[Mike Cohen]

Why would a camera operator own any video recorded on a work for hire project?

Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

[Mike Cohen] “Double click the clip on the sequence to open in course monitor. But then if you change an in or out point, it changes the clip on the sequence. You can right click the clip and select “reveal in project” but not necessarily get to the same in point in the original clip.”

Ok, so the match frame command solves this riddle. Did match frame exist as a function prior to CS6?

I can tell you how to do a match frame on an ACE 25 if anyone is interested 🙂

[Mike Cohen]

Wow what a fun thread. So nice to see someone from Adobe responding to nearly every point.

Here’s my primary annoyance – you want to reuse a clip on the sequence elsewhere in a sequence or project. Double click the clip on the sequence to open in course monitor. But then if you change an in or out point, it changes the clip on the sequence. You can right click the clip and select “reveal in project” but not necessarily get to the same in point in the original clip.

Here’s another – if you have keyframes set on a clip, then you shorten that clip, Premiere maintains the keyframes beyond the end of the clip. There is no way to delete the phantom keyframes easily.

And another – sometimes you want to make a new sequence, maybe a scratch pad to try something outside of the main sequence. If you follow Adobe protocol, such as in Photoshop, you select an item, copy, make a new sequence, then try to hit paste, it does not paste anything. When you make a new sequence it clears whatever is in the copy/paste buffer.

All this being said, CS6 is the best Premiere yet. Even on my Core2 Quad with 8 gigs of ram and no CUDA it is rock solid and exporting to h264 is faster than CS5.5. I’ve had maybe 2 crashes in as many months, vs CS5.5 crashing daily. That is much more important than new features.

Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

I can relate. Back in the mid to late 90’s we shot a number of complete videos with an 8′ jimmy jib / DVCPRO25 setup. Great for shots where people are moving, and in an operating room with 16′ ceilings, even better. We got some really great material.

Trying to do tabletop moves not only presents the issue Nick describes, but shooting at close range you are more likely to have camera shadows and you can simply run out of room in a smaller space.

Here in central CT there is a studio with a vintage 1980’s motion control rig, nearly identical to the ones used by ILM on the original Star Wars movies. They do some amazing work, mostly for ESPN documentaries. Never had a chance to use this service, but it seems well suited for the situation described.

Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

When I started in production, here is how a typical project went:

Pre-production / scripting, etc
Video shoot
Log tapes from VHS window dubs
Write time codes into script
Perform offline edit either in Avid or tape to tape. With Avid you can get a nearly final edit, but at the time, the image quality was offline resolution only, so what you do is export an EDL. With the tape to tape method, you basically have cuts only with perhaps some placeholders for supers and graphics (we didn’t have Photoshop yet – either you pay someone to use a paintbox or you put in a card) and you made a handwritten EDL. Or you could do your offline edit on a computerized edit controller, but still as cuts, and get an EDL that way.

In any case, you would take your edl, figure out the cuts needed for the b-reel, and manually dub those with timecode to a BetaSP tape or whatever. Then you would take your edl and your source tapes and your b-reel and go to an online editor to finish the job. You’d sit behind a desk witching a monitor and watch as the editor assembled your program cut by cut by cut. Things like effects and supers did not always translate from the NLE or pencil, so you’d have to tell them what to do. It could take hours to assemble a short program. Then you take your master and off you go.

This is a long setup to say that today if you want to give an editor tapes and an EDL, you need to put some work into it. Digital editing can make producers lazy – why log footage when you can just do it in the editing software? Well yeah you can do that but in your situation, which is a sign of a growing business – you may not want to be doing it that way. And yeah, you need to give up the button pushing, but you can still be in control of the process and the final product without pushing the buttons.

Rather than an EDL perhaps it is a script with timecodes entered in as well as a column for supers and description of graphics or effects or photos or stock video to comp in – whatever the visuals are. You have to assemble a set of instructions if you expect the editor to be efficient and effective. Otherwise the editor will be sitting there making stuff up. Unless you have a big budget, you don’t want the editor making stuff up. As a producer, it is your job to make stuff up and then you pay the editor to put your vision together.

Maybe the editor takes a few days to a week to do his or her assembly, depending upon the length of the program. A recent first edit took 6 days for a 55 minute show with lots of graphic builds, plus 1 day with me sitting in the edit bay behind a desk watching a monitor calling out cuts, corrections or supers. Sounds familiar, right?

You put work into planning the shoot.

You need to put work into planning the edit.

I average 40 hours each. And it pays off.

Then subsequent edits can be hours per cycle plus export/render/ftp time. The big time investment is the first edit, so put in your own time to make sure it is a finite bucket of time, and not a black hole.

Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

Reading this thread is amusing. Based upon industry advertising and articles in the few trades remaining you would think the world had gone 100% tapeless. But reality is sooo much different. Just watch local used car commercials to see how SD is alive and well.
We finished our last DVCPRO25 project this year. Nearly everything else is HDV, xdcam or p2.
We have about 1000a dvcpro25 tapes on a shelf and a few decks in a closet. About 75%a of these tapes were dumps from BetaSP, Umatic or 1″ and captured to AVI at the same time.
The history of surgery going back to the early 80’s. Not ancient but not recent either.
We have some films from 50’s – 70’s also on dvcpro and AVI.
Mike Cohen

Ps. In Southington and Bristol, CT, about 15 min away we have several post houses who primarily service ESPN, and these folks have nearly every type of deck.

[Mike Cohen]

Assume this is what also happened to the CalDigit forum..?
I was searching for an old post to make a follow-up about a previous issue, but although the post comes up in search it is no longer actually accessible.

Oh well

Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

While not yet a geezer I have changed a few things. No more red-eye flights home. Air travel in general takes a lot out of someone of any age. Early in my career I would go from the red-eye straight to the office and work all day. In your 40’s that’s not so easy.

As for gear, we try to rent things like light kits or even the whole shebang locally. Advantages aside from not carrying heavy cases are no baggage fees, no worry about baggage handlers breaking something and of course you can rent the latest camera if so inclined without having to keep buying gadgets. We have a small closet for current gear and a larger basement closet for old stuff. Anyone need a 1″ machine?!

This year we had productions shot on a C300, an F3 and various P2 cameras and recorded to KiPro and PIX 240, and we didn’t have to buy or maintain any of them. Clients hire us for our expertise, not our gear.

My two cents.

Mike C.

[Mike Cohen]

We just noticed this as well – in the case of longer record runs, Premiere sees clips that are part of the same record run as one clip.

Mike Cohen

[Mike Cohen]

Fields. A preset with lower field dominance was the culprit. Progressive videos play fine