[Samuel Frazier]

Just tried that and thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, it didn’t make any difference.

[Samuel Frazier]

Sorry, been out of this game for a long time and didn’t know you could upload pics. Here they are. Thoughts?

Canvass:

Viewer:

[Samuel Frazier]

Thanks, Chris. I’ve tried everything you mentioned except view through a Kona/ Decklink/ etc device. So my preview is FCP’s, then Quicktime, then whatever is done to when Withoutabox.com encodes it for steaming video. It’s fuzzy and pretty lousy regardless. Seems a bit worse to me than it used to be comparing to older pics I brought in before. Perhaps I’ve just looked at them too long.

But, if this is how text looks brought in from Photoshop, then I can’t imagine why anyone would ever use Photoshop for titles, etc for FCP. Is this really as good as it gets?

[Samuel Frazier]

Thanks very much, Jerry. I’ve checked around my town and no one has the Teranex box. Not having a lot of luck with the other hardware you mentioned either. Do you know of anyone or any company that I could send the movie to (either online or USB thumb drive in the mail) and can either do the conversion or perhaps even make the blu-ray as well?

[Samuel Frazier]

Jerry, thank you very much for the reply. And sorry for my late response. Unfortunately, the festival is demanding a blu-ray. I heard from a friend that I’m like to take a major quality hit doing a software up-convert/ render for the blu-ray. He said he heard a hardware solution (mentioned a Matrox box) would be better.

So I was wondering:

1- Is this true about the quality hit if doing a software prep?
2- If so, can you suggest a hardware solution that would work well?

Thanks again for all your help!

[Samuel Frazier]

Thank you very much! I’m not sure if they’re using a Kona or what, but I’ll go with your advice. It is what they advise doing as well. I just was hoping to avoid any huge mistakes (like my film being stretched), but I’m over thinking.

Regardless, from here on out it’s HD or no shoot. Sorry, gave up on this world years ago when good SD was the best you could hope for. So, there’s a lot for me to catch up on.

Thanks!!

[Samuel Frazier]

Thanks for the help. Was wondering though:

1- Is there any alternative to h.264? A DV25 export is 2.11 gigs so just barely over withoutabox’s 2 gig limit. Thought something like that would compress better with them. However, I can’t seem to make a smaller DV25 file unless I change the frame rate (audio settings and frame size don’t seem to change anything). Any thoughts?
2- I’m recompressing in Compressor using “Best” quality. This is a major tax on my system so I’m doing it on my old G5 running the previous version of Compressor (2.3 rather than v3.5.3). Will this make any difference in quality?

Thanks for the help!

[Samuel Frazier]

Thanks for the feedback. To get this out of the way, I used to edit professionally for a national magazine’s video, have had many films in decent festivals, and have worked with VO professionals in the past. Believe me, I know equipment is nothing compared to talent and experience. It’s like the old McEnroe w/ a snowshoe v weekend hacker w/ the latest and greatest tennis racket. What I’m trying to do is my voice narrating a short documentary and will probably do a few other small projects like this. I know a couple VO artists I’d hit up if it was a bigger or more important project, but I like to save those favors for later. I’m just trying to make this project decent and come up with the best solution that makes sense for the budget (small!)

So, getting back to the equipment, is the general consensus that the VO boxes like I mentioned don’t really work? Any other opinions on the c-stand moving blankets tent? I really like that idea.

Also, was the Studio Projects C1 sounds like a great mic, but perhaps too good for my purposes and to only be able to use for VO. Am still considering the ME64, but was wondering what y’all thought and if it has any applications other than VO work.

Thanks again for any help!

[Samuel Frazier]

Thanks very much for the help! I really appreciate it.

[Samuel Frazier]

Thanks for the help! Yeah, now I think I better understand tracking. Of course, as one problem is solved, another rears its ugly head. Now I want to smooth the tracking motion out but that feature seems only to be added to later versions of BCC (after 4.1).