[Ron James]

Thanks, Tom and David.

I’ll check out the plugin. I think trying to match the logo crawl with the text might drive me batty, but I’ll do that as a last resort.

Thanks again for the ideas.

James

[Ron James]

Is there any reason why you’re not keyframing the dissolve? If you’re set on the stock dissolves, use a different one. There are a couple buried in there. One is called cross dissolve and another is called cross fade, I believe.

[Ron James]

[John Calhoun] “Dude, just buy another one!”

Hasn’t the whole “dude” thing reached its expiry date yet? Or is Seann William Scott still in style? Just wondering…

[Ron James]

Is there something in the clip that’s showing up? Try bumping your edit point in 10 frames or so and see if the glitch moves with it.

[Ron James]

Yeah, you can search for unused, which is probably faster than manually going clip by clip. But try shift-f from the browser and see if that does what you want. I think that’s the command (I can never remember for sure when I’m not sitting right in front an open project).

[Ron James]

[edit] “You can’t cheap out on gear, it will always embarass you at the wrong moment.”

That’s funny. I have an iMac Intel at home and work on several different G5 towers for work, but my iMac is the snappiest and fastest at rendering at the moment. Don’t underestimate the iMac’s, especially if you can’t afford a full blown system right away.

These iMac Intels are the best bang for your buck EVER, no matter what people say. Try it and see for yourself.

Nice that they added FW800 now.

[Ron James]

Maria, I’ve had the pleasure of doing this many times. And it’s NEVER FUN! But, here’s a tip or two that can maybe help make it easier:

Don’t worry about reference level first-off (like -12 or whatever). Concentrate first on getting everything in the same general ballpark, then you can export them if you wish as an aif that you can import again and adjust that file to your reference, just to make it more manageable.

As far as evening out the audio, you’ll find that some clips are really far apart, such as some that are recorded at pro levels and some possible at consumer levels (softer and much louder). For the softer levels, in the old days, I’ve had to stack the audio tracks to increase the level. Apparently, there’s no need to do this now, though. In a thread last week, Thax added this great tip (which I haven’t tried yet, but am going to as soon as I can):

“No need to stack multiple copies of the same track to increase the level.

Add the Audio Filters > Apple > AUPeakLimiter and adjust the “Pre-gain” to any level you want.”

Now, this tip will get you working faster: select all the clips in your timeline that you want to adjust at once. For instance, you’ll find as you go along that you’ll have large chunks that you’ll want to adjust all at once, louder or softer. Select the multiple clips, either by drawing a marquee around them or command-clicking them, etc, and then hit:

Command-Option-L

Then, you can adjust for all the selected clips by entering a + or – value. I’m not at FCP right now, but I’m pretty sure that’s the key combo.

Hope that helps make your life a little easier.

[Ron James]

[David Roth Weiss] “Funny!!! Here at my place, good video levels on the way in when encoding to MPEG2 using Compressor are just as good on the way out.”

Wow, you mustn’t be as picky as me, or something is different in our quicktime/os configuration, because everything I do at default settings comes out washed out and pretty blocky, unlike what the BitVice demo gives me. And I’m not the only one getting gamma shift from compressor, so what’s your secret?

[Ron James]

[ED stevens] “Unfortunately I’m out of warranty. I remember when you bought a monitor and it lasted 20 years. Today you buy the product, then you must buy protection against poor workmanship.”

This is untrue. Crap has been around as long as I can remember. But I don’t think for a second that Apple monitors are crap. I know all kinds of people using them successfully for constant work over long periods of time, and they’re still chugging.

Insurance is not a new concept, either. It’s saved me many times at Future Shop (in Canada, owned by Best Buy). People love to go on about how the extended care is just a rip-off, but I’ve gotten brand new over-the-counter replacements for LCD monitors (Sony and NEC, not Apple, BTW) that died, printers, VCR’s and $380 cash back for a three-year-old LaCie 4x CD burner that started giving errors (b/c they couldn’t offer a Mac-compatible replacement). I don’t see how that is a rip-off.

With new technologies, I wouldn’t be caught without some kind of extended care, esp. if it’s for work and the higher the cost, the more important it is.

That said, I remember how angry I was when my old B&W Apple Studio Display 17″ (remember those bum units that would make a big snap sound and then go dim?) died just out of Apple’s extended care. It was such a widespread problem, but you really had to butt heads with Apple to get them to give a damn. In the end, they took care of me, thankfully, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.

I’ve been buying from Future Shop whenever possible since then, and with the extended care in most cases. I can assure you my iPod Video has the Future Shop extended warranty, which includes the battery, btw. It was an extra $110 for three years, but I wasn’t going to be stuck with a dead iPod one day out of my one-year limited warranty.

I hope you’re not stuck with a dead display, though. Try pleading with Apple and keep a cool head. And, if you’re in Canada, buy it at Future Shop next time w/ the longest extended care possible. You pretty much have to factor that into the price, IMO.

Best of Luck!

[Ron James]

[Chris Poisson] “I wonder which 3rd party plugins mentioned above do this better?”

I used to use one that came free on one of the FCP installers (v.3, I think) called “Roll-Scroll” from CGM. This was the only way I could get smooth ease fx.

Not sure if it still comes free or not. I don’t remember seeing it on the 5.1 installer.