[Randall Raymond]

[Grasshopper] ”
I have a client who wants to have his final production include a Warning statement about reproducing the video followed by a Tai Chi logo flying in from one side of the screen, stopping, and then flying out on the other side. This would be followed by the menu screen. I plan to use DVDA to author the video. I have never done anything in DVDA that would allow me to do any above things prior to being given a menu. Is there a way this can be done?”

Easily done. Create the clip and place as Introduction in DVD-A

[Randall Raymond]

Thanks John. Is there a dealer you’d recommend?

Which lens did you go with?

[Randall Raymond]

[TR 16MM] “Is there a way to get true anamorphic in vegas other than pan crop?”

To get anamorphic, you have to shoot anamorphic – which is basically a 4×3 picture stretched to 16×9 in post – you lose resolution.

A cropped 4×3 picture to 16×9 is letterboxed – you don’t lose resolution – you lose a portion of the picture.

HD footage doesn’t need to be cropped – it’s 16×9 to begin with – but it would still be letterboxed for a DVD which means a resolution loss because you have to go down to SD. (An HDTV Can zoom in on the letterbox to fill its 16×9 screen)

DVD’s are standard definition 4×3 – so the above are your choices for ‘widescreen’ which DVDs can only fake.

[Randall Raymond]

[Barry Green] “AVC-HD is not AVC-Intra. One’s a slightly-improved HDV, offering more compression efficiency, long-GOP 4:2:0 and uncompressed audio. The other’s a near D5HD caliber codec with intraframe-only 10-bit 4:2:2 encoding and full raster 1920×1080.

Both are based on AVC, hence the confusion. The AVC-Intra codec card (by itself) costs more than any AVC-HD complete camcorder on the market.”

Good to know – thank you, Barry. That begs the question – Is it an EDITING codec? Preferable to ProRes because of apparently smaller file sizes?

ProRes is a variable rate codec – I can’t see that as an improvement over D5 – unless it’s better to edit with for some reason. D5 to telecine seems to be the promise of this camera.

[Randall Raymond]

Thank you Mule, that’s what I’m looking for…

[Randall Raymond]

[Barry Green] “HPX3000 doesn’t use AVC-HD anyway, it uses the new AVC-Intra codec. Entirely different, night-and-day different.”

OK – but I’m still confused – will FCP be able to edit the native AVC-Intra codec directly? It’s apparently not a variable bit rate codec such as ProRes is.

[Randall Raymond]

[Shane Ross] ”
If you are importing AVCHD into FCP using the Long and Transfer option, converting to ProRes or AIC, you are indeed CONVERTING the footage….it does not deal with AVCHD as a native codec like it does DVCPRO HD. So the footage will be converted to another codec for editing.”

But they are both H264, what conversion is taking place?

[Randall Raymond]

Thanks Nino, I took a look – those are great prices. Again, thanks for the lead.

[Randall Raymond]

Hi Nino,

I enjoy your site – bravo! Keep up the good work!

Question: What model is ‘Shirley’? Is she just a torso set on a stool?

Here’s my reason for using a manikin – we have a number of complicated shots with a dolly on curved track in some – between focus pulls, audio and lighting (talent and background) I need lots of footage to analyze and then perfect with live talent. We are constantly moving things around in sculpting the scenes. It’s too much to ask a person not to move for lengthy periods, etc. I need a dummy!

[Randall Raymond]

It’s important to encode directly to a Flash Video.