[Pat Defilippo]

Thank you for your help, Dave!

In FCP 5, the Export settings are a bit different than “Export Quicktime Movie” in FCP 4.5, but I figured out that the variables that you listed are now in the “Export with Quicktime Conversion” option.

I tried them and they do in fact shrink the file size, like you said, however I lose the chapter markers within the Quicktime window. I output the audio file from FCP via “Export Quicktime Movie”, which does allow all chapter markers to be saved, however it won’t allow me to enter any variables as you suggested.

However, I’ve been playing with the variables you suggested from the large video and audio files that I already made before you reply using “Export Quicktime Movie” (for the 3 GB audio .mov file with chapter markers) and the “Export with Quicktime Conversion” (for the 2.77 GB .mpg video file) from within FCP 5.1. It appears I lose the chapter markers when further exporting from within Quicktime player (although they are there in the original that is doing the exporting). However, the video file (2.77 GB) is exporting right now using your variables from withing Quicktime and, if I can “add” the video to the existing 3 GB audio file with chapter markers and it totals less than 4.7 GB, at least I’ll be able to now fit it onto a DVD!

It’s too bad about the audio file being so large and in stereo where mono would be just fine, but I just don’t know what to do in order to reduce the size while maintaining the chapter markers.

I’ll post again later when the 2.77 GB video file is done exporting in Quicktime Player and I’ve had a chance to marry the audio with chapter markers file to the new video file, but that’s where I’m at for now.

Thanks again for your help – it definitely got me to the next level!
-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,

I also had this problem editing two layers of Boris type onto a 5-hour radio program, one layer of which stayed the same throughout and the other layer changed maybe 20 times during the whole session.

What I finally figured out was that if the playhead was between two clips, it doesn’t have to “prepare”. Basically, I copied and pasted a 2-minute CG clip while listening to the program, editing it to length and adding a chapter marker when I changed the one layer. What I would do is position the playhead at the end of the clip on the layer that I wanted to change, and then copy and paste the previous clip. The playhead ends up at the tail of the newly pasted clip and there is no “prepare” time waster.

If you have the playhead over the middle of any clip on the SAME TRACK that you are pasting or moving or shortening/lengthening (whatever), you’ll always get the “preparing” beach ball. If you have the playhead in between clips or at the end on the SAME TRACK before editing, you’ll be able to edit much quicker with no “preparing” message.

By the way, I have a Quad with 4GBs of RAM and I still get the same “preparing” messages that you do! Although I’m not 100% sure this is the answer that you are looking for or that it will even work for you the same way (I’ve only been using FCP for 5 months now, although I’ve been editing professionally for over 23 years now), I think it would be worth a shot for you to give it a try.

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]

Thanks, John!

I wish I knew SoundTrack Pro well enough to edit in that, but then again I would like to keep the video if at all possible.

In the last couple of days since writing this e-mail, here’s how far I’ve got just by experimenting (failing much more than succeeding!). I do now have a QuickTime movie file with video and audio and I also have the ability to jump to the chapter makers right from within the QT window. That’s ideally where I’d like to end up so that I can upload it to my website and send out links to all of the disc jockeys (who are spread out all over the country) for downloading.

The problem is that the Quicktime .mov file is 5.77 GB!!! I can’t even fit it onto a DVD! The best I could figure out to do from FCP was create an audio and chapter markers only file using “Export Quicktime Movie” from FCP, since this Export function appears to be the only one that supports chapter markers. The bottom three windows in “Export Quicktime Movie” say “Current Settings”, “Audio Only” and “Chapter Markers”. So, what I end up with is a 3 GB stereo Quicktime .mov audio only file with chapter markers.

For video, I turned off the audio in FCP and chose “Export with Compressor”. There, I chose the MPEG-1 option (within the QuickTime 6 settings). I then ended up with a video only 320X240 .mpg movie of 2.77 GB.

Then, I opened both the audio (with chapter markers) .mov file and video .mpg file from within Quicktime Player. I copied and pasted both together and now I’ve got the end product that is a .mov file with audio, video and chapter markers, however it is 5.77 GB (way too big).

To get the 5.77 GB file smaller, I can do two things that I can think of (unless you can think of anything else?).

