Randy Lee
Forum Replies Created
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In Milwaukee, one of the best places to get in the same room as the guys you want to be hired by is by going to MCA-I meetings. They usually have a great turnout, never enough students or newcomers, and plenty of higher-end people and experienced production people who are always looking for someone to help out. Madison is close by and usually has a great turnout as well. I don’t know where I’d be today if I hadn’t jumped on board there while I was still a student.
https://www.mcai-milwaukee.com/ for more details.
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One other consideration – if you’re using an image with an alpha, it seems to take longer. If it’s just text or a slap-on-the-top picture, it doesn’t take as much horsepower to render. That’s been my experience anyway.
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Any time you’re messing with files and don’t know exactly what you’re doing (and even if you do, for that matter), you should make a copy of the file before you start.
Stephen’s link from earlier takes you to a site that has the exact text that you need. It shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to make sure you’ve got exactly the same text in your document.
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Where I’m at, we often export not self-contained files of just the video portion of the final timeline that goes to tape. Then just duplicate the sequence, delete the video, edit in the exported file in its place, and go to tape. That really helps when using 3rd party filters – Tiffen causes crashes like mad, as does disabling clips, but using an exported file takes care of all of all of that. As soon as I’m done with the edit to tape, I get rid of the export and the extra timeline. It takes 30 seconds, which is less than the amount of swearing every time you crash or run into errors.
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Check your aspect ratio – you’ve got quite a few to choose from in Final Cut, but less that will play nice with your footage. If you don’t know what you’re doing there, it’s often easiest and best to go with the “default” ratios. If you think you’ve got a handle on what you’re doing, then the only thing I would advise is that you convert as much as possible to the same framesize, codec, and aspect ratio before editing so you’re not constantly rendering.
Good luck, and let us know how things are coming along, or if you run into more issues.
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Might I also suggest exporting a small portion of the film – say a minute long, to test compression on, until you figure out what settings you’re going to use? That way you’re not compressing all 20 minutes worth to 400kbps, just to decide that nope, I shouldn’t have gone 1920X1080 – maybe I’ll do something at 640X360 instead, and have to re-compress the entire video. The 300kbps setting is probably where you’ll want to start, which leaves room for audio. Or if you can upload in pieces, I would cut it in half and go up to 600kbps at 640X360.
Let us know what you end up with, and good luck!
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I was recently on the set of a short film and helped the person shooting behind the scenes videos to set up a preset for bringing 7D footage into FCE. 5Dmii should be exactly the same. After experimenting, it turned out that the best route (highest quality, no rendering in FCE) was AIC at 1440X1080, and leave the frame rate blank (So it maintains current). If you make the files 1920X1080 you’ll have to render when they go onto a timeline – 1440 worked perfectly fine. I would create a preset of that, so you don’t have to remember it every time you need to convert footage.
It could be that I missed something when figuring out what to convert to, but we couldn’t get anything 1920X1080 to work without rendering in FCE. Does anyone have any suggestions that would help? I’m a FCP user, and don’t often have access to FCE, but filmmakers often turn to me for help with their questions, and I’m sure someone on the Cow has dealt with this before and has a satisfactory answer.
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When I had this issue recently on a short film, no matter how many times I attempted to bring in the affected clips through L&T, they came in shortened. I didn’t shoot the film, so it may have never been noticed except that something seemed off when the audio that I was syncing continued but the video ended abruptly. Clips were from a 7D, and I ended up bringing them through Mpeg Streamclip, then adding reel and TOD timecode information from inside of Final Cut. It’s kind of scary – no warning, and it would be really easy to miss something if you’re not paying attention to every single clip, especially if you don’t know what was shot.
Hopefully there’s a fix soon. Or at least an update to the plugin that will tell you that something is amiss.
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Just a thought – and possibly a situation that you’re in since you’ve gotten into so many areas in the last few years, is that there might not be performance reviews, and nothing is going to happen until you bring up money / benefits issues. That’s close to the situation that I’ve been in – 3 1/2 years with a production company, and there have been pay increases along the way along with huge changes in duties, but never an official review. You learn that if you don’t stand up and say that it’s time for a raise, it isn’t going to happen. One filmmaker put it this way: Don’t ask, don’t get. That’s one that can be applied just about anywhere.
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One of the only things that has caused DVDs to not verify for me lately has been moving the computer while it is burning – something that should (obviously) be avoided. You never stated what sort of computer you’re on, so if you’re on a laptop and it is moving at all while you’re burning, that could do it. Hopefully unless you’re in an emergency situation on location somewhere that would never happen, but you never know.