[Tom Meegan]

Hi Sam,

You’ve probably taken action already, but I don’t think tweaking an aux output of the switcher is the best way to make the plasma look good on camera.

I would set you cameras up so they match.

Then I would frame the shot that will include the plasma, and feed the plasma bars. Make sure if there are going to be people on the set in the real shot that you have stand-ins.

I would then tweak the controls on the plasma until the bars feeding it looked right on the output of the camera shooting the plasma. You may need to adjust the lighting on the talent to balance the scene.

Make sense?

Best,

Tom

ps I do not think the panasonic switcher has image tweaks on the aux outs, but I’m not sure. If you find the controls on the monitor are inadequate, I would find a separate color corrector or tbc to improve your ability to adjust the look of the plasma on set.

[Tom Meegan]

Hit ggg. This is the range select tool.

Click and drag the area you want to select.

It is also located under the second tool button.

Tom

[Tom Meegan]

Thanks for the response Jerry.

I’ve seen this on four different systems over the last 13 months. Sadly, I don’t have all the relevant information. The system I saw it on this week is in the shipping cases already.

The lowest end system was a dual G5 2.0 with 2.5 GB of ram running 5.04 with a fw 800 drive as a capture disk and a Kona LH. I saw the same symtoms last month on a Mac Pro 3.0 with 8 GB of ram using an xRaid and a Kona 3. Both systems were rentals, and I did not make note of the QT versions.

I’ve also seen it on a system using a Kona 2

[Tom Meegan]

DVCPRO HD renders look pretty good. The only way to tell whether they are up to your standards is to do side by side tests between DVCPRO HD and HD 10 bit 4:2:2 (usually called “uncompressed”.) Make sure you view the tests on a calibrated HD monitor in a decent viewing environment.

In my opinion, the difference is subtle, at least when viewing HD. I haven’t done film blow ups, so I can’t speak to that.

You can edit DVCPRO HD with a FW 800 drive. You will need a much faster solution for uncompressed HD.

If I were you, I would edit DVCPRO HD.

If you find you need uncompressed quality for final output, buy the heavy duty RAID solution then, and use your KONA 3 to recapture at the higher data rate.

Or, take your project to a post house when you finish editing in DVCPRO HD, and let them do the final conform. If you think you might want to go this route the time to start talking to the post house is now. Communication, early and often, is the key.

Good luck.

Tom

[Tom Meegan]

I’m seconding Walter on the break out box. It will handle wear and tear better, deals with longer cable runs, and presents a more professional appearance. Everytime you don’t have to crawl under a desk with a flash light to make a cable swap, you will feel good about the purchase.

Tom

[Tom Meegan]

Here is a link to a good tutorial on time remapping.

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/fcp_4_time_remap.html

[Tom Meegan]

It sounds like your field order was reversed during compression.

In Compressor, in your batch window click on the setting you chose for the compression then go to the Inspector window.

There are six button across the top.

Pick the third one.

Turn the frame controls on, then explicitely choose the output field to match your footage.

DV-NTSC and DV-Pal are Lower Field Dominant. HDV is upper field dominant. Just to confuse things these field dominance is sometimes referred to as Odd and Even.

Lower = Even
Upper = Odd

I hope this helps. I’ve noticed that when I’ve left the setting at “same as source” sometimes Compressor gets it wrong.

Tom

[Tom Meegan]

Yes.

Use one of the AJA or Black Magic Design cards.

https://www.aja.com/html/products_Io_IoLAD.html

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/sd/

Tom

[Tom Meegan]

DVDxDV is probably the best solution.

https://www.dvdxdv.com/NewFolderLookSite/Products/DVDxDV.products.htm

Or dub the DVD to a DV tape and then digitize the tape. Recording on the tape rather than just passing the signal through, will give you a tape to go back to in case something sad happens along the way.

Tom

[Tom Meegan]

My suggestion would be to buy a drive and create a back-up of the project and the media.

Only saving the project and the five minutes of footage you used for your edit will be of little use later if you want to make more than small changes. In this scenario, to make large changes you will need to batch capture the media from tape.

Here is an 80GB drive for less than $100.

https://www.amazon.com/LaCie-Desktop-External-300698U-Porsche/dp/B0000DC6AZ

This is not a specific drive recommendation; the link is provided to point out that there are inexpensive forms of insurance available.

Alternatively, back-up only your project file. If you captured with time code and your tape labels match the logged reel numbers, you will be able to batch capture all of your project’s media from tape in the future. This also presumes non-repeating time code on the tapes.

Only keeping the project file is the more conventional way to archive a project – the project file takes very little space. Using this method, It is imperative that you take great care in the logging process for your batch capture to work when you return to the project in the future.

There is no joy when things go awry.

That is why I recommend backing up your project and your media files on a separate drive. I archive this back-up when a project is likely to need to be opened in the future. It save a lot of time and head ache.

The Media Manager is the feature you should read up on in the manual. I use it for complex tasks that might be difficult to achieve without it.

In my experience, Media Manager does a good job with simple projects. However, speed changes, nests, and several other features tend to confuse the Media Manager.

Sometimes things do go awry.

Again, for this reason, I create comprehensive back-ups and keep them.

The cost of the drive space is worth the piece of mind for me and my business.

Here is a resource for researching the Media Manager.

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/basic_onlining_jordan.html

And here is a source for the wheres and why-fors of the files that FCP creates.

https://www.lafcpug.org/tutorials/basic_files_stored.html

And here is a resource for thinking about archiving.

https://www.lafcpug.org/tutorials/basic_archiving_movie.html

Larry Jordan wrote all three articles.

Best of luck.

Tom