Terry Mikkelsen
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Sorry to post back so late. I’ve been really busy (that’s a good thing). You had me second guessing myself, so I needed a little time to run some tests and compare. I did confirm though, that my initial response was correct. Taking some graphics that I made in motion, I converted them to both Animation (with alpha) and ProRes 4×4. The original footage is 5min 9sec long, 1440×1080 progressive.
Animation codec = 3.91GB
ProRes 4×4 = 11.22GBI’m really not sure why there is such a large difference though. I know that the animation codec is 8bits per channel whereas the 4×4 is 10bits for the RGB and 12bit for the alpha. Also animation is 4:2:2 color space and 4×4 is 4:4:4. Do these two key differences makeup for that much of a data size difference?
Tech-T Productions
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1. A zero crossing is in reference to the waveform of your audio and how it starts and stops. The easiest way to envision it is to think about a sine wave. It starts at zero, gently rises up to 1, then goes down to -1 (crossing zero along the way), and finally goes back up to end at zero. In theory, you want each piece of audio that you edit to start and end at zero so when butted up to each other, they match. Otherwise, to abruptly jump from one value to another value within a few samples will cause the audio (and speakers) to violently try and achieve this unnatural edit, causing a click, clack, chunk, or other unwanted noise.
2. The smallest x-fade to use is to use your ears. The piece may not require a fade at all. On the other hand, 15 frames maybe way too short for another piece. Its mostly feeling and interpretation, with a little technical limitations here and there.
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Transcodes – I capture quite a bit of work in HDV. First thing I do is drop it on the G5 and let compressor transcode it all to ProRes 422, sometime LT. MacPro can edit or accomplish other tasks while this takes place. Also, I tend to transcode many final pieces on the G5 to MPEG-2 for DVD or H.264 for web. (Not as often for the web because the MacPro is SO significantly faster.) It all comes down to load balancing. The more time pressing or bigger budget projects utilize the MacPro more while the G5 preps stuff for the smaller budget stuff.
Background rendering – This is my own made-up term in the way I use it. You can send sequences to Compressor in the background now, but you still can’t render without tying up FCP. So for long form stuff with lots of renders, I’ll open on the G5 and let it do that, while I work on something else on MacPro.
The MacPro is amazing! But it still can get bogged down with HDD I/O, swap I/O, RAM and CPU jockeying. I could probably spend a couple thousand dollars to upgrade some more RAM and faster drive arrays, but its much cheaper and easier to utilize the old hardware. (I think that I get more performance from the G5 than I would from the upgrades too.)
Tech-T Productions
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For Motion, most of your processing power comes from the GPU. Not sure if your MBP has a dedicated graphics card or if shared on the chip and also with the RAM. It would be a good experiment to see which is currently faster on a small project. If it is close, the extra RAM in the G5 might get you a small performance gain. I have a hunch though that your laptop will run circles around the G5 and no amount of RAM is going to make it match or exceed.
I don’t have a current laptop, but I keep my G5 around as a background render/transcode machine. Frees up the MacPro for serious editing. It may be an idea for you too.
Tech-T Productions
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Sounds like the inks you used in the project may not be spot colors. In your swatches palette, if the color swatch is a solid color it is process, but if it has a small black square in the bottom left then it is a spot. If your swatch is process, double click on it in the swatches palette. In the dialog box that appears, change “color type” to “Spot color”. Click OK and repeat for all other swatches used.
ps – You may want to click the small disclosure triangle in the upper left of the swatches palette and click on “Select All Unused”. Then you can click on the small trash can and delete all the unused swatches, making it much easier to see what you are really using in the document and making sure that you don’t have duplicates or process colors.
Tech-T Productions
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I’m not sure which version of Illy your are using (or which platform), but when I print the “output” section shows which inks are going to print. If there is a little icon next to an ink indicating it is four color (like Cyan), it is just letting you know that it is a color in the 4 color process. Not that it is printing in four color process. The little printer icon next to it is the important one. This indicates if that ink color will print or not. (Older versions have the icon disappear when you click on it, newer versions place a diagonal red stroke over the icon.)
I really like Indy for separations more than Illy. It has a specific panel (separations preview) which allows you to see individual inks or any combination with simple clicks. Also with this preview on, you can hover over an area of your composition and see what inks make up that area and at what percentages.
Tech-T Productions
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Whoa, I wouldn’t jump so quickly to that conclusion. In the early days of Indy it did have some problems making a pdf in specific instances. Now though, I have no problems and haven’t had to make a postscript file in years!
My original guess was resolution (not having enough), but I wanted more info to be able to confirm.
Tech-T Productions
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Alright, now we are getting somewhere. You are sending these cards out to a print house. Your CMYK proof and his press proofs match. Hence, the printer is most likley using a CMYK process printing process.
Here is how you “fix” your problem:
You must convert your photos to CMYK in Photoshop. If the colors are not to your liking, you need to color correct them (BUT only after having converted them to CMYK). Then what you see on screen is what you should get back from the print house.
(One major variation is if you print to a consumer inkjet printer. It expects to see RGB files which it then performs its own calculations on it to convert internally to CMYK while printing. So sending CMYK files in this workflow would really make a mess.)Back story:
RGB and CMYK are two TOTALLY different ways of displaying color. RGB is typically used for light producing objects (computer screens), while CMYK is for light reflecting/absorption objects (printed pieces). These are typical, there are variations, but you get the idea. The problem is that the two color spaces are NOT equal to each other (Yellow + Blue does not always equal Green). So a color that can be mixed and made in RGB, may not be able to be reproduced in CMYK and vice-versa! This is why we convert our graphics to the color space in which we are outputting to and then adjust the image to fit the need.Tech-T Productions
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How is your document going to be presented?
Print on a press?
Print to a color copier?
pdf on a webpage?Tech-T Productions
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