[Stephen May]

Craig – what does that mean, and what’s the difference between ‘all’ vs ‘part’?

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

Ron, If you mean the video gain (sensors) – I’m not getting that message, and am able to set the three settings, however, if you mean the audio gain settings for mic input CH 1 and CH2, you must have the switch on the rear of the camera set to EXT (external) in order to adjust those. -s

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

Andy – great advice! Even though I edit a lot I don’t really know much about the preference-trashing thing, but I’ve heard about it. I solved my problem, but would you mind explaining:

What happens when you do that? Do you go to Macintosh HD > Library > Preferences, and then trash any related to Final Cut Pro? Or what? -thanks

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

While on hold with Apple Pro Apps support, I had talked through my issue several times, and I began to realize that in this particular sequence I had a short .ipr I made in Livetype. I right clicked on it and selected ‘open in editor’ to double check the Project Properties, and I noticed that it was set to 29.98fps whereas my sequence is 23.98fps (720p24) – so I changed that, but still had issues however where the sound cut out on the tracks moved slightly further down in the after the new render.

When the support tech came back on the line, he questioned the practice of saving the Livetype instead of exporting it (render movie). He went back to reproduce the issue, and while I was on hold again, I exported the Livetype project and imported it into my fcp project, and dropped it into the sequence, and voila, my audio is back.

Technically, I think I should still be able to simply save and use the .ipr, but at this point in my schedule, I’ll take what works. The parting advice from Apple was to use Motion instead. Good advice.

I hope any of this is somewhat useful to somebody out there.

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

That was fun! thanks for the link – great job. The story still trumps the glitz! Nice job.

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

btw – the EX11 isn’t actually out yet – just kidding – that was a type-O, I meant to type “EX1”. whoops.

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

The EX11 and EX3 are compressed files to SxS media cards; 4:2:0 and the compression is going to give you some trouble in the darker areas, but not as much as a camera with even smaller sensors, say a 1/3 inch CCD or CMOS – but everything makes a difference – the lens, the compression scheme, sampling, everything.

You’re doing good if you’re adjusting your picture profile in the gamma and black gamma, so you may be getting close to the best shot you can get, but make sure you’re using a proper monitoring system when viewing your clips. I have a coup[le of 24 inch Samsung SyncMaster 244T LCD panels that basically do a horrible job of showing me my true saturation and darks. The resolution is great and I have a nice amount of realty (space) to spread my work across – but I quickly had to learn not to pout over the awful looking displays. I share my media with the marketing team, and they have Apple displays, and my stuff looks much nicer on those!

There are also some options with shutter settings, but you need to be careful to not go to far and blur. The shutter is well known for crisp images in action, and when used like that it can also cut your light down considerably, but the shutter/angle can also be used to get the reverse effect getting you more exposure. The only other thing I’d recommend is to go FULL AUTO just to see if the camera ‘beats’ your settings in a low light situation.

So make sure you’re actually monitoring correctly, and always look at what the camera AUTO setting brings back when you feel like you should be getting a better shot. It took a small while before I had better settings than AUTO in low light. -Stephen

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

A very good way to get back low level audio is to enter the world of compressing the peaks and valleys in order to raise the overall level without clipping. It’s a technique that has been overused, I admit, in the mastering stages of pop, but I’d be quick to try this technique over Normalization. Here’s the quick of it:

In FCP, if all of your levels are nicely set within the final edit as a whole, then take the sequence from the Browser and drag it into a new sequence, which creates a nest. Ctl click or right click the nested sequence and select Open in Viewer.

Select ‘Effects’ > Audio Filters > Final Cut Pro > Compressor Limiter. Then in the ‘Filters’ tab of the Viewer, under Compressor, leave the Threshold(db) at -40, and select a Ratio of at least 1.2 or 1.24 to begin, and (this is the important part; check the ‘Preserve Volume’ box.

You will now have a large gain increase without distortion and without hot peaks that put you into clip. You can increase the ‘Ratio’ for even more gain, but try not to go too far, for example over 2.6 or 3. This technique is a fantastic method for re-gaining soft audio from interviews, and I like it because it’s best not to mix two different mics, for example, Lav with shotgun. Pick the cleanest clearest track and apply this technique, and you’ll be golden. And if not, the last thing I would tell you is that you can always take advantage of summing. Two instances of the same track (make sure they lay in at exactly the same point so they are not out of phase) – will increase the level of the sound. So if you have a clean but very quiet audio track, and you’ve already applied the Compressor Limiter to the track but it’s still not up over -6db (don’t mix above -3db!) then you can double click that audi track into the viewer and assign the destination track to a track below it (below the original track), set your in exactly at the head of the original track, and drop it in. Now you have two tracks in sync of the same audio, and the sum of the two instances of the audio results in a higher level of volume, without distortion, and without phase.

Hope this has been helpful. -Stephen

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

You guys, Don’s 100% right about the best way to get where you’re trying to go. Plus, the reason the SD clips look out of scale is because if you go into the motion tab of those SD Anamorphic clips in the HD sequence that you took them from, their scale will likely be way up to something like 220, so in the SD sequence, they’re wacked out.

Anyway, even though you have gotten excellent direction from Don, and you should force yourself to follow that advice and workflow next job, to at least save the hard work you have put into the edit thus far, this might help a little: You should be able to take segments of your original sequence where it is mostly the SD clips and set IN and OUT points around that and save that as it’s own sequence and nest it into the SD sequence where you can then adjust the clip as a whole by right clicking that nest and opening it into the VIEWER. Then you can make motion adjustments to the entire nested clip.

But Blue-Sky is to begin the edit in the SD setting and FCP6 will work miracles to downconvert the HD into the SD sequence, and the SD anamorphic clips will not only be at res, but they will stand up well when you take the sequence to compressor to prepare the final edit for DVD asset.

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer

[Stephen May]

On the Joystick: do any of you have a problem when trying to move the ‘joystick’ up – “twelve O’clock” position? Mine has become very hard to register ‘up’, but is OK for left, bottom, and right. -thanks for any input.

Stephen May
Keystone Media Productions
Freelance Videographer