[Terry O’brien]

By “pop” I was envisioning that the text would advance in one monospace character increments (I’m probably going to use the OCR font, where the 1 and the 0 occupy the same space). I don’t want the motion to be smooth.

Thanks for the AEP. I will check it out. I should mention that I am still in the stone age and using AE CS3. I own CS6 but just haven’t mustered the $$$$ to buy the 64 bit workstation.

[Terry O’brien]

Also, I did shoot 1920 Progressive at 30 because test footage at 35 Mb/s indicated significant tearing of the key. I had read that this may be due to the camera using interpolation to create the scan lines when in Interlace. In any event, keying at 35 Mb/s on Interlace was really chewy.

[Terry O’brien]

I just finished the shoot with the EX-1 and I’ve got to say I am underwhelmed!

I have never worked with a CMOS camera before, so I may just be behind the curve, but I say that the images from the two EX-1s that I was using was much noiser than images from even my Canon XH-A1 CCD camera with 1/3″ sensors. This may just be the current state of what everyone will accept from CMOS, but I would rate the images as looking noisy like 35mm Kodak 5296, the old 400 asa film stock before T-grain.

My settings for the EX-1 were: all enhancements off. Detail off, Matrix off, -3db, and still there was a ton of noise in the green and the shadows. Oh yeah, the green was around 50 IRE, so nothing was getting underexposed.

My output was via SDI to a NanoFlash running 4:2:2 at 80Mb/sec. Since both cameras presented the same results (and we had done a complete “Reset All” on one of the cameras before doing our settings), I’ve got to assume that noisy images are just the norm.

What is your experience with video noise on the EX-1 image?

I will just have to see how things key.

[Terry O’brien]

Thank you Nelson!

[Terry O’brien]

Hi Nelson

Thanks for the reply and the rationale behind it. It’s good to know about the 709 spec, and as long as I keep the TV out of the “SPORTS” preset, it should look less contrasty than a PC monitor.

Do you have any brand preference? I’d assume that Sony would have a clue as to how to do consumer sets right given their pro equipment pedigree. Every other manufacturer of monitors that I can think of seems to come from the PC background.

[Terry O’brien]

Hi,

You shouldn’t need to reinstall Premiere to get it to rebuild its registery of effects files. I am not absolutely sure that this is the right key command, but i believe that if you hold down the Enter key as Premiere is booting, it forces Premiere to build a new ini file with all of the effects registered. It may be the shift key if Enter doesn’t work, but I have done this process before with success.

However, your problem may have nothing to do with Premiere. I am having a problem with building effects in a Quicktime project because the qtx files that Quicktime uses for its effects tracks are missing. I guess that I will need to find the qtx files and install them. Or you can buy Quicktime Pro and it should come with the full install. How Apple!

[Terry O’brien]

I once had a contract from a client that contained a clause stating that I gave the client the right to go “outside the law” to secure satisfaction! I find that I get along just fine without kneecaps.

But seriously, client’s can only get away with this kind of crap if we allow them to. Check out the recommendations from AICP in conjunction with AAAA… they recommend a 75%/25% pay schedule. I haven’t tried this schedule yet, but I ALWAYS have 75% of the budget in hand before delivery, and ususally 100% as we do COD. I’ve worked for everything from Mom & Pops to huge Multinationals, and most of them have ever balked. The ones that do, you don’t want to work with. I’m in my 20th year of business so what do I know?

Finally, something that you give away has a value to a client of precisely zero. They won’t appreciate you more unless they KNOW that you are doing them a favor. If you are going to give something away, invoice them for it at rate card and then mark the invoice as complimentary. This way, they learn what the actual value of a service is and they know that you did them a favor.

[Terry O’brien]

Hi,

I work exclusively with interlaced footage sourced from DV, HDV or Beta. I know how to choose the correct field dominence.

The core of my question has to do with “best practices” when dealing with interlaced footage in AE. I gather from these responses that if you separate fields on input you should render to fields on output in order to maintain full resolution. Right?

By default, I have always separated fields with “preserve edges” no matter what I was doing. It seemed like the safe thing to do regardless of whatever rendering hit that it caused.

It is only recently that I noticed that my processed movies, rendered on frames, were half resolution. As Kevin mentions, if you don’t separate fields on input the resulting image rendered as frames has more detail (presuming that you haven’t scaled the source footage). If you DO separate fields on source footage, does rendering the output on fields yield the full resolution of the source clip (i.e. both fields of information)?

Obviously, I can test some scenes to confirm this, but the answer to this question seems like it should be a standard workflow issue that has already been figured out.

Thanks

[Terry O’brien]

Hi Ann,

Yes, I am pretty sure that the Matrox codecs have something to do with it, even though I am trying to open the old Matrox files on a new Matrox system. However, Matrox is mum about this topic.

Terry

[Terry O’brien]

Thanks for the suggestion, Jon, I will give it a try.

As for your question of the number of editors that it takes to change a light bulb, the answer is none. It’s the job of the graphics department to paint out the bulb.

Several reviews later, management will put the bulb shot in the “Could be better” cue where the shot with the bulb will be repainted repeatedly, until time runs out. In the meantime, a postition will have been created to track and oversee production on the changed bulb.

Years later, all talent will have moved on, but the “bulb evaluation and specification committee” will now be in charge of the company. Careers will have been made because of changing the bulb, and coffee table books about the “Art of changing the bulb” will have been published and commented upon. Philosophers will comment about the deeper meaning of repainting the bulb, and how the bulb refers to ancient architypes.

Later still, the company will redo changing the bulb because they can do it better now with current technology than they could back then.

Then oil runs out, there is no electricty or bulbs and mankind ends up huddled around fires, telling tales about the time of bulbs.