[Pat Defilippo]

Hi David,

Thanks for the reply! I appreciate the thoughts.

In using the Bit Budget Excel file to determine the Average Bit Rate to use, however, it starts with a capacity of 4.7gb or 37,600 mbits and then it takes 4% out for what it calls Overhead. So, Audio Assets, Subtitle Streams, Motion Menus and DVD-ROM Content are subtracted from a starting poing of 36,096 (or 4% less than full 4.7gb capacity). It sounds like what you described for everything to work is what the Bit Budget is referring to as Overhead. So, when it said to do 4.1 including 147 minutes of ac3 audio and 147 minutes of m2v video including the overhead, I figured I would end up with a total file size within 4.7gb minus the Overhead – not 4.9gb.

I guess what I should do is change the overhead from 4%? Perhaps I can wait until the 3.9gb file is done and, if it is just within 4.7gb, change the overhead percentage (currently 4%) to the number that makes the Average Bit Rate change from 4.1 to match the 3.9. Then, I’ll know what the correct amount of Overhead that DVDSP requires.

The reason I am asking this is not as much from a newbie standpoint because I have compressed at least six projects for DVD that have exceeded 90 minutes in length in the last two years. However, this is my first one over 90 minutes using the new Compressor and there are some weird things going on compared to the recect Compressor.

Thanks for making me think about the Bit Budget harder to figure out that, if this all fits at a quality of 3.9, the overhead % will need to be upped from 4! I should be able to nail the correct Overhead percentage that DVDSP needs if my 3.9 quality setting equals 4.7 or slightly less on the DVDSP meter!

If it exceeds 4.7gb, I do have a 3.7 quality version of the same exact timeline that I did via FCS1 that adds up to 4.4gb in DVDSP. So, like you said, I’ll just use it because I’m not adding a lot of quality anyway and it’s probably not worth another 9-plus hours to compress for a seventh time at that point. I’m just always been one of those kind of guys who tries to get the most quality, even after going to such extreme measures of doing this all week long and still not getting there…

(…yet)!

Thanks agian,
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio 2 ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~
Sony DSR-40 DVCam ~
2.33ghz MacBook Pro 17″ (with FCS2) ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs and Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Pat Defilippo]

Hi all!

Thanks for the replies! It’s good to hear that Quicktime 7.2 is working fine for some people, because if you do a search for “Quicktime 7.2” in the Apple Final Cut Pro forum for the last three months (and even within the last three weeks), there’s a bunch of reported problems with it and FCS2 in addition to the Flip For Mac audio issue.

Just last week, too, I was at a facility where one of the editors was trying to “uninstall” Quicktime 7.2 for the Flip For Mac issue but instead had to reinstall the entire OS to the Tiger disc, and then install every upgrade to the top of Quicktime 7.1 without accidentally installing 7.2 again. I was also at a Chicago FCP Users Group meeting in August where the topic was brought up and that was the only workaround. They talked about a package of OS updates to avoid because it included 7.2 and to just install previous upgrades manually. Sounded like an all-day nightmare to me!

Here are some Cow FCP forum links to some of the Quicktime 7.2 issues that I found in the last-three-months search:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/952105
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/946934
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/948038
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/951310

So, that’s why I asked if anyone knew if it was safe to install Quicktime 7.2 yet? Perhaps this latest Pro Apps 4.0.2 upgrade makes it ok to do so?

Then again, everything is working fine for at least these two highly respected pros with 7.2 installed?

Thanks again,
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio 2 ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~
Sony DSR-40 DVCam ~
2.33ghz MacBook Pro 17″ (with FCS2) ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs and Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Pat Defilippo]

Hi again, all,

Well, I did as I said I would do yesterday and I’m getting back with you on it. After a 5th attempt, it did finally work – sort of.

Here’s what I have done in the last 24 hours since starting this string:

1) I broke down and rendered the entire timeline in FCP6, which took about 6 hours for the 2 hour and 24 minute video with dozens of Chapter Markers. This shouldn’t have mattered much, but considering the fifth time through Compressor was the charm, perhaps this made the difference?

2) I took the lengthy timeline through Export Using Compressor, applied DVD Best Quality, changed the Quality of the m2v file to 4.1 (per the Bit Budget Excel file) and clicked “Submit” at 3:45pm. Everything started up fine and the temporary files that Compressor created were visible in the finder.

3) At the time I clicked on Submit in Compressor, there was no yellow caution triangle. There wasn’t for quite a while, but somewhere around the start of the process there was. Is this normal when Compressor is writing to a file that it already should know is its own temporary file? I double-clicked the yellow caution triangle to see that it said “The Target Will Overwrite An Existing File With The Same Name”. Again, Compressor had just started up that exact same, brand new file and was writing to it at the time. There were no existing files with the same name before this.

4) After five tries this week, the file finished at 1am this morning. So, it took about 9.25 hours to compress less than a 2.5 hour rendered timeline for DVD only on a 2.5ghz Quad core. Unlike the first four tries, the temporary file Compressor was writing to stayed viewable in the finder (instead of disappearing upon completion while Compressor reported “Successful Completion”). Does this length of compression time seem right or does anyone know why the file would have just disappeared upon Compressor completion on four previous 9-plus hour attempts this week? The ac3 file would not disappear, but the m2v did.

