Paolo Ciccone
Forum Replies Created
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If this is for a website and the files are in QuickTime then you don’t need to modify the videos, you just need to create a SMIL file that instructs the QT plugin to create a sequence. For example:
SMILtext <smil xmlns:qt=”https://www.apple.com/quicktime/resources/smilextensions” qt:autoplay=”true”>
<head>
<layout>
<root-layout id=”main” width=”640″ height=”360″ background-color=”black” />
<region id=”r1″ width=”640″ height=”360″ />
</layout>
</head>
<body>
<seq>
<video src=”https://www.yoursite.com/videos/Header.mov” region=”r1″ />
<video src=”https://www.yoursite.com/videos/MainVideo.mov?” region=”r1″ />
<video src=”https://www.yoursite.com/videos/Credits.mov?” region=”r1″ />
</seq>
</body>
</smil>If you replace the entries in there with your header, video and credits clips and save this as a .mov file QuickTime or the QT plugin will play it as a standard movie.
You can generate a SMIL file with a simple script, I can write it for you if you don’t have the experience, or you can have the script act as a filter for all the files in a given directory in your web server and the file can be generated on the fly when the video is required.
You can also place a watermark, see https://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/Conceptual/QTScripting_SMIL/QTScripting_SMIL_Document/chapter_1000_section_1.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/CH203-SMILScriptingforQuickTime for the whole spec.
Best of all, it’s free, that’s just another feature of QuickTime.—
Paolo Ciccone https://www.paolociccone.com
Hellriser Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
Perry, if you think how transitions are done in the film world you’ll be able to visualize the process. If you need a crossfade with two pieces of film adjust the printing light in order to gradually underexpose the “out clip” and increasingly expose the “in clip” while printing on the same piece of film. Using digital doesn’t change this basic fact of physics. You need handles for each clip. If you need to fade to black you need enough “exit frames” to be gradually blacked out. If they are not there then only solution is to duplicate the last frame, hardly a satisfying solution.
Actually Premiere is handling this more graciously than FCP by duplicating the frames, FCP flat out refuses to do it. Regardless, if there is no enough material there is no way you can create the transition. When acquiring the material be sure that you have 2-3 seconds of handles at the beginning and end.—
Paolo Ciccone https://www.paolociccone.com
Hellriser Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
Video screen grabs usually don’t have much motion so if you keep it at 15fps you should be able to reduce the files size quite a bit. Use QuickTime H.264, possibly from Compressor or other high-quality encoder, with a keyframe setting of 45, quality just above medium and it should get down to a reasonable size. How long is the video?
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Paolo Ciccone https://www.paolociccone.com
Hellriser Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
You can use the SheerVideo codec which supports SD/HD material with an alpha channel. See https://www.bitjazz.com
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Paolo Ciccone https://www.paolociccone.com
Hellriser Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
As another Santa Cruzan, congratulations Darby.
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Paolo Ciccone https://www.paolociccone.com
Hellriser Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
I second the suggestion about SheerVideo, it is my codec of choice for roundtripping when I don’t use something like Adobe’s Dynamic Link. Sheer is a codec for QuickTime. It works both on Macintosh and Windows. You can download the evaluation copy from https://www.bitjazz.com It doesn’t add any watermark, it just expires in 20 days.
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Paolo Ciccone https://www.paolociccone.com
Hellriser Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
Although I don’t know if Adobe Production Premium can run on a Mac Mini you should give it a try. The integration between Premiere and After Effects, the standard in Motion Graphics, is a big plus and the Adobe Dynamic Link means that you don’t have to render anything. Even just importing a Premiere project into After Effects, without dynamic link, takes a few seconds and because you are using the project you refer directly to the media files cut using Premiere. This means that you don’t get into any transcoding nonsense. From Premier or After Effects you can set markers and other elements to create menus for Encore. Encore can output directly to DVD, Blueray and create a Flash version of the same menu with a few clicks. So the same DVD layout becomes your Web-ready application.
You can get the try-out versions from Adobe and judge for yourself. -
I generally use YCbCr 10b. The different flavors depend on the use or not of Alpha channel.
I’m currently redesigning my workflow. I used to work in FCP but I’m moving to Premiere gven the amazing integration of Premiere with After Effects. I do a lot of work in AE and the ability to move back and forth in *seconds*, without rendering is plus that I cannot ignore anymore.
Given that condition my use for Sheer is much more limited today but I still use it when I need to communicate with other Applications, like SynthEyes or any other situation where I need to roundtrip and preserve the color information.In several cases I captured HDV footage and then converted to Sheer before editing in order to have a non-GOP version of the clips that is 100% faithful to the original. Other times I used it as a compressor in FCP because after the time you spend in rendering the output of the whole sequence, even at feature length, takes just a few seconds, if you use a QuickTime reference movie.
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Hi Paul.
I know about the nature of HDV and all the problems involved in recomputing GOPs but I described a procedure to avoid all that. The point in my approach is that if you use Premiere and edit in HDV and then master your video on AE you will not have any quality loss. This is because you will be import the Premiere *project* in After Effects, not a rendered video. By importing the project you end up with pointers to the original footage. AE reads the clip and then you are free to render to Uncompressed or TIFF sequences. This is by far the fastest and safest why of handling HDV.You can achieve the same with FCP => AE by using the FCPtoAE script (google it) or Automatic Duck. The result is the same, no rendering, no transcoding.
And the rendering time required for the transitions is still lower than transcoding the whole sequence.
Now, if we are talking about *acquiring* footage than I totally agree, if you can capture *directly* from component out or HDSDI to ProRes, Cineform or Sheer then you are much better off. -
Hmmm, the idea of transcoding, even with ProRes is not something that I would advice. If you want to convert to a lossless codec than OK but otherwise, if your original footage is in HDV, I would edit in that format while being careful to not render in HDV.
For example, if you capture footage from your HDV camera, via FW, you end up with a data dump that is exactly what is stored on the tape. No generation loss. If you edit in Premiere or FCP, directly in HDV, you don’t loose anything as long as the codec implementation is accurate.
Once you need to go to AE you have a couple of options, all better than transcoding (here “better” means no quality loss):– In Premiere/AE you just import the project thus referring to the original HDV clips. No generation loss.
– For FCP to AE you can use the FCPtoAE script or Automatic Duck to do the same. Your AE project will have a Sequence that links to the same unmodified HDV clips.
– Convert the NLE sequence to an lossless format and then import in AE.