Nick Toth
Forum Replies Created
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Crop your clip and then make it a compound clip (Option G). Add the shadow to that.
NT
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[Boris Jansch] “- Adding transitions is easy once you get your head around the storyline concept but why in God’s name does it add a second transition at the other end of the clip?? Idiotic!”
Using the trim tool (T) select the edit point at the end of the clip rather than the whole clip.
NT
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My point is – when you play back your final master it should be to spec. It doesn’t matter what steps it has gone through up to that point. Those are your decisions to make along the way. As the producer of a video program it is your responsibility to ensure that the final master meets the delivery specifications of its destination.
When I was editing in a linear one-inch suite and got footage on VHS tape that had to be included in the program it was my job to make sure that it was dubbed and edited into the final master properly so that, even though VHS tape is not “broadcast spec”, the overall final one-inch master was.
To get back to the original discussion – adding bars and tone to the front of a program does not perform any magic if the program that follows is not to spec in the first place.
NT
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[C. Park Seward] “No, I use real Tektronix scopes.”
As do I. The more recent FCP scopes are pretty accurate.
[C. Park Seward] “Incorrect. I did a series of tests for the International Teleproduction Society with the help of Tektronix and there was only one post-production system that had the input equal the output. A Quantel Harry. Every other VTR or disk system changed the images. Some changes were not obvious to the naked eye but changes were made by the process.This was because the Quantel kit stored the images uncompressed. If you shoot with a DSLR, edit in ProRes and output to H.264, you have changed the image at every step.”
I did not say anything about input to output. I said “if you produce your spot to spec”.
[C. Park Seward] “Yes, there are untalented amateurs in every business. That doesn’t mean you should not follow industry practice.”
You missed my point. I have seen this from any number of sources. I doubt that they are all “untalented amateurs”.
[C. Park Seward] “I would not want someone changing my levels, especially someone who had no idea why we set levels a certain way based on the emotion we were trying to show. And what standard would you be using to change my settings? Your opinion? Not valid. Can you imagine changing the levels in a motion picture because the overall levels were not high enough, in someone’s opinion, but that is where the director wants them?”
If I set my proc amp and levels to bars and tone and the following program material has crushed blacks, whites pushing 110 IRE, blown out chroma and audio pinned in the red would I be doing my job to leave it like that? I’m not talking about changing individual shots but the overall levels in order to bring them as close to spec as they should be. Typically there is not time to get another dub so that type of thing is going to get corrected.
My whole point is that bars and tone do not mean anything at all if the program was not produced to spec in the first place. Given that many places are no longer asking for slates, bars and tone it is even more incumbent on the producer to make sure they are doing a proper job of mastering.
NT
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Not hearing any audio on your clip.
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Why not just make a new empty project and copy and past your “bits” into it? That seems a lot easier than trying to force it into the events library.
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If you have produced your spot to spec using the scopes in FCP to check your levels then the digital file should not be any different no matter where it goes unless it goes through an analog process. That analog process should be set to broadcast specs by the broadcaster so that your spot passes through unchanged.
When I worked with a lot of analog media that included bars and tone it was typical that the spot was not referenced to the bars and tone anyway. By this I mean that I set proc amp and audio levels to the bars and tone and then found that the spot that followed was out of spec and I had to re-set everything to the spot making the bars and tone worthless in the first place.
I quickly learned to set levels to the spot itself and bypass the bars and tone. This includes spots that came from many different sources including independent producers, broadcast stations, dub houses etc. This is my experience in over twenty years. It always seemed to me that very few people really knew how to calibrate their systems when making dubs.
My local broadcast stations do not want anything in the file but the spot. Cable varies but in the Northeast they want just the spot and will typically take SD and HD spots. You also never know what kind of processing your spots will go through once they reach the play-out facility and propagate through the system. All the bars and tone in the world can’t help you there.
NT
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You can have multiple clips in an audition. Why use compound clips?
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[Lance Moody] “Got new drivers from Black Magic for FCP7, all is working there.”
The info on the new drivers on the BlackMagic website does not include FCP X in the “supported” list but in the next paragraph it mentions FCP X which is a little confusing. Have you tried it?
NT
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The paragraph below the list of supported devices mentions X.