NLE Mac / Final Cut questions from 2004

[Donie Kelly]

Hi all

I'm trying to add a logo at the bottom of my screen and I'm having trouble. I've created the logo ok in photoshop cs and I've imported it into FCP 4.5 HD.

I have two video tracks. the lower one is my footage and the upper one is my logo. I created the logo as a image with a transparent background. The image I copied to the layer so it has nothing on it only the logo. the rest is transparent.

OK, so it works in that I can play back the video and the logo is sitting on top nicely.

However, I want to fade the logo in and out so I stick a standard fade at each end, this is where I'm confused.

What it's doing at the fade out is the start of the fade makes the underlying video go black and both the logo and the video fade. The logo fades away. the underlying video fades in.

Similar at the fade in at the start of the logo, just reversed.

I'm guessing the alpha channel is not correct. When I save As... in photoshop it doesn't allow me to select that I want an alpha channel so I guess I'm not doing this correctly in photoshop????

Can anybody enlighted me? Please

Thanks
Donie

[Boyd Ostroff]

http://www.apple.com/support/powerbook/displayprogram/

A limited number of 15-inch PowerBook G4 computers exhibit a display issue which may cause faint white spots to appear on the screen over time. The 15-inch PowerBook G4 Repair Extension Program is a worldwide program covering replacement of LCDs that exhibit these white spots

I have one of these defective screens myself, but keep putting off the repairs since I hate to give up my computer!

[Donie Kelly]

Hi Boyd

They don't affect the newer 1.5Ghz machines... yet.

Thanks
Donie

[Boyd Ostroff]

Yes, there are a limited range of serial numbers that are affected on the first batch of aluminum powerbooks. As luck would have it, my Titanium powerbook got "fried" in an accident at work and I had to get an immediate replacement. I went to CompUSA that night and got one of the very first 15" machines they received. This is why I hate being the first kid on the block with the newest toy ;-)

[Tim Tonner]

I need to get a thirty-second video clip, (with only one track of audio) I assembled in FCP 3 (0SX) to my web designer. What is the procedure? I imagine saving it as a Quicktime Movie is the way to go, and if so, what are the correct compression rates, sizing, etc.? One limitation I have is dial-up modem, but I'm thinking I could probably burn it to CD and mail it off. Any thoughts?

[Glenn Chan]

Your web designer probably doesn't know how to encode it?

If they do, mail em a mini-DV tape. If they have a PC with a firewire card and a camcorder, they can capture it and use Windows Media Encoder.

You doing it:
If you have a PC, use Windows media encoder. Excellent quality (better than QT) and free. Export a DV AVI from Final Cut and put that onto your PC.

Mac:
If you pay for software you will get better quality. Sorenson pro codecs are what you'd look at.

I assume you want to do things for free.
Export from Final Cut...
codecs:
video: sorenson3
audio: mpeg4 audio
frame rate: probably bump it down to 15fps or less. Motion is usually not that important, but depends on your material.
frame size: bump this down to whatever's appropriate. the dimensions have to be in right aspect ratio, usually 4:3.
quality: use something between 10-40. I never have had good results using "limit bitrate to..." (leave that unchecked).
keyframe: you can leave this alone, doesn't make a major difference.

audio:
mono (listen and check that phase cancellation isn't causing problems).
32khz sampling rate or lower for music. 22.1/24khz for voice should work. That sampling rate can be ok for music too.
bitrate set as low as possible to balance compromise between sound quality (how many artifacts) and compression/size. The lower bitrates are the place to start.

[Gustavo Godinho]

A friend of mine has an AJA IO card working with a G5. He says that a DV tape captured to the G5 through AJA IO has better picture quality because the card "doesn´t compress the clip". I didn´t understand! If I capture directly through the G5 firewire, not using the AJA, the compression is gonna higher than the usual DV compression? What is the benefit of the AJA card?

[Matt Stahley]

Did you try keyframing the actual track opacity to fade out and in. I use this method for simple fade ins/outs rather than using the transitions.