5) This might be more of a question for the DVD Studio Pro forum, but the completed m2v file size at a quality of 4.1 was 4.19gb and the ac3 audio file was 201mb. This should add up to about 4.4gb, right? In DVDSP though, with no menus or other assets (I’m making this asset a First Play), the meter reads 4.9gb! So, at this time, I’m re-compressing the whole 9.25 hour process for a 6th time this week at a quality of 3.9 this time. The Bit Budget Excel file, although very useful, definitely was on the high side. I entered 147 minutes for Total Dolby 2.0 Stereo (ac3) and for the Video Assets and, at a maximum bit rate of 7.8 (of which I even left Compressor at its default of 7.5), it said to encode at an Average Bit Rate of 4.1. I don’t want to make it sound like I’m complaining about this free Worksheet, though, and I’m not pressed for time this week while FCP6 is tied up with Compressor. I do appreciate the author of it taking the time to make it and then make it available to us all!

Luckily and unluckily all at the same time, I had a no-work week this week and have/had time to address this!

If anyone has any comments or suggestions of what I did wrong, and even right, please do let me/us all know! I numbered the above steps I’ve taken in the last 24 hours to make it easier for you to reply to any specific step(s) that I did. I’ve been using FCS for over two years and have done many similar processes with it, and this “weirdness” is stuff I’ve never seen it do before.

Thanks again in advance!
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio 2 ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~
Sony DSR-40 DVCam ~
2.33ghz MacBook Pro 17″ (with FCS2) ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs and Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Pat Defilippo]

Hi Tom!

Thanks for the info regarding my compression problem!

I usually get the yellow triangle when I have a file with the exact same name as well, and usually I’ll either go and delete the old file or re-name the new one. But, this yellow triangle must not be that an old one exists, though, becuase, after what appears to be compression for several hours, no file exists.

Usually, I do Export a Quicktime Movie and go into Compressor with that becuase it does not tie up FCP6 and it is much faster as well. However, I’ve also done it that way and all of the Chapter Markers are gone. If I Export a Quicktime Movie on this 2 hour and 27 minute video, too, I might as well first re-render the whole thing becuase it will take just as long to run either process.

So, I was just trying to save many hours but, unless anyone else has any other upcoming ideas, I’m rendering the entire timeline in the meantime and will try to Export via Compressor once again when that process finishes so that I don’t lose all of my dozens of Chapter Markers through Export a Quicktime Movie.

I will definitely hover the mouse over the yellow triangle though, Tom, and see if that offers any hints at what the problem is. Thanks for your reply and idea!
-Pat

[Pat Defilippo]

Hi guys,

Does the clip in your timeline show a duration of 4 seconds as currently edited? If so, you’ll need to make the Motion clip 3:15 in order to do a 1 second dissolve to the next clip. Also, double-check that your Clip 3 has at least 15 frames of heads. This is assuming you are applying a dissolve that is centered on the edit (and does not begin or end there).

I hope this helps.
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs, Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Pat Defilippo]

Hi all,

I agree with you, John. I saved the Compressor/Limiter filter with four pretty solid default parameters in my Favorites folder and I drop this onto all of my SOT and VO tracks so that they punch better.

I never use Normalize unless I have something that was definitely recorded too low and I need to get it, non-destructively, to a respectible level. Then, I may or may not use the Compressor/Limiter filter (depending on how it sounds).

I was just pointing out where the Normalize feature exists in FCP6 because Walter had mentioned that he couldn’t find it.
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs, Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Pat Defilippo]

Hi all,

The new Normalize function directly in FCP6 is located in Modify > Audio > Apply Normailze Gain.
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs, Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Pat Defilippo]

Hi Jan and Jeff,

Thanks very much for your good ideas and quick replies!

Jan, I like the idea of the Mac setup assistant – I forgot I did that myself from my old PowerBook to my new MacBook Pro. That should do the trick, and I think I’d be able to just select “Applications” to transfer (and then upgrade to FCS2) since I don’t think they’d want anything else anyway (documents, etc).

Jeff, I will try installing FCS2 using their original number before doing the Mac setup assistant. I explained the benefit to them of using multiple computers as “render farms” for Compressor and Motion, and they liked the idea. So, for this reason, they would need the two seperate serial numbers.

Thanks again very much!
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs, Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Pat Defilippo]

Hi guys,

MechaGodzilla, you might already have done this, but have you checked the little box that says “show all” when in easy setup (or wherever) after your upgrade?

I, too, have an Io LA and have upgraded to FCS2 and did not have to re-install the drivers from my FCS1 original install. I’ve captured plenty from my analog UVW-1800 Beta-SP deck since upgrading, too.

Have a great weekend,
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs, Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Pat Defilippo]

Hi Bret,

You’re 100% right – sounds like you were non-linear in the ’90s, too. Yes, the Strat software grew out of the Videocube/Turbocube software in ’97/’98. That’s why I said ’95 (and, actually, Videocube was out in ’94) regarding the circa because it was pretty much the same software.

Yes, it did have its share of bugs and you had to learn work-arounds for them. You even have to do that with FCP, as we all know. But it was as solid and reliable as FCP, if not more so.

Strat was better than Avid in the ’90’s. Any of us who operated both systems know that. No rendering, even with as many lighting effects and 3D DVE as you can throw onto a layer, and the Accom DVEous DVE was the best in the business. Accom should have hit the gas instead of stopping with support and they’d still be among the leaders. They didn’t look and see what Avid was doing and, a few years later, Apple.

I don’t agree, though, that letting the software automatically move the timeline for you as the playhead plays is a bad thing! I’d rather be concentrating on my edits playing back on the monitor and let the software track it, like VideoCube ’94 (I didn’t think anyone would remember it!), than have to manually drag the timeline to the left each time the playhead dissapears to the right in order just to see it.

I got into a habit of glancing down at the timeline to see what was coming up and then looking back at the final product on the monitor. What good is looking at a FCP screen with a bunch of previously played edits and a dissapeared playhead and then manually have to drag a playing timeline to the left? I think that most people would love the FCP software to do this for them if it was tought of/available and I definitely side with Wherewolf on that one.

-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs, Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671