[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

$29, 563.92
plus 2 weeks vacation in the Summer, all national holidays, and 2 “floating” holidays.
Expected to “complete” some projects by staying late some days and on some weekends (salary, no overtime.)

HMO and major medical (no dental).

6′ x 7′ half-wall cubicle desk area, local phone (direct incoming number after 5:30pm and the PBX is closed)
Free parking (but “non-specific” parking space)

30 min. lunch and two 15-min. coffee breaks.
(Or you can have 1 hour for lunch and no breaks.)

Hours: 8:30am to 5:00pm M-F

Asked opinion on new gear (no actual “buying decisions”… they come from the comptroller/owners).

Christmas bonus: $100 (Series E savings bond or cash) less income tax.

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

[Barend Onneweer] “I’d like to add a consumer grade TV set to the setup, to get some feedback on what the picture will look like on a less accurate (and more average) screen.”

There IS no such thing.
Out of 95 “average” TV screens 100 of them will look different 🙂

By this I mean many consumers “ADJUST” their sets frequently (“if its on the remote control, USE it”) and, (just as bad) many with really AWFUL settings… DON’T!
And, as the sets age, they change and NEED adjustment.

By hooking up an “average” TV monitor to your system, you will only be seeing what THAT “average” TV monitor happens to look like at the moment.

That’s why we try to use the “ideal” monitor and adjust the image to be “RIGHT” under the best conditions.

Besides, what action would you take if the “Pro monitor” looked great, but the “average monitor” looked a bit red and fuzzy?
I hope you’d adjust the “average monitor” to better match the “Pro monitor”… and we’re back to square one.

I suppose that if you use a monitor with less rez than the pro set to judge font size it would be a bit useful, but once you determine that number, you then KNOW it.

This “worst case” monitor is very common in audio because being able to hear a mix thru small speakers at lower levels (if radio is the ultimate use) CAN be valuable (but judging color-match and chroma-levels for broladcast are a different story).

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

Try aa Audio “Mixdown” for playback before you dub out of FCP, or during the edit, if you have audio/video stuttering, drop-outs or freezes.

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.

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

Questions like this are posted very frequently. And many (most?) of the problems are solved by a simple procedure.

There is a function in FCP that is often overlooked… and it can help with many audio and video “skipping”, “sticking” and “missing” problems.

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.
Questions like this are posted very frequently. And many (most?) of the problems are solved by a simple procedure.

There is a function in FCP that is often overlooked… and it can help with many audio and video “skipping”, “sticking” and “missing” problems.

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.

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.

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

[Tom Matthies] “Shoot as wide as possible to maximize your depth of field and try to refrain from setting two different focus points. It will make it more difficult to match the two shots later.”

Hi Tom,

I’m LOL (even harder than when reading the “clone” post.)

If we’re using a prosumer DV camcorder, OUTSIDE… I defy ANYTHING to be out-of-focus.

There is so little “narrow” depth-of-field with small CCD camcorders (even INSIDE with the iris WIDE OPEN) that once you step outside on a moderately sunny day, any hope of seeing any focal difference between anything, a gnat walking on the lens to a cloud-pattern 12 miles away, is hopeless.

Of course you are RIGHT that IF there WERE the ability to set a different focus, you’d need to be careful… but with most camcorders, sitting in daylight, on a wide-shot (as you point out, there’d be no reason to “zoom in” to frame a dual-shot/split-screen like we’re talking about) if ANYTHING is in focus… EVERYTHING is in focus!

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

DVCAM and miniDV SP are identical in quality.

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

[Todd George] “I need to know what sizes and types of jacks are fairly common”

First, I guess you are asking about “PLUGS” and “ADAPTERS” and not just “JACKS”.
Jacks and plugs are similar terms. (Jacks are usually MOUNTED in gear, Plugs fit into them.)
And jacks CAN be a part of adapters, but not all jacks ARE adapters.)

95%-100% of audio Mixer Boards (Consoles) utilize THREE kinds (one, two or all three kinds on any given mixer) of output jacks: XLR, 1/4″ PHONE Jacks (*TRS, or just *TS) and RCA PHONO Jacks.

*TRS- Tip, Ring, Sleeve (like a stereo headphone jack/plug)
*TS- Tip, Sleeve (like a guitar input jack/plug)

XLR: 3-pin (Male) jack. OUTPUT: +4 to +8 LINE level. or MIC level

1/4″ Phone jack (TRS). OUTPUT: +4 to +8 (balanced or unbalanced) LINE level. or MIC level

1/4″ Phone jack (TS). OUTPUT: +4 to +8 (unbalanced) LINE level.

RCA Phono jack (like home audio component input plug). OUTPUT: unbalanced 1 volt consumer LINE level.

Assuming you have “Beachtek” or similar XLR input boxes for your cameras (or the cameras themselves have XLR inputs):

To match the mixers’ outputs, you will want to build a separate (rather short, say 10 feet) adapter cable with a matching PLUG on one end to fit each of these jacks. On the other end of each of these adapter cables, you want a (Male) XLR plug.

When needed, you can plug these shorter adapter cables into longer runs of standard XLR cables to reach your camera(s).

You’ll need the cameras audio inputs to be able to switch between MIC-level or LINE-level to accommodate various audio mixers output levels.
(If they don’t, you can buy XLR “Line-level-to-Mic-level adapters.”)

If you need more info, post back
Or (maybe the BEST IDEA) just find a local “audio pro” who can fix you up for a nominal fee!!

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

Its a matter of KNOWING that this kind of situation WILL come up in a multi-camera edit.
I solve it by simply editing each camera to its own track.
(All of Cam 1 on V1, Cam 2 on V2, etc.)
Dissolves are handled with keyframed opacity.

Then, I can just select that entire Video track’s clips and drop the filter on so that all clips from that camera are affected at once.

Like I say, I KNOW that multi-camera edits will almost ALWAYS require a filter to be added to EACH camera individually (and sometimes re-adjusted) so I keep all of my cameras isolated from the beginning.

BUT… with FCP 5’s new “multi-cam edit” function, I don’t know HOW I’ll be able to continue this work-flow.

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

Questions like this are posted very frequently. And many (most?) of the problems are solved by a simple procedure.

There is a function in FCP that is often overlooked… and it can help with many audio and video “skipping”, “sticking” and “missing” problems.

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.

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

There is a function in FCP that is often overlooked… and it can help with many audio and video “skipping”, “sticking” and “missing” problems.

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.