[Stuart Christensen]

Hello Shin…It’s super simple, in FCP just double click on the clip and it will load in the viewer. Then go to the menu “EDIT” and choose “Item Properties” and the dialogue box will appear with all of the stats about the selected clip. The info will identify the exact specs for the chosen clip. Cheers! STU

I know alot….but not as much as the other guy.

[Stuart Christensen]

Hello Milton, it’s pretty simple, first in photoshop create a new document (I’m assuming DV-NTSC) which has a preset in the menu. Make sure it has a transparent background (option is found in the dialogue box when you create the new doc.)

Then, open the picture you want to remove the figure from and clip the person out and drag and drop it into the new document you just created. Then, save the new document in the PNG format.

In Final Cut, import the PNG image and place it in the viewer, set the in and out points, and then overlay it on top of the footage.

The key here is to save the image as a PNG so that it preserves the transparency as a background.

At least that’s one way to do it! Hope that helps! STU

I know alot….but not as much as the other guy.

[Stuart Christensen]

Hello, Some more details about what you are trying to output is needed. What type of QT files are you creating. Are they HD, NTSC, Animation, you know, that kind of thing. A five minute QT shouldn’t really take that long to output, so perhaps your frame size or something in the QT settings for the type of output you desire is amiss. Send more info. Thanks STU

I know alot….but not as much as the other guy.

[Stuart Christensen]

Hello Cow Premiere Forum.

OK, I did some more technical reading on the Adobe site and find what I was looking for regarding splitting .flv files adding title slugs in Premiere.

Since I’ve been editing on FCP for so many years, I sort of forgot about Premiere. I have the current (CS4) for Mac Adobe Suite, use After Effects almost every day but somehow never paid much attention to Premiere. So here’s what I’ve found.

I like Premiere! and the way it handles those .flv files for editing.

The process is simple. With Premiere all you have to do is import the .flv files into a project and drop them into the timeline. Fiddle around with the settings a little, create the title slugs, place them before and after the video and reoutput the video as a .flv. You can’t do this with FCP because it’s not a native editing codec to FCP. Final Cut won’t recognize the file because Apple and Adobe still don’t like to play in the same sandbox.

I would assume that Premiere does not re-compress the original flash video upon re-outputting. If this is wrong, please correct me in this post. Upon rendering for output just use the “output to original settings” option and your done!

I use Adobe stuff and Apple stuff together everyday and for the most part nothing ever goes wrong. Why can’t Apple just face the fact that Flash video is the de-facto standard in the web world because quicktime, although it’s a robust high quality standard as well, it just doesn’t behave the same way on the net. So my advice to both of them would be to bury the hatchet and “share” the code!
Think of your users!

The last thought….One of the reason’s I haven’t embraced Premiere has to do with the appearance of the GUI.
It has specifically to do with the Control Icons. They are somewhat confusing to the eye and are hard to instantly find, but practice does help. Other than that, I will definitely keep learning Premiere because it’s an awesome program that’s equal to, and in some ways better than FCP.

So there! I think I figured it out! I’m all grown up now! Thanks!

I know alot….but not as much as the other guy.

[Stuart Christensen]

Hello Again! I may have posted prematurely as I have found info from Adobe that indicates I can natively edit flash files in Premiere. So far, I cannot get this to work. I open Premiere, create the correct project and import the .flv file and nothing happens. At the bottom right of the interface it indicates that a “peak file” is being generated and when it’s done the clip doesn’t appear anywhere. I usually edit with FCP so maybe I’m missing something about the way Premiere works. Any suggestions would be greatly welcomed! Thanks.

I know alot….but not as much as the other guy.

[Stuart Christensen]

Thanks again Kevin! Yes, I like the idea of sticking with the 1080 stuff because it only makes good sense. In the past I have read that the reason for 720/24P was that the human eye can’t tell the difference between 720p and 1080, but I don’t know what kind of eyeglass prescription they were wearing because I can see the difference. 720P24 is sometimes a suggested way to increase the amount of media you can fit on a P2 card and perhaps less taxing on your system during the edit stage. But I agree with you, stay with the big stuff.

Anyway, thanks to your help I’m on the right road. I will standardize this flow based on your suggestions. I’m new to AEFX (one month so far!) and it is quickly becoming my new obsession. A big thanks out to Andrew Kramer as well for all the super tutorials! I love the cow and all the folks who lend a brain to help out! MOOOOOOOO!

I know alot….but not as much as the other guy.

[Stuart Christensen]

Thanks Kevin! That explains it well enough for me. Thanks for the quick response. I will standardize this into my workflow now. STU

I know alot….but not as much as the other guy.

[Stuart Christensen]

I totally disagree with Peter about reading. It’s an essential part of stuffing your brain with the necessary information that you will grow from. Sure, you can edit your heart out and try everything, we all have, but in the end, if you want to be confident in your technical knowledge, which is really what James was concerned with in the original post, you HAVE to read and research all the stuff you need to know. It’s a technical as well as creative pursuit. READING is GOOD.

I know alot….but not as much as the other guy.

[Stuart Christensen]

Hello James! I can tell you this, you can never read too much about editing. I would read just about anything you can get your hands on. Information about the technical side (codecs, formats, data rates, compression and the like) is online and in all the program manuals that you may use currently. This site is awesome for learning stuff. Check out online tutorials and basically just live to edit and edit to live. I read about editing online and in books for about 1-2 hours everyday and have been for the past 5 years and I’m always amazed about how much I know…..and how much I DON’T know. Take an inventory of what is pertinent that you must learn and focus on that until you have a good grasp. Try to filter out stuff that you do not need to know, for the moment. Relevance is what it’s all about. Never be afraid to say “I don’t know…But I’ll find the answer soon!” Stay with it and Good Luck! STU

I know alot….but not as much as the other guy.

[Stuart Christensen]

Hello Joey, I always have good luck exporting to H264 with a size setting of 480×360 and setting the compression quality between low and medium. There does not appear to be a large difference between setting it to low/med as opposed to medium or the highest quality setting. The higher quality settings just increase the file size by about 100%. As well, I set keyframes at about 600 frames, (and most of the stuff I do is all moving camera, handeld etc.) and it doesn’t seem to have any effect on the quality and it reduces the overall file size. Hope that helps. STU

I know alot….but not as much as the other guy.