[Todd Reid]

you said you have it pretty good, but some areas start affecting the talent…
back off the effect until the affect on the talent is gone. Use that as one matte. Then apply a second matte so remove the other color (hopefully you can draw one, all depends on your footage and where the affected areas are.

But bottom line is that you can add multiple mattes to a key, when done properly. Play with it.
concept would be the same in Motion, that’s where I’d do something like this. Seems a bit more able to do the fine tuning that sounds like is needed for this effect.

Todd Reid
Senior Editor
Digitized Media, Inc.

[Todd Reid]

GREAT JOB!!!!!!!!!

My 2 year old son watches this movie very often, so it was awesome to see it in a different way.

KUDOS!!!!

Curious….
How long did you spend picking the shots and matching the mouths?

Todd Reid
Senior Editor
Digitized Media, Inc.

[Todd Reid]

https://www.stockmusic.net/

most cuts $30 each, and website has a great search engine

Todd Reid
Senior Editor
Digitized Media, Inc.

[Todd Reid]

Yes!

David, you were the one who made me FINALLY see the light.
I have since passed along your advice to a least 3 others in the herd.

Different topic…..
how come I can’t upload a picture for my my avatar?
I’ve chosen a few different pics, and the upload dialog just sits there, no error, no success, nothing.
When I go to check it, I see an empty box that says “add your avatar”.
what are the specs that you used?

Todd Reid
Senior Editor
Digitized Media, Inc.

[Todd Reid]

I’m having no problems with the same config as you mentioned.

clone your drive and go for it!
Since I started cloning, I no longer have the hesitation that would always prompt me to post a similar post on the cow.

Todd Reid
Senior Editor
Digitized Media, Inc.

[Todd Reid]

There are MANY software options, a quick google (or search on the cow) will provide several great options, even some free ones.

Todd Reid
Senior Editor
Digitized Media, Inc.

[Todd Reid]

I hear and respect your argument FOR the black bars on top/bottom to achieve a cinematic feel, however…
I would try to steer you away from this thinking. Here’s why.

When most people watched tv and videos on 4×3 tvs, this was true. Most movies, or higher end productions needed to be shown in letterbox in order to show everything that was shot, especially the far left and right of the screen. There have been thousands of editors to act and feel the exact way you have described. I myself have “added value” to many a project merely by slapping black bars on it.
Now that more and more people are replacing those older (soon to be ancient) tvs with newer 16×9 viewing portals, I think that the bars are actually a detriment. I would much rather see nice looking video or graphics in that real estate than black bars. I have had many clients request to “remove those thick black lines, cause they feel they are missing something” (ironic I know, since that whole concept is designed to show everything). When anamorphic is used correctly, you will still get the cinematic feel on older 4×3 tvs, but when the same video is viewed on newer tv, it will fill the screen and give your client the appearance they are “getting more”. Another way to think about it is that it ALREADY HAS the cinematic feel you are trying to achieve. Its in the same aspect ratio of a movie, no need to decrease the amount of real estate.

Now having said that, may I suggest that you follow Walter’s advice and “fill the screen” anamorphic-ly, but choose a few shots or scenes and letterbox them. This will keep your cinematic feel, but not look as if you slapped black bars on it. Another technique I have used it to create colored letterbox, white looked very nice, however ANY color letterbox used throughout a video is imho overkill.

When it comes down to brass tax, do whatever your CLIENTS like, not what you like. After all, they are the ones paying for it.
If they request letterboxing, by all means, letterbox.
If they have invested thousands of dollars on a state of the art media room, and are accustomed to seeing all movies fill the entire screen, then seeing your black bars may be a disappointment to them.

I hope this all makes sense to you, and it is just one man’s opinion.

[Todd Reid]

Hey Mark-

I hear what your saying,
but if my source clips (P2 media, named with numerals & letters) match my clips in FCP, then how am I going to get into trouble?

My situation may be unique,
Most of my projects contain specific footage for each, so I would very rarely share them. I have enough drives & space that I keep projects as is in case I need to revise, just keep adding storage space, which is relatively inexpensive.
Also, my client requires that I provide them with the raw quicktime files for them to archive and possibly use for their purposes on their AVIDs. If I used the comments, this wouldn’t help my specific issue.

I guess the best way is for the producer to use log & transfer to rename.

ANOTHER THING….I figured out the problem for this particular project and rename.
the clips contained a colon ( : ), and therefore was not a legitimate name due to computer programming conflict.

[Todd Reid]

I used to be a self proclaimed AVID snob. I would gladly tell people that if you wanted to cut your sister’s wedding or a birthday party, Final Cut is great, but I work on an AVID, why would I even want to look at FCP. I thought I was so clever.
Then it happened…I started messing around with FCP, it took a while cause it works quite a bit different than my beloved AVID. I got better with it, cut a few projects (broadcast on ABC affiliate in Dallas), and started to like it. Soon I was cutting only on FCP and I haven’t missed that other edit system at all.

I eventually took the plunge, due to the inexpensive nature of FCP, and started my own freelance business using an iMac, then a MacBook Pro. I was able to complete several projects over the two or three years, but I quickly learned that as a professional, I wanted a much more beefier system. I now am running on a 2x3ghz quad-core xeon, Lacie RAID, panasonic lh1700 and AJA IOHD. I do mostly HD (dvcpro hd 720p, via P2 cards) and I love it.

I say this only to illustrate what has already been mentioned here…
the best iMac will work with relatively few troubles, but I would guess that you will
soon want to be pushing buttons on a Mac Pro with a third party I/O and storage faster than firewire 800.

As far as the render issue goes…
I think way too much time and effort is given to this.
An experienced editor will develop a workflow that includes the needed render time.
I have to render stuff all the time, guess what….its ok!
It forces me to not look at a computer screen for several hours at a time.
It really has never been an issue for me, and I’ve been editing since the olden days of linear editing on a grass valley system (no rendering, but would you ever want to go back to that?).

So my advice is to work with what you have until you can justify buying a macpro based edit system. I bought mine with a business loan, and it has payed for itself many times over with the added ummph that I got. Don’t listen to the AVID folks (I won’t call them snobs) talk about render time. That is just one of the things the AVID does better than FCP. They both are great edit systems. In my opinion, FCP has a better set of resources to complete the task of creating finished video projects.

[Todd Reid]

in my experience, “offline” editing is a term that refers to the concept of going to a less expensive edit room and make all the tedious edit decisions to create the “base” or “skeleton” or rough cut of an edit.
When non-linear edits starting to pop up, the concept of editing with lower resolution (or quality) footage came into play. These edit systems couldn’t handle the high quality stuff very well and that’s why they were so cheap.
After all the time consuming edit decisions were made, an edl (edit decision list) was created and sent to the online editor who would re-create the project at high quality and then begin to put the effects, graphics and color correction and such. These rooms were generally much more expensive.

So having said this, those terms have pretty much lost their true meaning. However, I guess the concept of beginning the an edit, knowing that someone else (usually with a beefier system) will be completing it, is technically an offline edit, but as stated above, your system is fully capable of completing the project.

This doesn’t really help much other than giving my opinion of the whole process.
I used to offline on an AVID, and send my edl to a suite that had a quantel henry, and he would do all the fun, neat polishing, but that was almost 10 years ago.
I don’t hear those terms very often anymore, as most editors are finishing on the same system.