viewer, go to the motion tab again, go to the Distort item. Make sure your distortion is set properly. for example, If you are compositing hd (720) in a NTSC DV (3:2) sequence, you should set the distortion of the HD clip to -33.33. This will give you the proper height and width.

In my case, I had shot some of the footage with the HD camera on its side, this allowed me to do full height shots of the woman (host), giving me a lot of editing, cropping, and zoom options in post. For the shots that I turned the camera on its side, I needed to adjust the distortion to -66.66. For the shots where I used the camera normally, I needed to adjust the distortion to -33.33.

Hope this helps.
Matt

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617

[Matthew Abourezk]

Hi Arnie,

That is why they are double the DV size. I am flying things all over the place and I need to be able to zoom in on the graphics.

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617