Thaxter Clavemarlton
Forum Replies Created
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“Motion” and “LiveType” come to mind.
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[Bret Williams] “But you can’t pan the camera during the shot usually. A better solution is to set the monitors at 60khz, and set the camera at 1/60th shutter speed.”
Well, an even BETTER solution is to shoot with an LCD computer screen.
No flicker problems at all.In post, well that will be a challenge.
Not having seen the shot, I can’t tell you for sure, but “fixing it” it may be as simple as creating a new image for the computer and adding it as a “picture-in-picture”… up to a complex set of PIP, garbage mattes, and “animating” the PIP to move with the shot (not to mention there may be flickering from the screen visible on the actor’s faces.
As Brett says, its almost always better to re-shoot to eliminate complex problems than to “fix them in post”.
Some things CAN’T be shot without problems, but using an LCD computer screen on-set will fix THIS one.
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Its the shooting camcorder that creates the greater problems (if there are any).
About the only thing you can do is try your setup.
Using the home video camcorder as a “deck” should be fine (assuming the heads are in-line with the XL2 (and that will be true of the DSR20, as well).
One thing to do is be sure to capture in 10-minute-or-under-length sections.
That will usually reduce the effects of audio/video “slippage” sometimes present in longer captures (especially when shooting with Canon camcorders). -
Take one of your more complex images and make a COPY of it in Photoshop.
Drop its size by 50% to 75% (“Save as” a new name).Take that smaller image into FCP. It should look a bit better.
AND…
ANY image (even one at 750 x 480) can contain “too much detail” for standard video.
Just add the Gaussian Blur filter (under “Blur”) in FCP and adjust it to a low setting (somewhere between 0.25 and 1.5 should work).
At the optimum setting, the blur can make “dancing pixels” look much smoother.
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First questions have to be:
1. Where are you VIEWING the images for quality-check.
2. Have you RENDERED them?
3. Do you NEED them to be that large? (Are you zooming far INTO the shots?)
If not, I’d reduce them to about half that size or smaller for FCP use (they’ll render faster with no visual loss in quality.) -
[David Rowan] “Wouldn’t it be easier just to export a FCP movie and burn it with iDVD?
Whats the advantage to playing out and recording on an external DVD player?”Burning with iDVD can take HOURS to compress and burn.
I don’t want to tie up the Mac for that long.
It can be done overnight, but that will give me only one DVD and (even though burning subsequent DVDs takes LESS time, they still keep the Mac tied up the following morning until they’re all done.
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[Mike Johnson] “the FCP file format.”
The “FCP file format” is a QuickTime movie.
You can play files captured by FCP without the FCP software using any QuickTime Player.
Avid should be able to import these files with little problem.
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In addition to Don’s good thinking…
You should “Mixdown” the Audio for playback before you dub out of FCP, or during the edit, if you have audio/video stuttering, drop-outs or freezes.
NOTE: Mixdown has even been demonstrated to help with slipping, skipping problems (or “missing” audio clips) for files being EXPORTED as QT (or similar) files out of FCP.
First, SELECT ALL of your audio tracks (highlight them) on the timeline, then:
Sequence Menu > Render Only > Mixdown.
You should see a dialog box telling you its rendering.
It might seem to make little sense that “Mixing down” even simple audio tracks will “fix” complex video “freezes” or random audio dropouts to tape or export, but it CAN.
NOTE: It does not matter of you only have one audio track, if there are random freezes during output, you should try the Mixdown.
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No need to “create a still frame” at all.
Just park the cursor on the frame you want to export.
Then,Step 1: File> Export> Using QuickTime Conversion… “Save” window appears
Step 2: Format> Still Image
Step 3: Options… > Format: (choose PNG, PICT or Photoshop) > OK
Step 4: Name your image, Set location (disk, folder, desktop) for your new still. > Save -
[Todd Gipstein] “The scroll is at a fairly leisurely pace.”
The “pace” is exactly the problem.
There are only a very FEW roll-speeds that are “cleaner” in video.
The scan-lines interact with the high-res. letters and cause visible “dancing” around the edges.
(In TV stations, stand-alone Character Generators have SET speeds that assure optimum roll-speed-to-quality factors.)Adding a very slight amount of Gaussian Blur to the titles can HELP, but changing the SPEED (even by a tiny amount) can make or break the quality of a credit-roll.
As was suggested, inexpensive 3rd-party titlers (like the CHV text) can help make the roll-speed issue much less a problem.