Todd Gillespie
Forum Replies Created
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The CC filters are a separate install on the AE installer CD.
Cheers,
Todd at UCSB
Television Production -
Russ is correct, once you have bad audio-you’ll always have bad audio. This is why you always need to check the audio source with headphones-during the recording. I always emphasize to our students that getting good audio is MORE important than getting good video. You can cover up bad video with b-roll, graphics, etc, but if you have bad audio-you have nothing.
I’ve done my fair share of audio recovery, and it’s nearly an impossible task. Our recording studio has a top-of-the-line ProTools system, and it still can’t recover disorted audio that well. The tools in Soundtrack is just about as good. You can recover occassional spikes and crunches, but it would be difficult to recover and entire interview.
Good Luck,
Todd at UCSB
Television Production -
Hi Mike,
I’m not a big fan of the garbage mattes in FC, in fact, I can’t stand them. I’ve never keyed anything from within FC, it’s just not got the tools to do a good key.
As for your problem, try ‘nesting’ the garbage matte layer before applying it to the background. Sometimes it’s easier to work with that way. Unfortunately, you can’t choose which sides to feather, it’s all or nothing. And the buzzing around the head sounds like it’s a keying problem. Either the key isn’t great or the tolorances are set too high/low.
If you can get in and out of Shake fairly easy, I would go with that. Or AE or Boris.
Good Luck,
Todd at UCSB
Television Production -
It’s in your project settings (under file).
I believe the default is still 8 bit, try 16 bit ( that should get ride of the ‘banding’ issue you’re having. Because you’re creating the very gradual color gradient, the 8 bit color processsing is having trouble recreating every shade needed.AE is very good about upcoverting your project settings, nothing will change, but AE will warn you about effect that can’t be done with 16 bit.
Good Luck,
Todd at UCSB
Television Production -
No, Do not pass go, and do not collect $200.
First off, you can loop your FW cable from the deck through the drive, into the compter.
Second, it doesn’t matter if it’s on the same bus (?), you have 2 FW 400 ports, use them.
Lastly, we have FW hubs for all our edit stations to make it less crowded when connecting cables. Get a hub, connect it to the back with your deck, drives, and have a extra cable avalible for an extra drive, then you’ll have your front port open for anything that comes up.Good Luck,
Todd at UCSB
Television Production -
Sorry, RAM does NOT effect the speed of rendering, only the prosessors do. (actually bus speed, data pipelines, etc. also do, but in simple terms)
The RAM will let you work a little faster by not taking so long to move files, copy files, waveform previews, multiple apps running, etc. That should be a little quicker and better.
Todd at UCSB
Television Production -
Hey Jayse,
Sorry, I was down and out with a cold yesterday.
It would be ashame that your IT guy would be the deciding factor. Plus it’s pretty easy to setup ANY Apple network.
While I still edit/mfx/work on both Apple and Windows, I do believe that Apple’s OS is far superior and faster than Windows, even Vista.
Plus, as the commercials say, ‘you don’t get viruses on a Mac.’ Period. So when you’re talking about running a handful of PC, it’s a lot more of a headache on a PC. 🙂
Not to sound too much like an Apple guy, it’s hard to beat Adobe’s integration with Photoshop to Encore.Maybe you could start off with Apple’s FCS 2, then if it doesn’t workout, buy Adobe’s CS 3 for the Mac. 🙂 Best of both worlds.
It’s hard to make an argument on how an 8 Core won’t improve your workflow.
Cheers,
BTW, if you start using Motion, you’ll have to post some new tutorials about it. 😛
Todd at UCSB
Television Production -
Hi Jayse,
You mean you didn’t spend all your time at NAB answering this question?
I don’t think you’d be unhappy with either. Although watching both Apple’s and Adobe’s press parties, Apple is becoming a stronger editor, while Adobe focused a lot on AE.
The only thing I can think of that would be a strong influence as to which software to get would be the integration of AE with Premier. You can drop AE Comps straight on the timeline, go back to AE, make changes, then back to Premier and it will automatically update. Apple works the same way, but it’s with Motion.If you’re production house is going to be doing any field production (SD or HD), then Apple has a lot of 3rd party hardware that makes it much smoother on an Apple.
They each have their strength and weakness
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I’m not sure that you can export an NTSC movie file out as a PAL one? If so, the results will look pretty bad without running it through a conversion tool like Nattress.
You may want to stop a check just how the video will be play and using what machine. If you’re client is taking over his/her laptop to give the presentation, then it doesn’t matter since it’s an ‘NTSC’ laptop. A lot of presentations are coming from laptops anyway, so you might want to skip the DVD and give them a QuickTime movie and/or .wmv file-since those are format independant-you don’t need to worry about a format conversion. Plus the quality can be as good or better than a DVD.
Finally, a lot of modern DVD players -believe it or not- can play a PAL or NTSC DVD with no problem-it’s only will get caught up on the region code.So take a look at you options before you get bogged down with format conversion.
Good Luck,
Todd at UCSB
Television Production -
Hi Mike,
.bmp files do not carry an alpha channel, which is what you need for a watermark.
You’ll need to use Photoshop to make the changes and save the image as a .tiff – .targa – or pict. (there’s one more format, but I can’t remember off the top of my head)
Then you can bring that file back into FCP and it will display correctly.
Unless you’re familar with Photoshop, it’s not the simplest thing to do.I believe there is some freeware that can create an alpha channel from a white background graphic, but I haven’t run across one.
Good Luck,
Todd at UCSB
Television Production