NLE Mac / Final Cut questions from 2004

[Gary Chavez]

be willing to do a tutor session on my system?

email at:

grchavez@cps-satx.com

thanks

[Gary Chavez]

you know, for money.

[Mark Argerake]

Sorry - I'm not in San Antonio, or I'd help you out. But I was out there last summer at SIGGRAPH and was very impressed with the town.

What is your system, maybe I can point you in a direction or two?

[Beth Pielert]

Howdy ho, a few months back I sought help with my IOMEGA 120GB Firewire external drive. I've been using this *free* drive to digitize video and audio using an Adaptec PCI card and FCP4. All warned that Iomega was not a "supported drive" but since it worked 3/4 of the time, I plugged on. Now that I've amassed 23 minutes of my rough-cut in three sequences on a timeline that links to this god for saken drive (feeling rather dramatic today) I went ahead and plunked a LACIE 120 GB drive on my credit card.

Tomorrow when the new and hopefully reliable LACIE arrives, I'll want to move all my media from the IOMEGA over to her. Will I be able to reconnect media moved to a new drive from my working timeline? My thought was to daisy chain the two drives, mirror the LACIE to the IOMEGA in its formatting, move all the media over and then try reconnecting media from within my working timeline. Will the project reject this as each rendered file had IOMEGA as its address? I'm hoping I can move the media, reconnect it and render it if necessary - I just don't want to have to make a movie as I am still editing.

Thanks again for your words of wisdom.

[Ken Tanaka]

Beth,
Good for you! (Getting a more standard Firewire drive, that is.)

I've not worked with the Iomega drives (thankfully) but, yes, you have the basic process in-hand. The dance steps I would follow are:

1. Format the new drive on your Mac.

2. Connect it (either daisy-chain to the Iomega or use your 2nd FW port if you have one).

3. Copy your footage to the new drive.

4. Disconnect the Iomega.

5. Open FCP4 and your project. You should immediately get a nastygram advising you that FCP can't find your footage. It should also give you the opportunity to Reconnect the footage file. Take FCP up on this offer.

6. It will then open a list dialog box letting you navigate to the new footage file location. After you point to one file on the new drive it should be able to automatically re-link the rest of them from that drive (unless you've told FCP otherwise).

It sounds gnarly but it's pretty simple.

Good luck.

[Beth Pielert]

Thank you Ken - you are so there for us! I am making quicktime movies of each of my threads as backup in case all is lost.

Will let you know how it goes.

[Joshua Kopple]

Hey everyone,

Multi-part, big post ahead...

I've read through the extensive threads on manipulating photos to give them more life, seen the recommendations on simpler programs but I'd prefer to learn it right on either FCP3 or After Effects - I have both.

1) Here's what I'd ultimately like to achieve and maybe you guys can tell me which program I should learn on (I suspect AE):

My wedding gift to my brother is a video of everything from the bridal showers to bachelor/(ette) parties to the day after. For the bachelorette party, I obviously wasn't here and they only took digital photos.

As I plan to only shoot and edit more projects in the future, I figured this would be a perfect opportunity to really knock out a photo montage - more than just panning, zooming and tilting but even try out some of those shots (like you see in credit sequences or in 'Kid Stays In The Picture') where they move the subjects across the photo.

I should just learn to tackle AE for heavy duty photo manipulation, shouldn't I? If so, where might I find the tutorials/help I'm looking for? This, http://www.creativecow.net/articles/aftereffects5_5.html, was helpful but isn't the final solution to my needs. Thanks!

2) Having said that, I toyed around immediately in FCP3 with one of these photos they took. They are all 1704 x 2272. In the viewer, the picture is crystal clear but...

a) When I dragged the finished, choppy zoom into the timeline, it popped up in the canvas SERIOUSLY degraded. Very fuzzy. I was wondering why? Is it an issue of the proportions of the photo? Is it just an FCP quirk, wherein it will show up clear once you output it?

b) As a test, I did a zoom from 100% to 150% over about 5 seconds. The creep was very choppy. Not smooth. Do I need to add more keyframes? Smooth them out? Or just have the zoom run over a shorter time?



I know this is a large post. I apologize but hopefully I'll be answering someone else's questions (or future questions) as well.

Many thanks,


Joshua

P.S. I also found this via another thread here. It looks very helpful but not quite answering the questions I'm asking here. http://www.mindspring.com/~schleicher/

P.P.S. I live in Los Angeles. I'm not adverse to personally meeting someone who doesn't mind being Mr. Miyagi to my Daniel-son for an afternoon.

[John Britt]

I do a fair amount of "graphic spots" -- local commercials done quickly and on the cheap using just still photos provided by the business or their ad rep. One I just finished (mentioned below) attempted the "Kid satys in the picture" style

Go to http://www.karatemedia.com/video to see these examples:

*"Georgia Theatre" -- I just completed this one, my first attempt at the "Kid Stays In..." technique. I used it in the shot that opens and closes the commercial (the B&W one that zooms in on the guy holding his head). This version is very subtle, and would probably be mistaken for a typical pan-n-scan, "Ken Burns effect." But you can see how the background goes out of focus in an approximation of Depth of Field and you can sorta see the movement and shadow I created. My other attempt was too obvious, but this one may be too subtle.

There was a tutorial in DV magazine a couple months ago on how to do this technique, which may still be available on their website at dv.com. Basicially you cut and clone in Photoshop, import two layers into After Effects, then play with them in 3D space to get the look you want. Include lights and camera layers, too, if you like.

But the point is to create movement and interest out of a still photo. You don't have to go all out with the effects work to do this. A scene in a motion picture may pan over a beautiful vista or slowly reveal a special detail that is very meaniful -- it's still just a pan, no special effects involved...

