[Steve Freebairn]

Could you put them in a new sequence and then tell FCP that that sequence is just a subclip?

[Steve Freebairn]

First off, I’m curious why you are getting a 4:4:4 capture card for a 4:2:2 camera that doesn’t need to be digitized. Is it just for Playback? 4 250s in raid 0 is plenty fast enough to playback DVCPROHD footage, which is 100mbit/sec. Do the monitors that you are getting do 1080P (1920×1080) 8 Gigs of ram is great, but at about 4gbs you’re going to hit windows limit and then the other 4gbs won’t be as useful. These are the things that you need for the HVX200 to work with the Production studio

1. the camera
2. Raylight (https://dvfilm.com/raylight/index.htm)
3 your editing system

The editing system you have described sounds great. Why are you so concerned with 4:4:4, are you capturing off of a Telecine machine? or a XL H1? or a viper?

If you wanted to monitor your footage on an lcd, I’d suggest getting a blackmagic card and the HDlink and then hooking it to a dell 24inch 2405 (or 2407 if you wait a few more days) monitor. The dell does have component inputs on it, but supposedly you get better looking results if you use the sdi to DVI hdlink adapter.

Have you used PCs or Macs for previous jobs? I would think that would help you answer whether you need a mac or not. The pc can do it just fine, if not better, depending on what your project involves. Do you need AE, Photoshop, and Encore, and Audition to all play together nicely with Premiere? Then I’d use a PC, (although the mac can play together nicely, I’d prefer the PC because of price) if it was just for editing and money was no object, then I might get a quad core mac, but I wouldn’t switch platforms unless you have to.

[Steve Freebairn]

High Def will give you a much better key than SD, obviously. But that is only if you are going to be downrezzing to SD. If you plan on Distributing your piece in HD also, then you’ll have to be really careful. As was said, I’d test settings, lighting, and then when you’re actually shooting, I’d get multiple takes with different settings (if you can’t seem to find one that is better than the other, that way you’ll have your bases covered) If you can dump the P2 cards often enough, I’d shoot it in 1080P (which is recorded in 1080i stream, but with CinemaTools or any of the Adobe programs you can remove the pull down (if you are on a PC and using raylight, make sure to shoot 2:3:3:2 so that Raylight can remove the pulldown for you.))

TIPS for green screen (I’m not an expert, but have had some experience.

Put green gels on the lights that you are going to light your green screen with.

Have your actor(s) as far away from the screen as possible (if lit properly, the screen is going to be glowing green and the further away they are, the less spill of green they’ll have on their skin.

Don’t move the camera while shooting, unless you have tracking points and absolutely have to. (especially on your first green screen shoot, getting a good key will be a big enough challenge)

Use the HVX200 (good keys can be done with HDV, but you’ve got the extra advantage of 4:2:2 color vs. HDV’s 4:2:0 color. You should be fine.

[Steve Freebairn]

IF money isn’t an issue, then don’t burn them yourself, you’ll get much better results from having them Glass Mastered and silk screened. Plus, you’ll have a more professional looking product. And having discs glass mastered is how the hollywood discs are done, they’ll play in anything (theoretically)

[Steve Freebairn]

Thanks, I appreciate your help. I normally use Premiere Pro and there is a button that you can check or uncheck if you want to maintain the audio pitch, so I was hoping that Final Cut had a similar or comparable built in feature. Thanks for researching it for me.

[Steve Freebairn]

is the camera in record mode or play back mode? In case you didn’t know, it as to be in playback mode.

[Steve Freebairn]

Also, if you can (which I assume since you have clients that $29 isn’t going to break the bank) you should get Quicktime Pro and then you can export an uncompressed avi as was suggested and then have quicktime export that as an Mpeg 4 with H.264 compression (that is what all the quicktime trailers are done in) it looks much better than Windows media.

[Steve Freebairn]

yeah I’ve got the newest drivers, but you’re also right the 7800gt is newer than the 3400. I’m not quite sure exactly what clipping plane windows are. My interpretation originally was that the quadro helped mainly in 3d apps because of tool windows and such that would overlap the main “comp” window, but since AE 7.0 doesn’t really have overlapping windows, will a quadro help? Can you enlighten me?

[Steve Freebairn]

Yes you are correct, you can hook up an hd monitor or Tv from the 3450 and use a cheaper card for the second monitor. Most HDTV’s (at least nice ones) have either and hdmi connector or a DVI connector, you can connect either of those to your graphics cards with the proper cables.

[Steve Freebairn]

I know that you are extremely knowledgable Tim, but I’m curious if there is any documentation about the quadro’s helping AE more than a “gamer card?” Although I did look up the 3450 and it does have Open Gl 2.0 support, the reason why I ask is because my 7800gt does better at acceleration than the fx3400 that I use at work (of course the 3400 only supports open Gl 1.5).