[Scott Howard]

Good idea re: the loop. I used a simple Four-Point Garbage Matte on one of the shots I needed, and it looks good even as a freeze frame. Breathing begone!

Unfortunately, when I turned to the shot where it’s most needed, and there’s a problem–another actor keeps getting in the way of the corpse I need to freeze (or loop). So, I need the matte to change shape during the same take.

I don’t have After Effects or Motion. Rather than key the hell out of it to make the matte travel around, I’m wondering if I can just razor the same clip in a few places and have a differently-shaped hole every few seconds. Would that look weird? How would I deal with this in FCP 7?

[Scott Howard]

Thanks folks. I appreciate it. Time to go suffocate an actor.

[Scott Howard]

Thanks, I’ll try to figure that out.

Before I do, any idea whether using that effect to freeze part of a frame would look weird and draw attention to itself?

This is shot on DLSR indoors so there’s no moving light to consider (or much graininess).

[Scott Howard]

Thanks! There is a blank DVD in there, so I’ll try the workaround.

So are you saying that all I should need to do to get this sucker onto a DVD that I can play in a DVD player, is set the bitrate at 7 mbps CBR (is that based on the 38 minute length and an 80 minute DVD?), keep the audio at 1.2 mbps, output it to Video_TS, and then burn the contents of that folder to DVD? In other words, it should fit onto a DVD that way? And I don’t have to do any other fancy stuff?

Thanks again-
Scott

[Scott Howard]

Hi,

I am most assuredly a newbie, and I’m encountering a host of problems. I won’t burden you with them in this thread–most of them stem from the stupid propensity that XP has to randomly disconnect my 1394 external drive (this is all too well documented online in connection with many brands of drive, many different computers–cold comfort).

Why I’m writing here: if I can manage to fix that crippling 1394 connection problem, I still might be in for “newbie” sorrows, because currently my project file is 20 megs, and it’s only about 1/5 into the film (it’s going to be about 50 minutes long)! I try to do as much in the source window as possible, like setting in and outs points, but then I drag them down into the timeline and edit from there. I think I might just not understand the extent to which one can ‘edit in the timeline’. I remember seeing it in the Help, but I didn’t really understand the principle. All the editing I’ve done before, in earlier versions of Adobe Premiere and in Final Cut, has been timeline-centric.

If you have any tips, please tell me how to cut down on my apparently-out-of-control file size in the future…also, is there a way to go back through the editing I’ve already done and keep the same sequences, but somehow reduce the amount of space they take up???

Thank you,

Scott