I think the "Chick Piano" and "All About You" commercials on my site are nice, straightforward pan-n-scans that made the clients happy. These are simply 1600x1200 pics imported into Premiere and then manipulated with a combination of the Pan filter and the Motion settings. These are not the best examples of the now-monikered "Ken Burns effects" one could find, of course, but they show that simple panning can be fine, too.

I'm sorry I cannot help you with your other questions... I'm just a Windows/Premiere kinda guy (uh, so why did I come in this forum anyway?)... If you cannot find the DV.com tutorial on the After Effects effect, I'll post more here about how I did it. After Effects is a lot of fun to use, and any reason to use it is a good reason...

EDIT: Also, let me recommend Chris and Trish Meyer's books on After Effects -- Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects volumes 1 & 2 (vol 2 covers AE 5.5 and just came out in June, so I don't know if or when they'll put one out for After Effects 6.0), and After Effects in Production (this one covers AE 4 and 5 but these are hands-on lessons, which I love, and can certainly be applied to AE 5.5 and probably AE6.0). Chris and Trish also write for DV magazine.

[Mike Butler]

Yeah John, what are you doing in Mac-land??? :-)

Hey, I was just there in Dawg-ville a couple of weeks ago. Never thought I'd see a place called Gator Haters outside of Tallahassee! Sister Hazel were playing in one music theater and Three Doors Down were at the other.

Nice on the GA Theater "Kid Stays In" shot. Loved it.

I just had to do a :30 spot for Kuya Fusion Rum and had NO time to go out and burn any footage. So between some clips of old bar night happy face reels and some pan-n-scan shots of product and drinks, I managed to pull it together. Fortunately I had some layered PSDs of the bottle and drink, which I just motion-controlled in front of a Jump Back in an appropriate color scheme for the look-and-feel of the brand. Now I'm gonna have to try my game with this new (to me) twist on an old game.

Josh, "wax on, wax off." :-)

Y'know, although 1704 x 2272 is a bit big unless you are going to really zoom in tight on some detail in the picture, it should still work. Rather than more keyframes, try just one at the beginning and one at the end. That's all you should need unless you have a change of direction in mid-shot...which is not unheard-of but less common than a straight motion.

The stuff I do is mostly like the Chick Piano or All About You shots. Simple, native-to-the-timeline things that don't require AE.

Oh yes, and it's all in FCP 3.

I have to wonder if it's a computer issue like not enough memory partitioned to FCP or something.

[Steve Lehman]

I have a 733 G4. What is a good, compatible 160-220 g internal hard drive?

[Jeff Donald]

ATA133 support is required for the larger drives. I don't think the 733 supports drives larger than 135gb. You will need a controller card in a PCI slot to recognize the entire drive. If you get a new computer in the future you can reformat the drive and use the entire size of the drive.

[Glenn Chan]

Western Digital drives over the 137GB limit come with a PCI controller card that lets you get past the limit. You should be able to see the entire size of the drive with that card.

newegg.com is a great place to grab the drive from. They have the absolute best price half the time and great service. Check whether you're getting the retail or OEM version of the drive (and what the differences are if you're getting OEM).

Ken Stone's FCP page (kenstone.net) has an article on how to install the drive, as does the manual for your G4.

[Corey Cook]

I've been worrying about this problem for some time now.

The first thing that I think I should mention is the fact that I have three hard drives: an internal HD, and two externals.

O.K., here's what I do. I go into the program, and start doing some things, and notice that in the little column box listing the fonts, many of them, I'd say probably 90%, aren't installed.

So, I click on the font that I want, and hit the install button. After this, I get a message telling me to insert a disc, either LiveType 1 or Livetype 2. I do this. I open the 'LiveType Fonts' folder in the disc, and select the font that I want. Boom, I get another box telling me that the font cannot be installed.

I close the window with all of the fonts inside. Still looking at the open disk window, I see that there are some other options for me in there. So, I click on the other icon, a little box saying something like 'LiveType Data, Disc 1' under it. I click on it, and I get an installer window. It asks me where to install the data.

Now, be reminded that I have three hard drives. So, here's what I do: I click on the internal hard drive (install location) icon. My computer tells me that I am unable to install in this location. So, having two other choices, I click on my 'External HD #1' icon. I have Mac OS 10.2.6, but for some reason, the computer tells me that I need at least 10.2.5 to install here. Again, the darn exclamation point, telling me that I cannot install here.

Alright, I now have one more choice. So, I click on my 'External Hard Drive #2' Icon. No exclamation point! Did I finally get it right? Apparently not. I click on the 'install' option, and a dialogue box comes up. It says something to the extent that I need to install on the boot drive, (which I thought ext. HD #2 was established as! What the h*** is going on here?!) And it tells me that I should contact 'The administrator of my computer' for futher information.

--- And, that's where I am left at this point. Has anyone else had problems like this?

Replies are apprecieated, I am pretty stumped at this point.

Thanks,

Corey C.

[Jeff Donald]

It sounds like you have a non-standard boot setup. Certain applications need to find files and folders in specific locations in order to install correctly. In your case have the OS on an external drive is confusing the installer. Can you outline where you OS is installed and where your applications (such as FCP 4) are installed? You may need to reinstall the OS and FCP to the proper locations to get the installer to run.

[Mark Monciardini]

I'm using my DVX100 as a deck, out of that camera it goes straight to a monitor. But I get no audio to the camera or monitor while Printing To Tape. Is there a setting I need to turn on? I'm stumped.

Vegas Video on the PC had audio out just fine.