Miriam Moran
Forum Replies Created
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I agree – lynda.com rules! $25 a month is a great investment – especially considering the price of the upgrade – get your money’s worth!
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Hi Jonathan,
Need a little info to give you “best” advice but here are a couple of approaches (this is something I do all the time) –
If you’re lucky enough to be on Leopard (you won’t believe this) double-click on one of your .mov files to open it in Quicktime, play it, pause it at the frame you want, click on the frame and drag it onto your desktop or into a folder in Finder, and voila, a still frame just what the dr ordered. When I do this they are exactly the way I need them – just use Photoshop for any color correction, cropping, etc. I need to do.
If not (tiger or before) – File -> Export -> Using Quicktime Conversion – go through and set your options – Still Image gives you 1 frame (the frame your playhead is parked on) Still Image Sequence gives you a still for each frame in the clip you have selected (don’t pick a big one, the files pile up fast). Set the JPEG option, be sure you choose best quality.
When you open these files in Photoshop, you will probably need to use “Filter -> Video -> Deinterlace” to get rid of the horizontal lines in the picture and also fix your pixel aspect ratio.
If you’re in HD, I’ve had some luck with creating a new 720 sequence (I edit in 1080i), copying my clip into that sequence, say “yes” to change clip settings to match sequence (or “no” to change sequence to match clip – I forget which way it is worded and my computer is disassembled at the moment) then export that into still frames using the “export” steps above. I don’t need to do the Photoshop files at that point.
To avoid a 6 page answer, give the above a try, and if they don’t work, don’t hesitate to contact me – my computer should be reassembled tomorrow and I can send you additional suggestions.
Good luck – Miriam
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I’ve got an EX1 and I wouldn’t trade it ! It did ergonomically take a bit to get used to, but the transfer from SxS card can’t be beat for the situations I’m typically in, which require rapid transfer and editing of short turn around video. I’m also extremely happy with the quality – I added this camera to my fleet of Sony Z1Us and now want to sell all of them and buy more EX1’s. Haven’t had any issues with file transfer or editing this format, and 99% of the time I’m editing EX1 in a mixed-format environment. Good luck with your choice!
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In the motion tab of your viewer, there are controls for zooming and panning – use “scale” to make the picture larger/smaller, and you can use “center” to change where the center of your picture is. Both of these properties are keyframable – so you could, for example, begin a picture zoomed in on the top-left corner of the picture then zoom out toward the bottom right by
increasing scale and moving the picture (drag it with your mouse to the desired postition in the canvas), keyframe both settings,
move your playhead to the end of your picture, use scale to zoom out and move the center to affect position – FC should create those keyframes for you
play your clip – you should see that motion occurring.
Use of 3rd party software can be quicker, but I’ve done tons of photo montage type things in this manner and it is pretty straightforward once you get the hang of it.
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I’m running this version on Leopard, what I experience is random pinwheels, and after a bit of investigation my issue turned out to be a feature of Leopard that regularly polls your drives for Finder indexing – I have a number of external drives that are slow for that type of accessing. I can improve my speed if I remove my externals when I don’t need them. You can also configure the OS to not look at your disc as often or as thoroughly as it likes to, I didn’t go that far as removing the hard drives helped a lot.
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I haven’t experienced this exact set of circumstances, but I have moved FC from one computer to another, and I had to “deactivate” the first installation before activating the second one. I’m guessing you can’t run the first one (from your description) so you’ll probably need to call Apple and explain your circumstances, they can (I’m pretty sure) deactivate your serial number so that you can activate it on the new installation.
Good Luck!
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I have not used the Sound FX but I have used the Stak Trax (and many of their other products). Here’s a few guesses –
Do you have the correct version of the “juicer” ? I think it’s version 3.0(something) currently. Be sure your updates are current.
Check your settings you used in Juicer – be sure you selected the right settings for your FCP project.
If you haven’t figured it out – contact their technical support – I’ve only had to call them a couple of times, but they have been extremely prompt and courteous in their help.
Good Luck!
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I LOVE Looks and wouldn’t edit without it any more. I have dabbled in Color but honestly find it too confusing and cumbersome when most of the color grading I do is fairly simple and I need to be able to move very quickly.
I really like that there is an extensive list of preset effects, but that you can apply anything individually for the effect you want. For me, it’s the best $399 I ever spent – it has saved me hours and days of work since I bought it in January after seeing it at a videographer’s convention. In less than a minute I can correct virtually any clip that I have – probably nothing I couldn’t do by applying multiple filters in FCP or by diving through a few “rooms” in color – but it just isn’t cost-effective for me to take that time.
The person that I learned about Looks from had just won more awards than I could count that week for her wedding videography, and her work is beautiful – so it really inspired me to reach for more in the color grading world.
I will give the caveat that you need a bit of processing power to use it quickly – my new (6 months old) 2.8ghz iMac 4g memory handles it like lightning, but my older G5 struggles to display the video and takes a bit more patience.
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I bought a 2.8gh iMac with 4g ram and 1T hard drive back in March, I’m editing full HD every day with excellent results. We initially were holding out until we could affort a new MacPro, but realized we could buy multiple iMacs for the same cost as 1 MacPro, and our problem is not enough computers (multiple editors) not lack of power. The iMac and Final Cut Studio together set me back about $5000 (I think the computer was $3600 and the software is $1300).
I have a 17″ Mac Book Pro and while I can edit on it, I really prefer a larger screen for editing – I have the 24″ iMac and my 2 G5’s each have a 23″ screen.
I agree with other suggestion to go in and try some out, but I ended up having to order mine from http://www.apple.com as they didn’t carry the “cranked up” version of the iMac that I wanted in the store. No big deal, shipped it right to my house, everything was good. I’ve really enjoyed it!
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I never trust “Open Recent” – I always go through the open dialog and select exactly the file I want to open. This will probably eliminate the other problem, as I swear, FCP does pick whatever file it wants when I use open recent – I’m sure Apple isn’t going to confirm this, but it drives me batty, and my staff is under penalty of death if they use “Open Recent” and hose themselves, and thus, my productivity time. The other suggestion above is a good one, to save to a new name at the end of the day (I’d probably include the date, ex. “Jack & Jill 09-10”.