Dealing with different aspect ratio’s

January 16th, 2010

Workflow for multi format delivery to:
-Tape SD or HD
-Digital formats for Web & DVD
-Sources are a mix of 16×9 (HD or Anamorphic) and 4×3 SD.

With a mixture of 16×9 and 4×3 in a show, the best approach is to edit in the resolution and aspect ratio of your final output format.
Reformat footage on the timeline as needed.

HD
If you have to deliver the final show on HD-CAM, edit in your favorite HD resolution, 16×9.
-The 4×3 footage will be pillar-boxed

SD
For delivery on SD Digi-beta you have to make a choice between delivering anamorphic or letter-boxed. Decide based on how much 16×9 and 4×3 footage you have.

16×9
If you have more 16×9 footage (from HD sources), deliver anamorphic.
Make sure the Anamorphic box is checked in Sequence settings in FCP.
-4×3 footage will be pillar-boxed.

4×3
If you have more 4×3 footage, go for regular 4×3 and cut the HD footage in letter-boxed.

or centercut

In my opinion, because most TV sets are 16×9, anamorphic is preferred.
You gain about 1/3 resolution over letter-box.
TV’s, projectors and DVD players are very good at stretching Anamorphic to 16×9.
Anamorphic makes it easier to up-res the show to HD.
If you are making a tape for projection,  label with clear instructions:
“This tape is 4×3 LETTERBOX” or “This tape is ANAMORPHIC, please stretch to 16×9″

For SD DVD export a 640×480 Anamorphic quicktime.
Always de-interlace 4×3 full frame  for  the web on export!

If your sequence is SD-anamorphic or HD, export interlaced for Blue-Ray DVD.
For Web delivery, de-interlace on export!

Notes on digital delivery:
-Make sure to add a few extra frames at the top and bottom to make the movie go to black and not hang on a ghost frame.
-Resize picture to 104% to get rid of closed captioning and fuzzy video edges.
-Always de-interlace coming out of your NLE, software like adobe’s media encoder assumes that you de-interlace, there is no option to de-interlace!

1080i24P on the HVX200 or HVX170

December 27th, 2009

Progressive video is not really recorded progressive on modern video cameras.
Editing software extracts progressive frames from interlaced recording formats.
See wikipedia
If you accidentally shot 1080i24P on the HVX200 or HVX170 then Cinema tools is your friend. Do this:
-Use Log and Transfer to re-wrap as usual. (the Remove Advanced Pulldown checkbox doesn’t help because 1080i24P is NOT advanced pulldown)
-Footage comes in as 1080p30 29.97. It plays really shitty in FCP and you see  interlacing artifacts.
-Start cinema tools
-FIle > Batch Reverse Telecine
-Use these settings:


It takes about the same time as re-wrapping
You end up with 1080p30 23.98 with all the fields removed.
Next time shoot 1080i24PA (Advanced pulldown), that way log and transfer can pull the fields and frames out while it re-wraps into Quicktime.

Always copy whole P2 card on set!

December 14th, 2009

During a shoot always copy the “CONTENTS” and “LASTCLIP.TXT” to a drive to empty cards, never try to re-wrap files on location!
Best thing is to bring enough cards to make it through the day.
If you bring laptop, card reader & HD, make folders in advance; CARD 1, CARD 2 etc.

Lately I’ve seen FCP skip files or abort transfer in the log & transfer window.
You see a red stop sign with an exclamation point.
This is with a fast laptop 3.06 gHz with 8GB ram.
Only after many tries will it transfer certain files.
See this link on Apple
It is too much of a pain to have to troubleshoot and make sure you have all files on location.

Choosing an HD TV shooting format.

November 24th, 2009

If you shoot for American TV on a Panasonic camera (HVX-200, HPX-170)
set the camera to DVCPRO 60i
For European TV DVCPRO 50i (50Hz model)
Storage calculation 1GB/Min.

For the HMC-150 record DVCPRO 60i in PH-mode.
Storage calculation 3 hours on a 32GB SDHC card.
Do a test on the editing system if you shoot with the 150. The codec is AVCHD witch means more heavy lifting on your processors in editing. You’ll have to balance quality with efficiency if you’ve got a slower system. Otherwise, Panasonic offers a free utility that will convert the AVCHD files into the DVCPRO format. This will reduce the responsibilities of the processor, but will dramatically increase file size.
In FCP use the preset in log& Transfer to re-wrap to Pro-res 422.

If you shoot with the Sony PMW-EX3 shoot 1080 59.94i (50i for European TV)
Storage calculation 1GB/4 min. or 70min per 16GB SxS card in HQ mode.

List of Panasonic cameras

List of Canon cameras

List of Sony cameras

Sony XDCAM format

Does my internet connection work ok?

November 17th, 2009

go to down for everyone or just me

Red getting started guide

November 17th, 2009

For editing in FCP first download the Final cut studio installer

Read the “Using Red Media with Final Cut Studio 3 Whitepaper”

Click here to go to the page on red.com

Minimum system requirement on Intel-based Apple Mac systems is 2GB of RAM. RED recommends either a 4-core or 8-core Mac Pro Tower system with at least 2GB of RAM, a suitable graphic card (such as NVIDIA 8800, or ATI 4870) and high speed storage for this new end-to-end native REDCODE as QuickTime files or the existing REDCODE transcode to ProRes codec workflow.

Download free RED software:

REDalert Open R3D files,  do first color correct and export for editing.

REDcine REDCINE was written both by RED and ASSIMILATE (which it is really a lite version of the popular grading software called SCRATCH). REDCINE is available for both Windows XP/Vista and Intel MAC OSX. It differs from RED Alert! in that it has a lot more controls available, which some people like and others find tricky. REDCINE also mainly uses the GPU for processing, so render times are different depending on your system’s hardware. Third party tools, such as CRIMSON also have been made to work with REDCINE by use of XML file importing for conforming purposes.

Clipfinder A much smarter, free program for opening drives & cards with footage, selecting and exporting to edit codec.

slow internet on snow

November 16th, 2009

I’ve had extremely slow internet connection since doing clean install snow

I found this link on apple

After that it is a little better, but still not great