[Roger Poole]

Hi Joe, I had a similar experience. However, I found that it works if you don’t launch the MTT installer app. Go to your downloaded Xeffect file, open the folder and look for the file which has the MTT suffix, it should be displaying it’s icon rather than a blank page with a turned down corner. If it doesn’t display the icon you might need to reinstall the MTT installer engine because the file is not recognized. If it displays the icon, double click and the MTT installer app should launch and show your Xeffects Flare Lights in the list on the left. If it’s there hit the “install for this user” (Your name should show at the top) Apple authorization window pops up, ok that and you should be done.

[Roger Poole]

Xeffects has a new way of working. The plugins don’t come with an installer, you can manually install by dropping them into the appropriate folder but that’s where things get tricky, which is the appropriate folder? I ran into this and the answer isn’t obvious but what’s needed is the MTT installer engine which you download and install first. The Xeffect plug in which you have downloaded will contain all kinds of stuff but what you need to look for is, in this case, Xeffects Flare Lights MTT, now that you have installed the MTT engine the Flare lights icon will now display correctly. Double click it and the MTT installer app will open and show flare lights in the list. Bottom right click “install for this user”, the apple authorization window will open, enter your password if reqd and you’re done. The installer will place the plug in in the relevant folder, generators, transitions, text etc

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/41744/motion-template-installer/

[Roger Poole]

That’s a hell of a lot of footage. There are lot’s of considerations, the first being your choice of 8TB of storage. For media use, drives shouldn’t go over about 75% full, also the formatted size of 8TB will be much less than 8TB, which will leave you with over full drives before you start editing, then you would need almost as much again for render files and final export.

Then, what interface will you be using. Whatever size of disks you have they need to be in a RAID configuration with a fast interface. The amount of footage you have is huge and if it is multi-cam footage you will definitely need fast storage to enable multiple streams in a multi-cam edit

The brand of drive enclosure is not the main consideration, it’s what is inside that is important. The make and model of the disks will be hugely important on a project of this size. “Enterprise” series drives would be my choice but bear in mind they are expensive and are designed to be left on 24/7 and also don’t withstand as many start/stop cycles as normal disks. Hitachi seem to have a good reputation but you’ll need to do your own research to find out what’s hot in the market at the moment as things change all the time.

Pro Res data rates here: https://provideocoalition.com/mcurtis/story/new_prores_info_data_rate_chart/

[Roger Poole]

The calligraphy font, if I’m not mistaken, is “Sloop script one” If you don’t need to match it then Zapfino is close.

[Roger Poole]

You can try duplicating the audio track in the timeline.

[Roger Poole]

Excuse me diving in here. I never went down the route of Blu-ray duplication but is this a license issue. My understanding is that you need to pay Sony a ridiculously expensive license fee to enable duplication. The duplicator looks on the BDR data for the license, if none found, no dupes. Probably the main reason Blu ray didn’t enjoy the success that it should.

[Roger Poole]

I agree with Shane. The problem with USB is not speed but the way USB sends data in packets rather than a stream. For editing we need Firewire, eSata or thunderbolt external drives. Fiber channel for high end users.

[Roger Poole]

To create images with Alpha channels in Photoshop. To give yourself an idea of the workflow open an image in Photoshop. In the layers pallate on the RH side double click in the image thumbnail. A dialogue box will open, in the color menu choose none, close the box. Now from the toolbox select the marquee tool, click and drag anywhere on the image then hit the backspace key. The section you selected will be removed revealing the transparency underneath.

Now the vital bit, save the image as a Tiff – include layers. in the second dialogue box which opens during the save process you will see a tick box, Preserve transparency, check that and complete the save, ignoring any warnings about layers and transparency

Import the image into FCP. Place it over the top of a video track and you will see that the hole you cut in the image in Photoshop is there revealing the video underneath.

This is just a demonstration so If for instance you were creating text with an alpha channel, start with a blank sheet with the content black. Create your text in your chosen color. Take the magic wand then click on the background to select it then hit the backspace key to delete it leaving the text on transparency. Save as before and your’e done.

[Roger Poole]

Well done Mark, I couldn’t find it. The one I saw was a different scene but the principle is exactly right. What’s going on here is that it’s sampling clean frames ahead and/or behind the talent and substituting the talent with a clean area to mask him out. It can be done manually but this saves a lot of time and seeing it in action is a lot better than me trying to explain a rather complex manual procedure.

[Roger Poole]

I’m sure you are right Dave but I never got into After Effects so I can only speak about sorting out similar problems in FCP. It is tricky but it can be done if a re-shoot is out of the question.