Rich Rubasch
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Forum Replies Created
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Hey Bill, good insight. It probably is an indicator that it is time to dig in and decide what the future holds.
On another note…did you ever work in Hawaii? Your name rings a bell. I knew a Bill Paris when I worked at Pacific Focus and Island Post out in Hawaii.
Are you THAT Bill Paris?
Just curious.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
Looks like we could be in for a bumpy ride in 2008. Time will tell, but the indicators point that way. We are doing some basic upgrades…we also had a pretty good year and with the FC Studio upgrades and buying three CS3 suites we spent a lot on software.
Real glad we found a rental space that includes all utilities.
I guess it is having a good forecast to what your clients needs will be, if there are good prospects on the horizon, and a general sense of how you are viewed in the community.
I personally think there are ways to get to the top of mind of your clients rather than spending $3000 on a personalized promo piece. Depends on the market and your client list.
Got a good accountant? Ask him/her how you are doing and what steps you can make to keep the surprises to a minimum.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
Great advice Jeremy….to clarify one point you would add the pulldown in the render process?
What I have done in the past is to create the 23.98 comp and in the advanced tap click the Preserve Frame Rate button. Then I create a 1080 comp at 29.97 and drop the 23.98 comp in there. It always added the pulldown that way automatically. Then I would just use my 29.97 fields-based render settings.
Or do you think adding the pulldown in the render settings is better? Or just different?
BTW, I was correct in dropping the clips into a sequence in FCP and letting FCP make the sequence match the clips….it was the 29.97 stuff that didn’t hold up thru AE and the render process.
Just checking…
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
Thanks guys. Well, I did think that cutting in 23.98 was better. I dragged the clips into the sequence, let the sequence do the matching and off I went.
However I also had to mix in some standard def clips from betacam. There were field order problems, juddering in renders out of AE and more.
When I export the 720p 23.98 sequence from FCP and use it in AE, should I also be working in a 23.98 sequence there? When I did that the 29.97 standard def stuff got very juddery, like frames were being pulled out…it was harsh. I got that fixed.
But it also looked like the 23.98 stuff wasn’t being field ordered correctly. Actually FCP set up the sequence to no fields and I couldn’t change it there because it was grayed out.
Our delivery was a 1920 x 1080 square pixels Quicktime Upper field Animation codec at 29.97, and my sources were 720p 23.98 DVCProHD (960 x 720 – anamorphic) and Betacam.
I was having issues mixing all the various sources into a big comp in AE and having the fields behave. (AE CS3) But I thought perhaps the culprit was starting in a 23.98 sequence with no fields and trying to force it into a 1920 x 1080 upper field comp in AE.
One last tidbit….these files were being imported into a Grass Valley Turbo Disc recorder for a show and in some tests lower field 1920 x 1080 clips looked better according to one tech. This goes against all the specs for the system and HD footage. I was told to render out lower field in the final render….reluctantly I did so. Still haven’t heard if they worked or not.
Any thoughts on this mess?
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
In one of the compression audio plug ins it has a gain setting at the bottom…apply the filter and only adjust the gain slider.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
Roxio Toast.
Use the Free BitVice muxer app to put the two together into a program stream, then use the Free MPEG Streamclip to rip it to a Quicktime movie, then on to iDVD to make the DVD.
How is it that you have FCP 5 and/or 6, but don’t have the associated apps like Compressor and DVD Studio Pro?
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
A quick search on Amazon.com for Typography came up with a bunc of pretty good selections.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
Boy, with this much material I would consider having the shows converted realtime tape to tape and then upload the new PAL tape, edit and output Pal. Having Nattress convert 26 hours of footage would take eons and you will get better results realtime with an outboard converter box. Find a service provider that has one and see what that would cost.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
Gotta jump in on this one. Thanks for getting it started, Grin.
I am 45 and got started in 1991 as a tape op. Read all the manuals and eventually ran a Digital FX Composium (Windows 1.5), and soon after got to work on the 11th AVID ever sold on an old Mac IIFx. AfterEffects was still Cosa and Photoshop had channels not layers.
I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but in the last couple years it does seem that projects are less creative and not all that inspiring, and more and more like jobs. The craft factor is slipping away. Less and less of our recent stuff is ending up on our demo reel.
I think I know much of what Charlie was going to write, or did write, then erased. I share his sentiment somewhat. We are looking for the people and the means to bring the creative and craft back into the process. We have not nailed down a strategy to pull this off, however.
It seems that the democratization of the craft has in many ways diluted it. We all own a camcorder of some kind. Back in 1992 only a handful in our town had one. And most of those guys were specialists. We are in a time when we see more Jack of all trade types, and less craftsman. Lots of Writer/Director/Producer/Editor types out there, but how many really good, focused, creative script writers are out there? Especially in corporate video? How about spot writing?
Since most TV stations and corporate in house shops have the same gear as the nearest post house or boutique shop they keep the project in house, and in lesser hands.
Another factor is budget and time. Our time is much less valuable. Other than HD rates, when was the last time editing room rates have gone up? We have been hovering in the sub $200/hr range for a good 8 years. And budgets are ever shrinking, partly because we have shown that we can do the job faster and sometimes with more interesting results because of the toolsets on our desktops. We applauded Nattress for giving us low priced plug ins, but now even corporate clients want film look but don’t want to pay for the time it takes to do a real thorough color correct. They think it is a preset on a $99 plugin. They don’t realize that FILM actually looks the most like film.
Ok, I’ll admit that sometimes it is a $99 plug in that saves the day, but…
Another problem. We all can do the job faster. We have octo core computers. We have 512 megs of Video Ram. We have terabytes of storage, and that’s on an internal array. We are a production company, but the student graduate has the same system in his bedroom. The savvy producer knows this too. And the kid in his bedroom just might have a better idea of how to put the pictures together, too. There is a lot of new talent in the field. Agencies love the new talent, don’t they? Not the old seasoned guys.
I am hoping that in a couple months we get a new post from Grinner that he worked it all out and he’s right where he wants to be. And I also hope that we all chime in that it’s all gotten better for us too. But it looks like the economy might be in that slide they’ve been promising, so it’s probably best to get back to it and do our best, and work hard, and try to create something that we can put on a reel.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
I you are on a Mac and happen to have Motion I think the Motion preset generator for snow is the best I have used and the easiest. I created two clips with alpha, one with smaller flakes farther away and one with larger flakes that looked closer to the camera. I rendered out QT with alpha in 10 second durations….very easy to loop. The look is excellent. Soft, whispy, very organic looking flakes.
Used them as layers n an AE comp.
Give Motion a try if you have it.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media