Regarding video, I can go to a smaller size (240X192, or whatever the specific numbers are, or even the 192X152), but the FCP “Export Using Compressor” option and the Compressor MPEG-1 preset won’t let me adjust the 320X240 size (I’ve tried looking in the Compressor Inspector Window and there’s no place to change that). So, I tried taking the 320X240 .mpg file into Cleaner in order to do this, but I keep getting setting errors there.

Regarding audio, the .mov file with chapter markers is stereo coming out of FCP. The 4 hour and 40 minute edited audio can be mono since it’s just a bunch of guys talking for the entire time anyway. I tried changing the FCP sequence settings to mono, but I still get a .mov file with chapter markers that is 3 GB (the same size as stereo) anyway. I’ve also tried to run the this file through cleaner to get it to a mono Wave, Aiff or ideally MP3 file, but then it strips the chapter markers off.

Would anyone have any suggestions of how I can get the same end result (.mov or .mpg file that plays audio and video with chapter markers in the Quicktime window) that is a smaller file size than 5.77 GB (again, smaller video and mono audio with chapter markers would be fine)?

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 ~
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]

I have the Swift Data 200 built inside my G5. I got it in January and it’s been rock solid. It appears to be even better in that it’s already available, doesn’t take up any more space since it’s all internal and offers SATA speeds (I believe this is Firewire 800, reading the link?).

Here’s the link: https://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2490

If you have about 10 minutes or so, click the “Installation Movie” in the middle of the page to get the full picture of how it all comes together and see the speed benchmarks. It took me about 1.5 hours to install and it worked perfectly for me right away. I have 1.6TB, but you can get 2.0TB and double it by adding an external box.
-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]

Thank you all for your help!

I went with Winston’s suggestion of using Boris’s Title Crawl (changing it to Roll – I wouldn’t have known it was there if not for Winston pointing it out) within FCP. As compared to keyframing static pages in Boris or Photoshop (via AE), I liked the idea of the Boris Title Crawl (Roll) because it seems to be much easier to revise right from within FCP since this client will probably add, delete or change.

Thanks again for your help – LiveType, for as great as it is for what it does, should definitely NOT be used for credit rolls (in my opinion) until a later date! Boris is fast, easy to revise and powerful enough.

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 ~
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]

Thanks again, Walter!

Starting with the next project I digitize, I’m going to input in 8-bit. I’ll have to make sure I don’t capture anything in 8-bit that I am already editing in 10-bit, right? If not, the two clips won’t play on the timeline? I don’t know for sure because I’ve not run into this yet, but compression settings can not be mixed and matched within a timeline, right?
-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]

Thanks, Walter!

Are there any times that you would want to go to 10-bit? I heard that if you’re chroma keying or if you do are doing multiple layers that need to be rendered? I’ve got 1.6TBs of storage with my Swift Data 200 system, but it does tend to fill up fast! I’m guessing you can’t mix 10-bit with 8-bit in the same timeline, right?

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 ~
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 Walter and Steve,

Thanks for the reply! As you described, I hooked the deck in, changed the settings to AJA Io LA S-Video 10-bit Uncompressed and it appears to be working just fine. The picture looks pretty good, too. I have heard that capturing in 8-bit Uncompressed for all analog sources is good because, in the case of Beta-SP, most are about 5:1 anyway. I’ll probably move to this capture setting once I get going.

NAB was good this year, but I didn’t think it was fantastic. There were some great things going on, though. I’ve been going off and on since ’96 and was a bit disappointed by the Apple and Apple plug ins booths. I guess I was expecting much more, but what they had was good. It was fun hanging out with you there, Steve!

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 ~
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]

Thanks guys – I’ll check out both options and see what works best with the visuals.
-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]

Hello again – this time thanks to Lee as well!

I’m just a bit confused regarding the outputs of the Behringer. I can see where I can run the XLRs in from the AJA Io LA, Beta-SP deck, etc., to the different inputs but where is it that I run the audio out of the mixer back to the AJA Io LA, Beta-SP deck, etc.? I only see one set of male XLR for either/or but I don’t see any more XLR outputs than that. Do you additionally have to get an XLR DA or are there additional Phono outputs that can be adapted?

Also, what type of speakers do you run for monitoring and what mixer output do you use for that?

Thanks again for you help!