[Tom Nelson]

In my opinion, this all depends on what your footage is. The purpose of VBR is to up the bitrate during movement and drop it when you’ve got static shots. If I’m compressing, say, a meeting where it’s someone talking on a podium for an hour and a half, I’d use VBR so the bitrate would be low when there’s no movement and jump up when, say, someone was walking up on stage. I’d use CBR on something with lots of movement because it compresses faster and I’m going to want a good high bitrate for everything anyways.

It also matters how good your compressor is with VBR. Sorenson works well for me, but other built-in compressors might not work as well.

Tom Nelson
Videographer/Editor
Essex Television Group

[Tom Nelson]

I stand corrected, Todd. The help file for AE is much more complete than the paper user guide, which simply says to “Select a mask” and then “copy the mask to the clipboard.” Simply following these directions and copying the actual mask doesn’t work. I guess I’ll stick to the help file from now on.

Tom Nelson
Videographer/Editor
Essex Television Group

[Tom Nelson]

I’ve got to admit – AE’s User Guide and help menu incorrectly or at least inadequately cover this – they both say you can copy the mask, they don’t point out that you need to highlight the mask shape property in order to paste it. Makes a big difference.

Tom Nelson
Videographer/Editor
Essex Television Group

[Tom Nelson]

Encore’s preview isn’t a good way to check those transitions – grab a DVD-RW and do a test burn. The playback probably won’t have those black spaces.

Tom Nelson
Essex Television Group

[Tom Nelson]

With that said, in your opinion, what’s the best way to light a caucasian subject with a dark jacket? The green screen isn’t a problem – I can successfully light it with two totas (not the most ideal, but they work diffused) and get even zebras across the screen, while keeping the level a stop under the foreground subject. Should I try to diffuse the key over the subjects face and open it up over the jacket?

[Tom Nelson]

I’d say give yourself more like 30 frames of black – Sorenson may have cut it off or possibly it was cut off by whatever editing program you exported it from. A second of black at the end of a compression won’t hurt.

[Tom Nelson]

I’ll preface my responce by saying that I’m unfamiliar with FreeWayPro. However, I’ve had experience encoding SWFs with Squeeze. I’m running version 4.5, and when you choose SWF as your output, you can double click “player options” (under the source file in the batch tree), and choose a skin to use for playback (to preview the skins, browse to that folder on your comp and look at them in a web browser). When you want to post your video on the web, you need to make sure you include the SWF, the FLV, and the SWF skin file. There’s need to go into Flash. I will say, though, that the skins that come bundled with Squeeze are kind of clunky. Let me know if this helps.

Tom Nelson
Editor/Animator
Essex Television Group

[Tom Nelson]

I’m running 2.0

[Tom Nelson]

I did this; I know of the strange quirk Encore has with disregarding the main folder and only looking at the sub-folders.

I know now that this is simply another dumb glitch Encore has – I simply started a new project, successfully linked to DVD-rom content, and re-built the disc. Then, it worked fine. Has anyone else run into this?

[Tom Nelson]

I know this is an old post, but it may help me find an answer. I’ve attached a frame grab below that illustrates the problem I’m having with a QT ref. This frame grab is in the middle of a white flash. An AVI looks fine, but uncompressed, due to the file size limit, I can only export 45 seconds. This is not an interlacing issue – I’ve tried multiple different interlacing settings. Squeeze puts out an MP2 that looks like the one pictured below. I’m “wasting” valuable company resources by constantly squeezing with different parameters trying to avoid this issue. I’ve mixed DV 25 and 1:1 in my sequence and did a video mixdown before exporting. When there is quick motion in the MP2, the video artifacts in the areas of the frame grab where you see the most defined horizontal lines. Nobody at my company has an answer. Help!!!