[Tom Matthies]

Although I can read my screen OK I think that I’m ruining the back of my neck from doing the “Bi-focal Head Bob” for hours a day.
I just ordered a pair of “computer glasses” last night that will focus (thru the upper part of the glasses) on my screen a few feet away and (on the lower half of the glasses) on the keyboard and closer-up items on the desk. Hopefully this will prevent me from completely trashing the vertebrae in my neck.
Yea, life if tough for us “mature” editors…
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Thanks Chris.
I also found a downloadable Excel Doc. at this address:

https://www.siemon.com/us/download/labels.asp

It works nicely.

Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Also mixdown your audio tracks before exporting.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Nice. Kind of like getting a small Inferno for $149.
Very Interesting
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

I think I answered my own question. I’m cutting on a DVCProHD timeline at 23.98fps. I had a couple of scenes that I needed to make masks and then retouch a few background elements. That PSD would then be used over the original footage since it was a locked-down shot. I just exported a frame from the original footage as a reference at 1280×1080, did the retouching in Photoshop and exported the mask/retouched background back into FCP at the same frame size. When imported, everything matched over the original footage up without any problems. It was just a small fix so you can’t really see that there is no compression noise in the graphic when placed over the original footage. (Someone left a water bottle in the background and it wasn’t caught during the shoot.) OOPS!

Usually I cut in 10 bit uncompressed from the original HDCam footage. This project, due to client request, was cut in the DVCProHD codec so I had to develop a different workflow from the one I usually use. Since this spot was going to be distributed in SD anyway, going to DVCHD wasn’t that big of an issue. The client was happy to not be advertising that brand of water along with his product and DP will be getting a LARGER field monitor next time.

As a side note, how the times have changed. Being concerned about dropping DOWN to a format like DVCHD and being worried about if the final product will look good enough on the air. (It does BTW) 🙂
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

DV Matte has a feature that allows you to blend the background into the foreground with a few sliders to fine tune the effect. It will generate a kind of a light wrap from the background into the foreground that sounds like it will do what you are describing. I’ve used it a few times to take the edge off of a composite and , if you take it a little farther than normal, it will add a kind of backlight effect to your foreground layer.
You used to be able to download a trial version from DV Garage. I’m not sure if they still offer that, but it night be worth looking into.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Ah yes. Avid Airplays.
I worked at a station a while ago that had three of them. They actually worked pretty well considering but, to save storage space, the engineering department set them up to ingest/play back at avr-70 (I believe). While the playback worked fairly well for most video, when a spot with a lot of chroma and high detail was played back, the video just turned to mush. We did a spot for a local green house that had very detailed video and whenever it aired it looked like you-know-what. Even the client noticed it. So much for digital video.

Things atill aren’t there yet, but the technology has come a long way since then. BTW, Beta SP is still king around this market for SD delivery. HD playback? Forget about it! Go figure…
tom

[Tom Matthies]

You can find Vapor Across at:
https://www.kafwang.com/eureka/eurekamain.html

tom

[Tom Matthies]

Eureka has a free plug called Vapor Across that will, I think do what you describe.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Thanks Walter. I see it now.
Tom