Spencer Averick
Forum Replies Created
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[Bob Cole] “Did you find a dealer who discounts?”
Yes your’e right! I forgot I got a discount. I can’t remember why though to tell you the truth… Maybe because I paid for it months before it came out. I got it from here though: https://www.thehumansolution.com/humanscale-float-sit-stand-table.html
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Exactly! I’m up and down all day, it’s so easy. I figured if I bought a desk that was a pain in the ass to adjust I’d be pretty much sitting all day. It’s a solid work table.
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It sounds like your sequence settings don’t match your footage (codec and frame size). You can go in to sequence settings and correct both of these, but if your frame rate is different you’ll have to create a new sequence. Also once you adjust your sequence frame size to match your footage you may have to reset “scale” in the motions tab.
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Assuming you’re starting with decent quality HD videos that aren’t much more than 5 mins-
If you create 1280×720 h.264 videos with a data rate of 10,000 kbps, you’ll have great looking videos. I wouldn’t go higher than 300-400 MBs. The 20 mb limit is only for email. -
Andrew, I bought the Humanscale Float Table. Definitely expensive at around $1300 but well worth it to me. It works on some sort of counterbalance system that makes it an effortless adjustment.
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I’ve been editing standing up for about 4 months now and it’s definitely for me. I bought an easily adjustable table so I slide up and down during the day, probably stand 75% of the time. I feel more engaged and active and it feels more like a physical activity even though I’m just standing there.
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This happened to me once before. I think I simply changed the name of the autosaved file back to the original file name and everything connected. So instead of “Project File_08-26-12” I deleted the date and just called it “Project File”. For some reason FCP got confused when the project file’s name was different, which is obviously not always and shouldn’t be the case.
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Hey Vic, I would definitely color correct your videos, it will make a big difference. The first few times you do it will be a learning process but once you get it you’ll be able to knock it out in a couple hours.
In the professional process the color correction happens after the edit is finished and locked, and it is very time consuming because they do color each shot individually, although there are obviously ways to copy and paste certain “looks” to similar or identical shots to save time.
But when I think about your situation with weddings, if I was editing and you gave me a shot that lasted an hour during the ceremony and was washed out, I would probably fix it before I started editing. Apply it to the clip before it goes into the timeline so that I don’t have to tediously apply a color filter every time I see that same shot. For everything else like quicker shots I’d only color correct after picture lock.
So for your situation with weddings you should focus on 2 things- Color consistency (mainly with the whites, white balancing, but also with overall hue) and contrast (avoid the washed out look).
Like I said this will take time getting used to , but start with this- apply the 3-way color correcter to a clip in the timeline. Now adust the “blacks” slider the the left and you’ll see the blacks getting blacker. Now adjust the “whites” slider to the right and the whites get whiter (or to the the left if you want to bring the whites down like you said) . Use small adjustments here don’t go overboard. This is adding basic contrast and will help your finished look. You may have to adjust the saturation slider up a bit. Play with the “mids” slider as well. Also, to the lower left of the “whites” slider there is a tiny box. If you click that, then go to your video and point it to anything that is truly white in the frame, then you’ll automatically adjust the white balance. White balance will be key in giving your video an overall consistency. Let’s say you like this look and want to apply it to other clips in the timeline. Copy the clip then option+v to paste attributes>filters to other clips. Or you can open the filter and drag it into your browser, then name it something like “wedding ceremony CAM A”. Now you have that filter to drag and drop to any clip you want in the timeline. Also always remember to keep in mind that your computer monitor isn’t exactly the perfect reference. Professionals use expensive monitors to see exactly what the finished product will look like. In your case, the only way to view exactly what your clients will see is to burn dvd’s and watch at home.
This is just a tiny bit of what coloring is, but you should definitely play around with it, and see how it looks after adding contrast and compressing for the DVD
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Hey Vic, you do lose quite a bit of quality going to DVD but there are ways to adjust quality settings. Obviously, it depends so much on the quality of the raw content you shoot. When you shoot on your small camcorder then compress to DVD there will be some loss. If you shoot on a RED camera then compress for DVD it will still look pretty good, even though you’re compressing both to same exact format (mpeg2 always for sd dvd).
Do you color correct at all? You might want to apply some contrast to your image before compressing to dvd, that might off set the washed out look you see.
In terms of dvd quality, it doesn’t matter if you use DVDSP or Toast. The only thing that matters is bit rate. In Compressor after you apply the dvd “best quality 90 minutes”, click on that setting on your file to open in the inspector. Select the “encoder” tab in the inspector. Select the “quality tab”. Here you can adjust the “average bit rate”. As you move the slider up, go back to the “summary” tab to see that your estimated file size has gone up. You can’t go over 4.7 gigs for dvds.
I would do some tests with a 2 minute piece of your video. Adjust the “average bit rate” up to like 7.0 or 8.0 and see how that looks compared to 5 or 6 or what you had it at.
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Hey Vic, sorry don’t have any experience with this, but take a look at this thread it might be there:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3112577?start=0&tstart=0