[Donie Kelly]

hi matt,

i got it to work. i needed a proper alpha channel on the picture rather than just a transparent background.

however, once i got that to work i ran into another problem. When I render the transitions the bitmap during the fade gets blocky??? What the heck is going on??? It's extremely noticeable. The bitmap in the outside the transition area is perfect.

I check that all settings I know about were set for high quality...

Any ideas???

Donie

[Matt Stahley]

Hmm not sure but i would just save the logo as a .psd file. I dont flatten my images i usually just import the logo as a saved .psd file with an empty transparent layer into FCP and then delete the empty layer in the FCP timeline. I know it may not be the right way but it always works for me.I dont even mess with the alpha channels but I guess you would have to if you are flattening the image and saving as a bitmap?? There is a nice tutorial over at www.kenstone.net that expalins a logo "bug" this may help.

[Rob Lohman]

None if you are using a DV camera. DV is already 5:1 compressed,
no way about this. AJA might *re-compress* it though, but it
cannot work with an uncompressed signal since it is not send
over the firewire chain (from the DV camera).

I've shortly checked out the AJA IO and they do say uncompressed
over firewire. But that must be to another device that supports
uncompressed as well, which a DV camera DOES NOT!

However, in theory he *might* be able to get a a *slightly*
better signal if the AJA can capture the analog s-video out of
a camcorder.

It has never been proven yet that this actually does yield a
higher quality picture. It also depends on the quality of the
then digital -> analog -> digital conversion process and the
compression/codec used for the final digital file format.

[Duane Martin]

Your friends explanation for why the image is "better" is not accurate. DV through Firewire is basically an exact copy of what is on the tape, a transfer of 1's and 0's, no generation loss, no compression or uncompression. Your friend is simply converting the DV codec to a SD codec.

Before the advancements made with recent upgrades to FCP 4, in the old days of FCP 3, some people would capture their DV through an analog convertor when working with chroma keys and extensive colour correction. The DV would be "uncompressed"* to an SD format, which could be helpful in eliminating the stair-stepping common with the native DV codec. This technique applied a colour smoothing to the DV for better chroma keying within FCP 3, which is generally acknowledged to have had weak chroma key tools.

But this conversion does result in a generation loss of image. Now, with better DV codecs, improved colour tools, and generally better performance with FCP HD, this technique is often only used by people who got in the habit a couple years ago. Now, I believe, it is arguable that the generation loss achieved by doing a DV to SD conversion for editing is not worth any possible gain in working with colour. Some would agree with me, but I am positive there are just as many people to make the argument otherwise.

* All video is compressed to tape. DV, SD or HD, analog signal or digital. It is simply a matter of degrees of compression. The native compression of DV is 5:1 and I put the word "uncompressed" in quotation marks because it is a little misleading in this context. Uncompression of DV results in a generation loss, larger file size, and questionable benefits. There used to be a great article on the Ken Stone pages <http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/fcp_homepage_index.html> on this very topic, but I cannot locate it now.

[Les Wilson]

There's no need to use a PC. The quality with Quicktime is just fine, simple and will work on the most computers. You can get some visual improvements with other QuickTime tools tools such as Sorenson but I gather that isn't the scenario you are looking for. There's two Export features in FCP. One is to export a full quality DV file. THe other is to export to one of the many QuickTime compressed formats for CDROM, the Web etc. You want the latter.

From FCP:
Open the assembled timeline
Select File->Export->Export to Quicktime (or something similar)

In the resulting dialog box, you get to name the output clip and tell QuickTime what settings to use. You should see settings for Modem, DSL etc with various quality (High, Medium, low). If you don't have this drop down, you've picked the wrong Export.

Doing it this way uses preconfigured presets and ensures the best compatibility across computers in use by those visiting your website.

Create as many as you think you want to offer on your website.

[Andrew Hogan]

Has anyone used these yet?

And, did the On-line Registration process, to authorize them, all work ok etc

[Ryan Wachter]

I was working on footage today on my AGDVX100 and when I went to batch capture the next set of scenes the screen stayed blue, the time showed that it was playing through footage but again it just stayed blue, we even tried another tape which we know had footage on it. So the camera itself isnt showing the image. It still works fine in record mode....what am I missing here. Please get back to me ASAP this if for the 48 hour project..!!!