[Mike Smith]

Tricky. If it’s for computer monitor only, maybe deinterlacing is something to think about too.

You could sit your 4×3 footage at actual size (or mildly shrunk [80%?], even) and pixel aspect ratio on a series of attractive, perhaps sublty moving backgrounds – which will only show around the edges.

Building on this, you could “cut out” using masking / cropping different, interesting parts of your frames to add a level of interest as the key picture zone repositions to different parts of the screen – going “full frame” on the 4×3 when you need to …

[Mike Smith]

Would it be possible to close fcp, find and move the timecode generator filter out of the plugins folder, restart fcp and reopen the project … and what would that do?

[Mike Smith]

As I think Tim is suggesting, the “how to” on one effect is never going to replace the creative imagination and sensibility that offers something fresh, relevant and striking. So they want to copy your effect – how manytimes can they reuse it and still have it be worth anything to their projects / audiences ..?

So maybe playing nice would have been a good first instinct – trying to build a relationship with the editor.

Though I agree that was a weird call, coming from the editor and not your client. Maybe the “in house” guy has his nose a little out of joint that they called you in at all.

Might be worth a call to your actual client to say you’re glad they liked your stuff as her / his colleague reported in the call, and for sure if s/he thinks it appropriate you can give the in-house guy some pointers.

Or was this all weeks ago ..?

[Mike Smith]

Hi Andrew. You may be underpaid … but I’ve yet to meet the person in business who felt she or he was overpaid. If you feel you are worth more, why not ask for it – or look for another job offer which will give you what you feel you’re worth?

You don’t indicate what country, let alone what market you’re in, but most industrialised countries publish national income data which gives comprehensive information on levels of employment and average earnings within different occupations, and perhaps there’s a professional assocation based where you are which can offer guidance?

In a market, a price is only a price when it has a willing buyer – your employer – and a willing (in the sense of accepting, rather than ecstatic) seller – in this case, you, selling your labour. So just what you bring to the party, and just what market conditions affect your employer’s business, will both be relevant here.

[Mike Smith]

Why not dig about on the grass valley website … https://www.canopuscorp.com/products/EDIUSBroadcast/index.php

[Mike Smith]

Or you could create a new submix track, stereo, and route your mono tracks to it …

[Mike Smith]

While Rob’s approach is no doubt great for him and may be for you, the compression thing remains both a personal choice and a big influence on your eventual sound.

I’d strongly agree that your starting point is to record and mix the songs to consistent levels – which you can check both by ear on your speakers and by eye, checking the level meters on your audio mixing software (or Vegas if you’re really using it for this).

Levels: it’s probably fair to say that most people reckon it’s good to go for the loudest recorded signal you can get before you reach clipping or distortion. Since some peak signals can come and go very fast and are not shown on all types of meter, some people reckon to leave 6Db or more “headroom” above displayed peaks to prevent distortion when such fast peaks get clipped.

Compression: you may have a big range between the loud and the quiet parts of your finsihed tracks. Compression in this audio context will bring those loud and soft parts to much more of an even volume – good for low-fi playback, car stereos, whatever, but not really a faithful record of the music, nor so appealing on a hi-fi playback set up … so it’s a choice for you.

[Mike Smith]

Sounds like now is the time for that small claims court. She may not be chasing you for the drive, but a liquidator may well, an you have no paper to say it’s now yours. Anyway, it’s worth only a small fraction of the $$$ you are owed.

On another tack, presumably you hold the only offline of an edit which has not yet been onlined and delivered. Who is the end client? They stand to lose whatever they have put into the prod co up until now, and not have their programme finished.

Perhaps you need to contact the end user (copy to prod co) to fill them in on the situation, report that you are holding the project files for the time, and that when / if the prod co folds, they may want to approach you and the liquidator to see what they can salvage at what cost.

There’s no reason for you to accept less than full $$ value on all work – the end client’s options are all worse, and for the liquidator – who will hold all rights to the footage, which you can’t use without her/his approval – but can return net cash into the liquidation so long as the client pays more into the liquidation for the completion than your overall bill.

[Mike Smith]

Are you in PAL land or NTSC land (PAL = upper field first for most all video except DV, NTSC = lower field first for most all video).

If you are mixing video (recorded with fields not as 24p) with AE graphics then you’ll probably get best results from matching the AE project render settings to the original video field order (as above).

There is little or nothing to be gained by turning your video material captured with separate fields into faux “progressive scan” material. If there is much movement in the frame, this is bound to create problems. If you want / must have progressive scan output for some reason, why not record video in a progressive scan format?

You are sure you’re rendering out of Premiere with fields enabled, of course …

Have you tested a simple video sample – capture edit compress to mpeg 2 write to DVD – and does that show the same problems, or is this introduced with your AE graphics stage?

And I haven’t quite grasped your “ugly distortion around the edges” – which edges ..?

[Mike Smith]

Might be better to do it all in AE. If you use PPro and output, you’ll need to find a codec to render to that has alpha channel info – i.e. not DV. You’ll orobably want to output to a 32-bit targa, tiff or psd image sequence.

But AE would give you better control of animation of the fuse, access to Particular for the spark, and let you preview how it all looks composited before you render … and AE will keep your field handling all nice and consistent …