The city renamed cigarettes jacks or how,
Even the mayor had a run in with Crack,
But we all kept it real and we voted him back. -Mambo Sauce

Meeting Details on the DCFCPUG site, where you should RSVP. Oh, it’s free too.

Date: Monday, June 2nd
Time: 7:00pm - 10:00pm
Place: GW University Campus (Downtown DC)
Jack Morton Auditorium
805 21st St, NW
Washington, D.C. 20052

(Metro Accessible off Foggy Bottom)
It’s official DC has a revitalized Final Cut Pro User Group (DCFCPUG)!

That’s right LA we taking this to the web. *chuckles*

My friend Matt messages me on facebook:

“I am used to the “export to disk” function is Adobe….. I will use DVD Studio Pro to build the senior video, but how should I export and import into DVD Studio? … the full length [video name] that [jerk “boss”] wants on Monday. It is nearly 2 hours and when I export to Quicktime, it is 21GB!!! (how the hell do I always end up with the biggest files? lol) I really just need something that will autoplay in his DVD player, no fancy menus and sh*t.”

I’m glad he made the switch to Mac, now I won’t have to answer so many gosh darn PC Video problems. but for the time being its “pwnage” season on his mac rookie-ness.

Easiest Question- Why is my QT 21GB?! (Get Bitrate Pro) 1 Hour of DV video is roughly 10-12GB so two hours would be ~20Gb.

Now here’s the useful information:

There’s two methods to make a DVD. One is to encode the files and author it or the other is to use a DVD recorder to burn a screener. For Matt I hope he has the available option of #2, because encoding a 2 hour video is not really fun. (Note he’s on EXTREMELY tight deadline on his first FCP project.)

1. In FCP go File>Export> Using Compressor

   

2. Then in the settings window (lower left) Select the DVD option which makes the most sense. There’s two flavors of each bitrate. Fastest encode vs. Best Quality… All it is 1 pass VBR vs. 2 pass VBR. Use one pass for anything that’s urgent of a screener. Use 2 pass if quality is worth you losing a lot of time. (You can use inspector to modify any settings, like aspect ratio, bitrate, cropping, and all sorts of things but this is a beginner’s guide)
3. Then set your destination and Compress Away!
   

As far as Authoring is concerned here’s a good YouTube tutorial, although ignore the beginning steps I would not advise bringing your QT directly into Studio Pro its nice to have the M2v and AC3 first.

Option 2, and the more time effective method is buy a DVD recorder hook it up to some out (breakout-box, kona card or even firewire converter) and play it out of the computer whilst recording it to DVD in real time.

When Adobe bought Macromedia, many workflow problems were resolved. Others were not, you cannot copy artwork in flash and paste it into illustrator and achieve desirable results. The vector data behaves in strange manners and becomes jagged. Furthermore if you select export to .Ai in flash and open in illustrator the colors shift when opened (even when going RGB to RGB).

The work-around goes like this:

1. In Flash, go File -> Export ->Image…. Select .Ai.  Open the file.
2. Copy and Paste the same artwork from Flash to Illustrator.
3. Select all the elements which are one color (For example the teal leaves/tree trunk) and then use the Eyedropper Tool (I) and click the copy that has the correct color.
4. Repeat Step 3 for all other colors (For example the lettering)

It took a lot of work to get my eyes well-trained to catch mistakes, so my clients, um you know; come back. Yet I don’t think there’s any good excuse on this. It’s from a commercial on ESPN promoting their ESPN U channel.

Our subject leaps out of a SUV on a flat road onto an upward sloping, grassy hill. Yet he lands on a downward sloping mulch pad out of a SUV traveling downhill!

Once this caught my eye I began to look a little closer.  The mask on the car was pretty soft and the stunt double had considerable more hair than our middle aged balding Buckeye fan had just seconds before. My guess is this was a rush project and the producer was grillin’ the artist…

Whenever I go to work on a client’s system the one realistic fear I have is that I’m going to be hindered by equipment issues. I know the quirks of my setup, and have the latest and greatest…

This week I was working with a new client and wasn’t sure exactly what they had. As this was a deadline driven project I prepared by loading my 30GB iPod with software/freeware I can’t live without.

This is a MAJOR time saver if:

• They have a Password on the computer!
• They do not trust freeware
• Restart would be required

Here’s How:

Get the Discs or .dmg(s) and mount them, then launch the install function.

