[Sam Tollitt]

the trick is to make a tracking chart and film it wiggle the camera the way you want it to look then import the clip and track the points you want to use and then apply the motion to the clip you want to effect.

I think this is the simple alternative you were looking for and will allow you total creative freedom!!!

for example …. do a chart with 2x tracking dots on a clean surface than you can apply the rotation too.

good luck.

Sam Tollitt
Editor | Finisher | Consultant

[Sam Tollitt]

the sync issue is one thing but…

I am also a bit confused re 24 bit audio…. I was approached about an audio issue the other day and I recommended that it be 16bit 48Khz for best compatibility with FCP, are you saying this is incorrect?

I have just loaded a ton of sequence presets in fcp 7 as I was a bit worried & they all read 16bit 48Khz as expected, if it is the case that I am wrong could somebody please explain why?

back to the point > I have also experienced the sync issue on a vast number of systems, it has been boiled the problem appearing to be something to do with FCP 7 & kona cards.

multiple drivers have been tryed and konas have been swapped out in place for BM cards.

anyone experiencing the same problems? I’m sure there is as it does appear to be a solid issue which we cannot rid of!

[Sam Tollitt]

When you transcode the original 5D .mov’s in compressor to an edit friendly codec (e.g prores) compressor will automatically add a timecode track that starts at 00:00:00:00.

Good luck!

[Sam Tollitt]

same as my last post!

1 thing i did not mention…

open the QT movie in question hit ‘apple & j’ and tick the high quality box! ( & de-interlace if your footage is interlaced)

all the best

[Sam Tollitt]

I would suggest doing the best possibly quality down-conversion to an i-frame codec before encoding to MPEG-2 DVD

I find that mpeg encoders are generally stupid & will not incorporate any clever down conversion techniques prior too the actual mpeg encoding.

make your source media as close too your destination as possible before encoding, this applies to any highly compressed formats –

frame rate
frame size
pixel aspect

[Sam Tollitt]

export a native Quicktime movie (self contained to be safe) from FCP and play direct from quicktime in full screen.

You don’t need another drive with FW800 or eSATA as the data rate for DVCPRO HD 720 will be no problem for the internal drive on any apple laptop made in the last 5 or so years!

You will need to change the full screen options in the quicktime preferences as it defaults too playing in the on with the finder controls.
If the projector is 1080 just for simplicity I would do the scaling in the mac (might not be the best but without a doubt it will defiantly look good) the mac will detect settings for the projector via the DVI connection, this is all available in – system preferences>displays if your having trouble viewing the projector output the settings might not be correct if so hit > gather windows so you can alter the settings from your normal/finder screen here you should be able to select something along the lines of “1920×1080 – 25Hz” this will work fine and look great, I’m sure 🙂

As for the audio – simply feed a mini jack from you macs output too the amplifier, no point in trying to do something “clever” as this will give you a crisp stereo output for a viewing, which is all you require, right?

Hope all goes well

Sam Tollitt
sammy.cutcopy@gmail.com

[Sam Tollitt]

using the camera might be one of you best choices if you don’t want too spend loads of extra cash.. or compressor… ahem…

I have been doing experiments as I am trying to find the best quality DVD, the images have been shot on RED cam with a finished cut in Pro Res HQ 1080. (not the same as you i know)
Encoding and burning this file to DVD looks terrible when encoded with either cinema craft plugin for compressor or just the apple standard encoder, both with top notch settings.

I have experimented with different methods of down converting the video too SD first, I am getting much better results, yet I do still feel the quality can taken to a higher grade

I have been doing my down converts with Kona 3 and Kona LHe cards (which I suspect are identical)
now this morning I did a test in compressor – re encoding the HD QT 2 uncompressed 10bit SD using frame controls in compressor with settings set too max, what I saw appeared to look better than the uncompressed SD files I had been making from the Kona card… I carried on to encode my test file as a MPEG2 for dvd using Cinema Craft encoder (compressor one looks good too) and as expected they looked better than the files I had originally been playing with that had been down-converted using the kona card.

Of corse this process in compressor is very lenghtly and is not really for a ‘quick’ viewing copy yet a cheap way to get as higher quality DVD out of your FCP system.

Hope this helps

[Sam Tollitt]

I would strongly advise you not to do a down conversion in this manor, that is if you intend to retain as much of your picture quality as possible…

for this type of workflow I would firstly reccomened a hardware solution like the kona to down convert, as you stated this is not a great help due to your delivery requirments.

To nail this effectively I would need more information re: how important is quality, what kit do you have… on so forth..

Good luck

Sam Tollitt
Broadcast and Web Integration
sammy.cutcopy@gmail.com

[Sam Tollitt]

I have spent my last few days trying to impress one of my clients with some DVD encodes of their work..

the basic rule is – get as close to the end dvd format as you possibly can before going for the MPEG2 encode, and if you cant work out what kind of variables that might be… then get me to do it! lol

I have come from pro res HQ 1080 QT and done a hardware down conversion to a uncompressed 8 bit SD QT using 2 x FCP systems running kona cards and im getting great results either using Cinema Craft Encoder or Apple own DVD encoder in Compressor/DVD SP.

you basically wanna leave as little as possible to the encoding when it comes too things like scaling and aspect ratio conversion.

Sam Tollitt
Broadcast and Web Integration
Teccky/FCP Editor
sammy.cutcopy@gmail.com