[Mike Smith]

I can’t see the original move file – no iTunes / QT7 on this machine (and it’s not installable on this platform).

But this is from the excellent Mr Ebbert’s website, and does decaying motion … https://www.motionscript.com/expressions-lab-ae65/pendulum.html

It stimulate a useful thought for you …

[Mike Smith]

I can’t see the original move file – no iTunes / QT7 on this machine (and it’s not installable on this platform).

But this is from the excellent Mr Ebbert’s website, and does decaying motion … https://www.motionscript.com/expressions-lab-ae65/pendulum.html

It stimulate a useful thought for you …

[Mike Smith]

I look forward to reading about them.

Small is beautiful !

[Mike Smith]

Why not work-flow test a 10 second clip – or better, 3 3 second clips with dissolves, picking a variety of your material – to see if you can see any difference in the end result.

The downconvert-from-camera option will surely save you a lot of FCP rendering time ; if final delivery is (heavily compressed) mpeg2 for DVD, I’d be surprised if you see any benefit from the more difficult HDV workflows … .

And report back your results ..?

[Mike Smith]

Congratulations on the (first!) five years, and all best for what’s to come.

We on the user side depend on the efforts of creative developers to make fast, flexible and usable tools available – and as hi def takes over we’re all going to be stretching our little budget systems way beyond their comfort zones.

If we were to get left entirely to the devices of the software “giants” (Adobe, Apple, Avid, Autodesk (is there an A theme here?) maybe Media 100, Sony, Thompon/Canopus maybe MediaI00 think we’d lose out a lot in speed of response and range and versatility of tools So please keep up the good work: no doubt you have some interesting ideas for new products to develop … !

[Mike Smith]

A complete reinstall is a big process, and should not be needed.

Do you have any new programs running “in the background” – no-one’s put the system onto a file shaer program or similar that might be draining resources – when you look in Windows Task Manager you recognise all the apps, no doubt ..

On a checklist fow what’s slowing your system, you might start with a virus scanner sweep, check that you have plenty of spare hard disc space, that you don’t have a lot of old .tmp files cluttering up your temp directory, you’ve defragmented your hard disc …. and it’s still running slower ..?

Otherwise, Norton Utilities / Systemworks has disc disc speed, disc optimisation, registry optimisation tools.

Good luck !

[Mike Smith]

Since you’re taking the trouble to set up a monitor, I should be nicer!

The Video / Broadcast Colors filter, like a limiter on an audio circuit, can do a useful job in clipping the signal to keep it “legal”; but it can cost quite a lot in picture quality, particularly when the signal is quite a bit out of legal spec, which I guess is your situation here.

You may not need extensive grading in Color Finesse, though, if your material looks good in RGB / computer colours. The Effects / Adjust / Levels filter will let you set input and output levels: you could set this to output black at 16 or so and white at 235 or so and see whether it does most of the job for you.

Some video edit software allows you to choose on import whether to treat graphics as having full RGB colour values or the reduced video-friendly set, but I’ve never found this option in AE.

On the encoder side,though, the CinemaCraft Encoder Basic version is cheap, fast, and produces very good quality output (so long as you don’t need Dolby AC3 or can do that in something else – for us in PAL land, it produces good mpeg audio.) And in its advanced settings panel it offers a choice of interpreting incoming signal as “16 to 235” or “0 to 255” – which just might be an alternative for you …

All best

[Mike Smith]

Hi Mark
It sounds like the old panasonic monitor is not set up properly, or is worn out. This https://videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm
may help – I think there’s a PAL link – or you may be able to find a better guide to setting up the monitor.

You’ll want some kind of a “reference monitor” to check your DVD playback on so you know the quality s good – people have their home screens (and computer screens) set up all kinds of strange ways!

Broadcast colours – I think saturation range is RGB values 16 to 235 for colour values (rather than the full 0 to 255 range viewable on computer).

The broadcast safe colours filter may help, though it might be worth a peek at these.

https://www.lafcpug.org/reviews/review_color_finesse.html

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/perfect_titles_phil.html

All best!

[Mike Smith]

Could you precompose the particle layer, and mask the pre-comp ..?

[Mike Smith]

It seems strange that your material can look fine on an external video monitor, and then grotty when encoded. How are you monitoring – Decklink, firewire, Aja – to a good pro or broadcast monitor (or to a consumer LCD – please say no!)?

If your stuff is good, then you might be wanting to look carefully at your encoder settings …