Select your iPod as the target drive (Enable Disk use first)

Load any Extras (Stock/ Codecs/ Plugins)

In the end it really didn’t matter the system was nearly identical to mine loaded with FCP 6.0.2 and CS3 and all the freeware (Streamclip, Hijack, Bitrate Pro). I encountered one glitch that caused the system to crash and the media to unlink itself but since I altered the preferences before working and set  the Autosave to every 2 min I lost nothing.

Every once in a while, I discover something new on the web that absolutely blows me away-

Netdisaster : An absolute must. If your enemies have a website- why not destroy it!

I’m Twittering.
I finally broke down and started Twittering. I don’t really see a point to it, but my role models do it so I figure I’d give it a try.(Clueless to what Twitter is? ~Click Here.)

To think, 3 years ago I didn’t understand the point of Facebook. Now I would die without it. Perhaps this is the same?

Although I am not in Vegas for NAB I’ve kept an ear to the ground and eye on the blogs for key developments in prosumer/pro cameras. Here are the highlights:

Red

• Scarlet Camera [Official Site][Mike Curtis Review]
  • 3k for $3000.
  • 8x Fixed Lends T2.8
  • 2/3″ Mysterium X Sensor
  • I will most likely buy this.

• Epic Camera [Official Site]
  • 5k
  • PL Mount
  • Out of my league.

Panasonic

• AG-HPX170
  • Handheld P2 Camera shoots 1080p

I don’t see anything earth shattering about this camera though, it looks to be just a follow up to the HVX. Perhaps I haven’t read enough into it yet– Check it out on FreshDV

I  *think* I read somewhere that Red will be revealing their follow-up camera to the initial Red One on April 14th, if not it’s one day during NAB.

I’m very much looking forward to seeing what Jim the Oakley mogul has come up with this time. The Red One shattered many ideas about what digital filmmaking is…

Based on what we know (It will be smaller and less expensive), and the many assumptions I read on RedUser I think we will see a 2k camera possibly with a fixed lens but an adapter set available. I’m going to put it in the 7-9k  range. I  assume their challenging the EX-1 and HVX but don’t think it will be an exact price match. Yet 20k is a big step down from 75 so anything is possible.

My audio skills are limited at best, but you can always teach a young dog a new trick- censoring flattened audio. It was my understanding that you needed all the tracks separated in order to do this cleanly. I learned a new way- I’m sure this is sound design 101 but for video guys it might be something new. Why not just isolate the word or phrase in question, and reverse that section!

Here’s the quickest way to do this- Take the blade tool and cut on either side of the word.
Hit Command+J to bring up the Time Remap dialog box, and check reverse.

Example, the lyric I had to abolish were “hydro”

Listen to the before: Hydro Before
Listen to it after: Hydro After

Simple.

Yesterday I decided that it would be a good idea to update the videos on my site. Not the content (I don’t have that much free time!) but wanted to use H.264 in Flash except once I changed the files nothing played until it was done downloading!

Well that was just not acceptable– That is so 2002. As it turns out there is something called a “moov atom” more or less header info or metadata which needs to be at the beginning of the file. Certain applications tack it to the end of the file, so far this includes Squeeze, AE and Premiere.

 Scott Morgan a Flash/Flex Developer goes into more detail on his site. 

The quick answer is try saving your files out through QT or using a M4v as opposed to a .Mov…

The answer I chose, GO BACK TO On2VP6 until Adobe gets its act together. It’s not worth it to me to force my users to update to version 9 for a semi-functional H.264 inclusion. Until then you can view my reel as a .flv- yet at least it plays.

Hey All!

Mike Maniglia of Subterra Films has entered his recent music video Motorin’ in the VSM and I believe he won his initial round. Anyway it’s time that YOU go and watch the video and vote for it!

Watch It Now

 

My associate, Nick Dale and I have produced a music video for The Saturday Knights (Light in the Attic recording artists) and it is an official winner in the Very Short Movies Festival (www.veryshortmovies.com ). The festival is a quarterly competition that runs current with the “live” fest in LA. Our film made it into the 4th Quarter Finals this year, it’s happening NOW. It works like American Idol, you watch, you register & vote, we win, simple.

The video is up for viewing and the festival officially starts today. Below is the direct link to the video, but to vote, you must register and log in. I’m sure you can watch the video, then vote, so don’t fret. The registration instructions are below. Email me if you have a problem, don’t get it or you want to tell us how dope our video is. If you are in LA on the 10th of next month, come have a drink and we will screen it in HiDef at Cinespace in Hollywood, CA.

We appreciate your support and everyone who helped us on this video and worked with us…