[Todd Gillespie]

both of the movies that you mentioned used high end-3d software/hardware to create these effects. Not 2d AE.
LOTR created their own software and hardware to make these scenes, and they rendered using a system called ‘Massive’, just to give you an idea on what it takes to do this kind of work. On a side note: LOTR developed the technology, not to animate 10,000 orcs, but to create 10,000 orcs and tell them where to run. BIG DIFFERENCE.

Having said that, if you hunt around the pasture you’ll find a couple of tutorials that can show you some amazing effects that will get you quite far. Using Trapcode’s Particular is very powerful.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

Hi Rumi,
Sorry for the delay.
I don’t have an answer for that…it shouldn’t have given you those clips?
Every once and a while our FCP would ‘freak out’ and do things like that. Then we usually had to trash the prefs and everything would run great. I wouldn’t worry about it UNLESS it does it again or affects how FCP is running.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

Hi Richard,
That’s a trickier question!
Yes and No-is your answer. Don’t you love it. 😛

A couple of years ago Marco Solorio wrote an article about Capture cards and codecs that address the very same questions you’re having.
https://www.creativecow.net/show.php?page=/articles/solorio_marco/capture_cards/index.html

Basicly it comes down to what’s your destination? (DV, Digibeta, HD, etc) What are you going to do with the footage? (color correction, effects, titles, etc) Assuming that you will ALWAYS finish onto DVD, then 10 bit uncompressed would seem like a little overkill, but if you need to add effects and graphics, then these will hold up much better in 10 bit umcompressedd, than in native DV.
So it’s all a matter of degrees and perference.
I switch between 8 bit & 10 bit myself, depending on how I’ve shot, and what I want to do with the footage. If drive space and speed are not an issue with you, then staying with 10 bit should be fine.

FWIW,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

We are getting away from using tapes all together for our work.
Most broadcast/satelitte playback is MPEG. So when you give them a tape, they turn around and digitze that straight into their playback system (which is usually an MPEG variant) SeaChange is a big co. that does this. So by the time it gets into any broadcast system it’s usually 2nd or 3rd generation. I believe Avid has some solutions for bridging this gap (if you edit with Avids).
Since we always make our clients/distribution copies onto DVD, we are already doing the work of compressing. So I use compressor out of FCP, then I use a program from BitVice that will create a Multiplex MPEG file ( i didn’t mention that-but the MPEG file needs a/v in one file-Multiplex), then I FTP it down to our Satelitte station for upload. We are on a ‘backbone’ on the internet, so it take about 3-5 mintues to upload a 1 hour program. Done.
That quality should be better since the MPEG file is a direct export from your FCP timeline. But, as Matte pointed out, it might be time prohibited, but it’s possible with what you have.

FWIW

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

HI Richard,
That’s not really the best way to get to DVDSP. When you export to MPEG4, you’re compressing the footage MORE than you need to when using DVDSP. So you end up with a twice *highly* compressed movie before you burn to DVD. Not so good.
Compressor is difinatly the way to go. Once you get use to using compressor, it’s pretty straight forward. Export to compressor, then choose one of the presets from the pulldown menu. I believe there is a 2 hour preset for DVDs. Make sure you’re saving to the correct destination and you’re good to go.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

Hi Rumi,
Not the capture now limit, but the ‘Limit Capture/Export file segment size to’
I believe the default is 2000mb, so you end up with about 5-6 clips for a half hour worth of footage.

Usually it’s a good thing to leave the ‘Capture Now limit’ on, just in case you forget your digitzing.

Way back in FCP 3, we would run into problems with clips getting out of sync when we didn’t check the ‘Limit Capture/Export file segment size to’, but NOW we don’t usualy check it.

Hope this helps,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

Export-Quicktime Conversion-still image (from pulldown menu)

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

I believe when you tell FCP to use a file size limit, it will name the subsequent files with the name and add that to the end. Although you cannot view any of these subsequent files, but they all point back to the original file. So you defiantly don’t want to delete them.
Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

shift arrow moves you 30 frames (1 second). that’s as close as you can get.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

You probably need to include more info so we can have a better understanding of what you are trying to do?
IF we knew what you wanted to accomplish, we could probably tell you another way to do it, but since you didn’t tell us, we can only guess.

The color range is another tool that might do what you are trying to accomplish.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production