[Tim Kolb]

[john sharaf] “There are various flavors of ProRes, and they are all very good. Usually no need to go to the highest, known as HQ.”

Well, if we’re tailking about greenscreen, I’d say go with HQ myself.

(4:2:2, 10 bit, 220 Mbps)

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

I don’t know if you can render to the TechSmith AVI codec…that would work better most likely.

I edit my Camtasia stuff in Premiere Pro, so I never go back to Camtasia…so I’m sort of guessing what you might be dealing with…

Why exactly would you edit in Camtasia if you have Premiere Pro?

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

I think where many product reviews go astray are in situations similar to what Ron is referring to…the reviewer doesn’t understand the product’s purpose or technical requirements and reviews it based on its effectiveness in a role or configuration the manufacturer had not designed it for…

What I’ve typically done with product reviews is I ask the manufacturer what the intended role and benefit is of the product and what its tech requirements are before I start. I suspect those with the “consumer reports” system in their mind would call this collusion, but with a consumer product like a blender or a vacuum or a car, the purpose is pretty clear. With many of the products we use in the industry, different manufacturers approach a given challenge differently.

I’ve also returned any product that was simply not a useful device to the manufacturer with my recommendations for improving it and I’ve simply skipped reviewing it. Once a negative review is out there, even an honest effort by the manufacturer to correct issues that were honest oversights is an uphill battle. If given a chance, most manufacturers would prefer a chance to at least address the issues before they’re ambushed in a magazine review…

The important thing is balance. Even with products in our industry that don’t fit into my workflow, I want to give serious thought to what workfows would benefit…because I owe those people as honest an accounting of the device as I owe those who have workflows similar to mine.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

[Bram Tulloch] “You should be able to access the AJA playback options once you have made the sequence.
I agree, it doesn’t work when you first make the sequence in a new project, but once you’re in the project, you should be able to access the playback options no problem.”

When have you ever been able to adjust the card in/outputs (the composite/component question) from the “new sequence” dialog? It’s always been in the playback settings…where it still is.

BTW, as far as a “known issue”… that usually refers to a symptom that can be reproduced consistently relating problem for which the cause has been identified… It does not mean “we’ve never heard of that issue before”, it simply means that there is no known reason for it to be occurring.

All that being said, keep in mind that Adobe has changed their player structure with CS4 and AJA has changed a few things to adapt to that…I’m not in front of my machine right now, but I’d just backtrack through your docs…I need to follow up to find exactly what the specifics are when I get in front of my machine.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

What’s in the content that is more sophisticated than 16 bit?

What was the material recorded on? (acquisition format)

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

[Tripp Crosby] “What are the benefits of a Kona card other than being able to capture multiple formats.”

I think if you are delivering video (something for air, or traditional video exposition), you’ll find that monitoring RGB through your display card on an 8 bit LCD display is a different representation than the image on a conventional video display downstream from a Y’CbCr video output. The two images will be significantly different.

…so the I/O is an advantage, but a video signal path to monitor while editing really is a big part of the “O” advantage.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

My personal take is that someone who is a video editor or video shooter as an employee mistakenly thinks that by striking out on their own, they’ll do all the same things, but they’ll simply receive the gross receipts instead of what they consider a meager portion of those gross receipts in the form of a paycheck.

There are many non-billable activities in a small business such as ours and a great many activities that don’t fall into the stuff we’re passionate about. These activities (accounting, selling, taxes, managing employees, etc.) can be stifling when they’re done properly and devastating when done improperly or neglected.

Combine this with the fact that most of us starting out end up under charging for our services as the world seems to make “paying your dues” a virtuous thing…and the stress can mount.

After 23 years on my own, I’d say I’ve felt burned out a number of times…and it’s been during both huge successes and failures.

It takes some effort to pull out of the “deer in the headlights” feeling of being overwhelmed or the “What the hell am I going to do to get out of this one” despair and roll your sleeves back up and get to work, but often pondering what else you would consider doing for your occupation makes you realize how good you’ve got it.

In the end, having your own business is exactly what the employed masses dream it is…it’s the ability to achieve success limited only by your potential.

Many of us slightly over-estimate our potential…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

The biggest piece of the puzzle that most seem to miss is that very few keys at that budget level are pulled with one pass and one set of settings.

Often you’ll have one person who is being keyed and you’ll need one layer garbage matted to isolate the head, and you deal with the hair…maybe another layer needs to isolate a fast moving (blurring) arm or leg…then a chair or a weapon may have some reflective surfaces that need attention, causing some more layers to be generated to isolate those aspects of the shot.

There just aren’t that many challenging keys that are done with a one touch/full shot pass.

Keylight definitely isn’t excessively intuitive, but it can carry the load.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

Titles in PPro are bitmaps on the timeline…not vector images. Zooming any bitmapped image will cause them to look fuzzy.

Can’t you create the text very large and zoom it toward 100%?

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

The title should be created (in the PPro title tool anyway) at the resolution of the timeline…I’m not sure what you’re seeing, but the titles don’t “drop” resolution…

I’m not really sure what it is you’re seeing without some details…do you have playback quality set to draft?

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,