[Mike Smith]

Another approach would be to apply equalisation at track level, if you can or have grouped the relevant clips onto one or a few tracks. Use the audio mixer window, use the twirly to open the effects / sends panel and choose from the EQ tools in the drop down.

Alternatively, you can open the source clip in PPro (another project or timeline) or another tool (Audition, SoundForge, whatever) carry out the EQ you need, and export the treated file (if you use PPro) or re-save the soure file (if you choose an audio tool that allows this).

If you exported a modified version, you’ll need to close PPro, rename the source as a backup and give the modified version the orignal clip name; then when you re-open the project in PPro all of the many clips referring to that source file will now refer to the treated audio version …

[Mike Smith]

Why not try out the demo versions?

I have a version of MainConcept, which is OK, and an old version of Digigami which I found excellent and relied on for a while. It was a little buggy but produced good quality; newer versions may have ironed out the bugs. Reports are that Bitvice produces excellent results but is very slow. At present I use Cinemacraft on PC, which produces very good quality and is speedy.

[Mike Smith]

Aja good. Blackmagic’s Decklink cards can also do the job, and will also show both AE output and ColorFinesse output at broadcast quality. And they are a little cheaper.

[Mike Smith]

Good points, Timothy. Surely the appropriate response here is to be more of a good citizen, not less.

[Mike Smith]

For the future, you might want to take a look at the animation effects available with Painter …

[Mike Smith]

Of course you watched the animation out on a good – preferably broadcast quality – video monitor before and after transfer to DV, and it was looking good then …? You really cannot judge video for broadcast from a computer monitor or an LCD.

Assuming it was good from your DV playback, then the DV-DigiBeta transfer would be your next suspect. But really going through DV at all was a bad move. You lose resolution and colour information by going to DV at all, and no mainstream UK broadcast channel’s engineering dept is going to be happy with a DigiBeta transfer from DV.

What you could try is contacting your transfer facility, and asking what computer output that they can handle – frame sequence, or interlaced uncompressed quicktime or avi file? That way you could hand them a full resolution, full quality output file from AE and get full broadcast quality DigiBeta in return.

Some issues which can arise going from computer to broadcast video include:
flicker , which can be caused by field order issues (in PAL, DV is lower field first and DigiBeta / everything else is upper field first), or by single-pixel lines or edges, which always look bad: a little judicious softening of edges will help.
gamma – the brightness / contrast handling can look quite different on a video monitor from Windows or Mac computer displays; and
legal video colors / video levels where AE handles RGB levels 0 – 255, for video that range has to be restricted to 16-235, even after any glows / filters / effects have been added.

[Mike Smith]

Glad it all worked out. And good luck with the environmental issue – and the festivals!

[Mike Smith]

This link from a lawyer may be a relevant jumping off point ..
https://www.photosecrets.com/p14.html

[Mike Smith]

Another thought to consider: the woman may have good reasons for wanting privacy. She could be an escapee from a violent relationship; her child may have been through abuse and a contested adoption, or even kidnap attempts – you don’t know. Just because you don’t know what’s driving her, that doesn’t mean she might not have good reason.

but there are some kids playing in the foreground and you can see there faces – This sounds like you know there’s trouble.

You kind of know that those kids were too close for comfort, and that you probably should have moved them on or gone for consent form signatures, or you wouldn’t be posting I guess.

It’s bad luck that your good will in passing on your contact details has produced you this problem; but I suspect your producers may be on a loser if she takes legal advice.

Apparently the law on privacy varies from state to state, but many states do recognise a right to privacy, and some argue that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut extends that right across the US. But you’d need legal opinion on that.

[Mike Smith]

Glad it worked out.

For PAL land, for reasons that pass me by, DV video is normally lower-field first (unless captured with Matrox RTX.100 or other proprietary hardware/codec combos) and all other video is upper field first.

To check interlaced video for quality (or any video really) it’s probably necessary to play out to a good video monitor – the fields which can make motion smoother on the video screen can look grotty on a typical computer monitor with progressive scan – no fields.

All best