[Rich Rubasch]

Here’s what I do to get clips to the PC. Export a Ref clip from FCP. Open that clip in MPEGStream clip on the Mac. (latest version). Export an AVI and choose Apple PhotoJPEG at 75% quality and make sure your audio is uncompressed. Also don’t scale and be sure it’s set for lower field. You must have Quicktime installed on the PC side for this clip to be readable.

Launch windows. Open the AVI into the encoder. I know this works for Windows Media encoding, not sure, but assume that the Real encoder can accept an AVI, and as long as Quicktime is installed it can read the PhotoJPEG compressor.

I use the PhotoJPEG compressor so that I don’t hit the 2 gig file size limit on AVIs.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Rich Rubasch]

Interesting…..I opened them both in cleaner and looked at the graph. Your clip has a much lower bitrate but does not contain audio. Both played back perfectly smooth but I’m on a MacBook Pro. Hmmm. I didn’t see any appreciable difference between the two clips.

Perhaps duration between keyframes?

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Rich Rubasch]

Two reasons I could start my own production company with confidence. Our local MCA-I chapter and the Creative COW.

Without the COW, it would be like flying untethered from the mother ship…

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Rich Rubasch]

Well, first you need to know at what resolution and size they are requesting. I have sometimes dragged a comp into a new much larger comp and scaled everything up. I have even saved out PICT with alpha’s so I could re-layer them in Photoshop. Usually only a few layers are necessary. And I always suggest they set their own type. I provide Font info.

Sometimes the challenge is that they are designing for a vertical layout and we work in a horizontal layout.

But for the most part scaling up a comp these days seems to hold up pretty well. As far as plugins go, most of ours move, so for print it is subjective which frame is best….I will usually provide an alternate.

This will be more and more requested as we move into HD. I don’t think anyone can expect a 300 dpi 9 inch by 6 inch file. I usually get the final width as close to 1500-2000 pixels as I can. That usually suffices for most of these video to print requests.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Rich Rubasch]

Are the Apple clips 23.98 fps by chance? Those extra 6 frames per second can make a big difference in playback and decompression.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Rich Rubasch]

I only use CBR single pass at 6.2 mbps and AC3 audio. I don’t have any issues with unplayable discs or quality complaints.

Seems to work for us.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Rich Rubasch]

Compressor does not allow for MPEG-1 movies larger than 320 x 240. Cleaner does.

If your clients will play off a Windows computer then encoding the clip on a PC to a Windows Media clip is the best option here. Only a Windows Media clip at 640 x 480 will look good if encoded on a PC. Flip4Mac can do smaller Windows Media clips but at 640 x 480 only the free Microsoft encoder does the job very well.

And although cleaner allows for larger MPEG-1 clips they are still 1 field and wont look as good as a Windows Media clip.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Rich Rubasch]

I assume you are also encoding the Flash to 23.98 fps as well? How about audio sampling? Is the Flash 44.1 like the source or something different? And is that a 6 minute 41 second clip? Or six seconds?

Thanks,

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Rich Rubasch]

What I wish they would do is un-link the apps from the Studio Serial Number. I seriously want to compress to MPEG-2 on a nice fast G5 while I continue to edit on my trusty G4 dual 1 gig. Can’t be done unless I buy a complete new studio package. Would be nice to just buy a compressor license to do just that. Please give us the apps separately, but keep the integration of the studio.

Oh, and give us decompose like the Avid has. man I miss decompose. Wouldn’t that be a better workflow than the current convoluted media manager. Sure it works but it is still not intuitive like the old decompose. You know what we need to do….break down the clips we used in the sequence with handles we specify and either take everything offline and make a new sequence with a bin of clips or give us the option to consolidate to new media clips online.

I am beginning to think that Adobe is being very strategic in rolling out their studio bundle on the Mac side. I am a much bigger fan of Adobe software than Apple. If Premier could pony up the goods and be compatible with all the cards and plugins that FCP now uses it could get interesting.

So FCP 6 had better be something sweet for the users out there asking for the goods…

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Rich Rubasch]

I didn’t look at your mock up right away, but that is exactly it. If Matrox can sell the MXO then I don’t see why this product wouldn’t exceed the IO sales. With tdshe small footprint you couln’t fit drives in there, but on second glance, a small 4 drive external box running off the two SATA ports would suffice quite nicely.

C’mon Walter…..you don’t think this product would have legs in today’s market? It would be groundbreaking and probably get all the buzz at NAB. The IO could run uncompressed, even the Mojo can, but that uncompressed isn’t running in and out of the firewire cable. Only the commands to tell the card what to send to the drives, and back to the card and to the outputs.

And it still leaves your Firewire 800 available for a second drive if needed.

I really like this product. Walter, in my experience, firewire as your main IO including machine control is not ideal. and it gives you little choice in codec choice, up/down convert etc. Only a true card gives you that. And with true RS422 control the system would behave much like a desktop system, but fit in a couple bags.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media