NLE Mac / Final Cut questions from 2003

[Timothy Eno]

Thanks I will read some more, specific to gray scale

[Brian McDonald]

I compressed examples from a video I made and got the size down to 2.5Mb per minute. This was with the cable modem preset in compressor. How long is your program?
Also you might want to set it up with a streaming header for easier downloading.

-Brian

[Jeff Price]

Nathan hits the nail right on the head. If you are regularly doing disk intensive work then your really need to be using a UPS. The size of the UPS depends on how long it will take to safely bring your system to a stop. Will the software allow you to stop the render? Can you stop optimizing mid-stream, etc.?

This is the critical point. If you lose power on disk writes you stand a very good chance of major data corruption - possibly even permanent drive damage.

The UPS will also let you get through the brownouts and transient spikes with nary a blip. Either one may cause your computer to decide it needs to reboot - oops. If a portion of a grid goes down you might actually have a spike before you lose power entirely. The spike can damage the CPU, the brownout the data on the disk if you are writing. If the problem is from lightning in the area you can have the electricity work fine but fry your motherboard with a spike coming in through the phone line.

Running a computer, especially an NLE, without a UPS is like playing russian roulette with more than one barrel loaded. Then again, if you start on a long render and then leave, even a basic UPS won't help. It could run out of juice before the render is done or you are back to safely bring the system down.

[Bill Markel]

John,

I have the personal edition of CAT dv.

http://www.squarebox.co.uk/

It does the trick for what I need.

Bill

[Aaron Rosen]

Thanks for your reply.

My video is approx. 5 min. I got it down to 8 megs.

It is located at www.ransom-rosen.com/mda.html

I would appreciate any feedback from ya'll.

(frogive the dl time, we have a slow connection right now)

THANKS!

[Michael Westphal]

I've given up on iDVD 3.0.1.
I had too much trouble with chapter menus. They'd work fine in preview mode, but never worked correctly once burned to a disk.
If you go plain vanilla, use the templates given, and don't do anything custom, then you can get disks to burn and work... (I could).

I'm having less trouble and more fun with DVDSP 1.5.2.
v2.0 should be coming this week. he he hehe. I'm so excited.

Joe, I have made disks using the disk image built by iDVD3 and Toast to burn the disk.

I do not recommend Cleaner 6 for DVDs. It's a fantastic piece of work for web or CD based videos, but the MPEG2 encoder is too slow, and has too many artifacts in fast moving scenes even in the higher bit rates.
The new Compressor with FCP4 does a MUCH better job.

BUT, Cleaner 6 and Compressor only encode your video into MPEG2. They don't let you author a disk. You'll need DVDSP for that...

(To be clear - iDVD authors a disk AND encodes the video.
-Cleaner 6 and Compressor encode Video.
-Toast will burn a pre-authored disk image.
-DVDSP authors a disk, creates a disk image from previously encoded video, and burns an image to disk.
-there IS other software that will do encoding, authoring, and burning; some cheaper, some much better and more expensive, but I don't use them and can't comment on their capabilities.)

[Jennifer Marine]

First off, I'm still a beginner with this stuff, so please forgive me if I don't get the terminology right...

I recorded some footage on a Canon ZR-70 using 12-bit audio. Did some editing in iMovie, which worked fine. Unfortunately, trying to fine-tune audio problems in iMovie seems close to impossible, so I thought I'd export the edited footage to tape, dump it into FCP and work from there.

Final Cut Pro does not seem to recognize 12 bit audio - it's either 8 or 16 and that's it. So now what? What are my options for changing the audio? Running it through something else? I am very confused!

Also, the tape I exported from iMovie didn't have any sound at all. Apparently the camera reverts to some default setting where it is anticipating incoming analog footage(?). So I've got to re-export the edited footage again after changing the audio settings, and try again.

I was trying to stick with the simple stuff (like iMovie and then straightforward audio tidying in FCP) so I wouldn't end up going through editing hell like I have before (read - in over my head, with a deadline). Alas, for now, it hasn't worked!

Thanks in advance. Y'all are so smart. :)

-Jennifer

[Scott Anderson]

I just finished a project that a client had rough cut in iMovie, then I was to add compositing and effects in Final Cut.

Not wanting to re-digitize from the original tapes if I didn't have to, I just exported out of iMovie to disk, then imported THAT file as the source footage for FCP.

I believe that if you export using the Quicktime DV codec, it does not recompress at all. You might also be able to tweak the dialog boxes to still use the DV codec (no recompression), but resample the audio to 16bit. Then FCP should see it fine.

Just go to File>Export Movie and select Quicktime. Look around the dialog boxes and settings, and you should figure it out.

[Jennifer Marine]

Thanks Scott. Appreciate it.

