Oliver Peters
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The files correspond to your Avid bins. Move the copy (renamed as XXXX back-up or .bak) into the same folder as the other files/bins for the actual project. Then inside Avid, choose “open bins” and navigate to that copy. The bin should open and be part of your project after you save.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Yes, FCP5 runs fine on a 15″ 1.5 PB with 2 GB RAM. Motion is also fine, if you stick to simple stuff like text animations. Runs best with DV media, but I’ve also played and edited DV50, uncompressed 8-bit SD and 720p/24. The most maxed out I’ve run it is with an external Cinema display and dual FW800 LaCie drives, plus an external keyboard. Worked like a champ on 60+ hours of docu footage (DV).
Also driven AJA IoLA, as well as Avid Xpress Pro + Mojo on this unit.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[John Steventon] “Look at The Office for example. Can’t remember for the life of me what that’s shot on, but it’s typical of the colourscapes that get used in British productions, and if you compare that with pretty much any US drama/sitcom – it’s starkly different. “
My gut feeling is that it comes down to lighting and art direction. If you look at the Seinfeld or Friends set, there’s a lot of stuff in the apartments. The Office is lit very much like a typical corporate video, more natural lighting, rather than lighting intended to highlight elements in the scene. As far as color, PAL has no set-up (7.5 ire) and a different matrix for reds, which explains why images are more saturated and have richer blacks. This is true even if the colors are muted. The Office (in the US) looks like it is shot 24p – probably Sony cameras, which tend to have a more neutral/flatter look unless tweaked. Curb Your Enthusiasm looks like interlaced 29.97.
There may also be some other subtle differences. US sitcoms shot on film are often shot 3-perf 35mm. This gives you a wider aspect for HD, but then the 4×3 NTSC version is zoomed in during xfer to crop the edges. This tends to alter the grain structure from dramatic 35mm productions. Sort of halfway between 16mm and 35mm.
Remember that if you are comparing US shows in the UK, then you are often seeing images with 2-3 pulldwon, which have then gone through a standards converter to get to PAL. The same show in the US may not look the same under close scrutiny.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Although I certainly understand the budget constraints, I would respectfully point out that most upconversions done with VTRs, capture cards and software rendering are simple scaling and little else. I was thinking of rental and not purchase, however, if we are talking about Teranex specifically, I have been doing some comparisons of their new Mini unit, which is in the $3-6K range. The side-by-sides I’ve done are visibly superior on a monitor and night-and-day better if you compare still frames. In normal broadcast it probably isn’t as big of a deal, but for film-out it might be significantly different. Just a thought anyway…
– Oliver
Oliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Most of the Compressor presets are based on 1 or 2-pass VBR, which is quite slow and doesn’t always deliver the best results. Create a custom preset using a 1-pass CBR setting. These will generally take about 1.5x to 3x the length of your sequence (depending on processors and media type) to compress. Then the burn time will depend on your burner’s speed, so a 2X burn will be about half your sequence length if you used a higher bitrate.
For example, on a 70 min. documentary (DV media) that I’m cutting on my PowerBook (1.5GHz), I figure about 3-4 hours total to compress and burn a review DVD. Obviously a dual-proc G5 would be faster. The same compression settings using Sorenson or Bitvice tends to look better, but is far slower.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I think a lot of this is going to depend on what you plan to deliver to them and how good your vis efx artists are. Their concern is the multiple passes through the DV50 codec. If you plan to do ANY effects in FCP, such as color-correction, it’s a non-issue, since you already will be going through the codec several times.
Let me offer a workflow suggestion that might change some things for you. If you are planning to uprez in FCP and deliver an HD product for film-out, then this will be a better way. If the film out house is doing the uprez to HD, then they might do a better job, but it is something you really need to investigate. My suggestion is this. Offline at DV50, then uprez when you conform through a Teranex system and take that signal as native HD into a Kona2 as 8 or 10-bit uncompressed. Do all your effects (including boom fixes) in that mode. The vis efx artists should be able to do a seamless paint job in AE if given progessive uncompressed HD frames. Deliver to the film house an HD tape or an uncompressed QT (depending on what they can handle).
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Go to Automatic Duck and review the product info.
https://automaticduck.com/products/pifcp/For the product info:
“With Import Media References turned on, Pro Import FCP is able to create reference files to the Avid OMF media and import them into FCP, allowing you to view your Avid media in Final Cut Pro 4.1 or later.”So it seems like this would do what you need.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I don’t believe so. Avids display fields to the computer screen, but you can step through F1 and F2. I forget the keyboard shortcut, but you can also find it in the command palette. When you do this, the monitor window will display a little 1 or 2.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Tom,
The .png suggestion is good and I use it myself all the time, but the reason you are having a problem is that you must first merge the layer effects and rasterize the text in order for Avid to correctly recognize the transparency values. In Photoshop, create a blank layer above the layer with the text/shadow. Link the text layer with the blank layer and select “merge linked”. This will flatten/merge just that layer. If you have a multi-layered graphic, you can import this as a sequence, where the individual layers can be further manipulated with effects in Avid.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
If I understand correctly, EDL Manager is working the right way. EDL formats only support 3-8 digit alphanumerics, depending on format. There is no way to automatically link the reels to the names, though you can edit the reel numbers later. Check in your options, for a source table, generated by EDL manager. It might be at the bottom of your EDL events. This will give the cross-reference for the names you used and which numbers these were converted into. Next time when you digitize from scratch only use 3-digit numerics to be safe.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com