[Olin Padilla]

Are you positive the media manager transcoded them to prores? If so, do they have the same name and file structure?

In FCP you can replace multiple clips based on the file structure. If you highlight all the footage in your bin and select Reconnect Media.

A window will pop up with a list of your video files. Click ‘locate’ and it will find the source file for the first video in the list. Search through the finder and find the new prores file with the same name, make sure ‘reconnect all files in relative path’ is selected, and click ok.

If the transcoded prores files have the same name and file structure as the originals, than it will automatically reconnect all of them.

But as I said before, something doesn’t sound right about the whole media manager thing.

[Olin Padilla]

I personally find that compressor has a lot of issues with larger batches.

In this type of situation I would use MPEG Streamclip (free), if only for the simplicity and reliability.

[Olin Padilla]

As far as I know, you have to log and transfer the P2 footage to have playable DVCProHD footage. Transcoding to ProRes would be a separate and possibly unnecessary step.

I could be wrong about this one though. Dave?

[Olin Padilla]

OK, a couple of things.

First, don’t assume that Sorenson is going to give you better results than any other compression software. Your codec and settings are what matters.

Second, don’t forget about your audio. Choose AAC as your compressor, and you should be able to knock quite a bit off that size.

Third, half on the h.264 scale is actually pretty high for web, especially for a 25 min video. Youtube videos at that resolution are encoded at roughly 500kbps (which is considerably lower than 50%).

If this is for personal use, I would look in to using Vimeo. It will give you pretty decent quality while saving you the headache of hosting and embedding the video, and these days it’s considered pretty acceptable in the professional community.

[Olin Padilla]

I have run into similar problems to this when working with alpha channels, but I’ve never used Motion.

One thing to remember is that transparent pixels in images and video are not actually transparent, they are colored pixels that are matted out by the alpha channel. Sometimes they are matted out all the way in one program, but still show through a little in others.

This kind of thing happens in after effects when people work with colored backgrounds but then export them as transparent.

What makes this seem strange to me is that it happened out of Photoshop. I’ve never seen it happen that way.

Is there anything in your Motion/PS project that is magenta, or is this totally out of the blue?

Also, is your PS project in CMYK of RGB?

[Olin Padilla]

If time is any kind of issue, then you can skip the transcode with the HPX footage (assuming it’s DVCProHD).

I have edited DVCProHD on prores timelines on many occasions without any difficulty, quality loss, or need for render.

[Olin Padilla]

The main thing to remember when you are lighting it is that you are making a matte. You want as much contrast as possible, and you want to isolate the water from the background.

Assuming you are shooting with dyed water in an aquarium, I would try to do this:

Make some kind of white backdrop (a plain white wall will work fine), and get a bunch of light on it. The more even the better, but it doesn’t matter that much. Turn off your overhead likes too.

Now setup the aquarium far enough away from the backdrop that the light does not hit it. Set your camera up perpendicular to the wall and the aquarium, and play with the exposure until you have very dark water and a very bright white wall.

Make sure when you pour the water that you don’t cast any shadows on the wall or the water. And beware that if you use the wrong kind of light you will get an ugly strobing effect. It will be visible on the monitor.

Good luck.

[Olin Padilla]

MPEG Streamclip is a free standalone video encoding software. Google it.

[Olin Padilla]

It’s just the over scan area, and it was probably recorded that way. You are going to want to crop it for any delivery other than NTSC.

If you are going to 1080 aren’t you going to have to crop for 16×9 anyway?

[Olin Padilla]

There is a crop setting in compressor in the geometry tab. You need to know the exact pixel amount though.

As far as whether or not to uprez or downrez, to me that would depend on how much footage is HD/SD. Also, do you have an uprez plug-in, or are you just planning to scale?