This is kind of like trying to listen to someone in their native country, speaking to you in a language you learned for a bit in the 8th grade!

I understand about choosing Quicktime DV for exporting. Not sure if I understand what you're saying about resampling the audio to 16 bit. I've got my little Peach Pit Press FCP book and two iMovie books - between those and experimenting with the dialog boxes and settings, maybe I can do a little research tomorrow and figure it out...

Thanks again for your help.

best,
Jennifer

[Jeff Donald]

Have you captured the audio yet in either iMove or FCP? If so, what version are you using? FCP can be set-up to capture 12 bit, 32kHZ audio. You just need to change your video settings.

[Don Berube]

Hello Jennifer,

Final Cut Pro can handle 12-bit no problemo. As Jeff suggested, you need to set up your preferences properly EACH TIME you start a new project or each time you attempt to capture something different than before spec-wise.

Read the following and let us know if you have any additional questions, ok?
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage...ra_to_fcp.html

Would love to know more about your project and how you make out! Please do keep in touch.

- don

[Jennifer Marine]

Thank you so much, Jeff and Don. I am now smacking my forehead gently, going... well, duh!

Good to know that this is possible...

Don, thanks for the link to Ken Stone's article - I printed it out and will keep it next to my computer in the closet (that's really where it is). Interesting professional experiences you've had! I'm especially jealous of all the travel. My father was in both the Air Force and American Embassy, so we spent stretches of time in both Manila and Madrid overseas. I'm itching to move overseas again. Maybe later when my kids are older.

In answer to your question about my project - it's really more of a question of the blind leading the blind... I'm primarily a writer (essays, fiction and non- and am currently writing a screenplay). About three years ago, I decided I wanted to learn more about filmmaking. I thought the best way to do that was to learn together WITH someone. So I bought some equipment and started teaching filmmaking classes to kids. I feel like my storytelling skills are solid, and with each class, I learn more and more about the technical aspects.

I just finished a class teaching DV production to a small group of African American, low-income teens at one of the properties that the organization I work for owns (an affordable housing nonprofit, rich in services for residents to help them get ahead). We shot a short film which will probably only end up being about five minutes long. We're going to add some high-energy, royalty free hip-hop which should add a nice feel to things. We edited as much as we could before the class ended and school started up again. Now it's up to me to finish at home...

My boyfriend helped me get the footage I did have into FCP using an analog in and converting it. Wish I would have seen these posts earlier!

Thanks again to both of you for your help. :)

best,
Jennifer

[Glenn Chan]

How big is your movie? If it's really big then bandwidth will be an i$$ue.

My experience with Windows Media Player is that it doesn't always work. It's hard to get WMP7 or higher to work on win95/98 and for other versions of windows they don't always download the right codec (you have to keep trying, which most people don't realize). Quicktime with soreson3 video mpeg4 audio at low resolutions (320 X 240 and under) will play decently on all computers given that the viewer has QT Player 6. If bandwidth is really a concern then I would use a PC (emulator) and encode in divX.

A lot of this depends on your audience (how large and how tech savvy). A safe route would be to do both WMP and QT and give good instructions.

MPEG1 is a good format if you don't mind the low quality. It is the most likely to work. A free program called "movie2mpeg" does a better job of encoding than Cleaner, which is horrid at mpeg1. TMPGENC on the PC is better for encoding MPEG1 I believe. Check out vcdhelp.com

[Nicholi Brossia]

Hi Glenn, thanks for the help. You seem to have quite a bit more experience in this area than me, so I hope you don't mind a few more questions.

I will be assuming my audience to have little tech sense and would therefore like to make the cd as automated as possible. I was really hoping that I could write an autorun file that would allow the client/user to pop in the disc and the computer would do the work from there. Unfortunately, with all of the different formats and codecs and viewers, I'm guessing that isn't too possible right now. I also thought maybe I could include both mac and pc files, but I don't have a program on my mac that will save pc media files. I'm sure there is one out there (I am going to download movie2mpeg right after this message), I just have to locate it.
It would be nice to run a higher resolution, but I think 320x240 will be okay for now. That seems to be the generally accepted size for internet videos, so hopefully it will be okay for this project.
As far as the quality being stuck at mpeg-1 level, I don't know. I'm not very familiar with that compression quality, but by your description I'm guessing it isn't so hot.
Now for the big one... the movie is going to be approximately 30-40 minutes long. I'd like to break it up into sessions, but the producer says no. Hopefully you'll have some pointers as to what format (if its even possible) for that long of a presentation.

Thank you very much for the help.
nicholi

[Marco Leavitt]

After converting a wav file to AIFF, I'm getting terrible, distorted sound when dropping it into Final Cut. It plays fine in Quicktime. Anybody have an idea what I'm doing wrong? I'm using Quicktime Pro to convert the file.