Technical Note About Brief 601
Posted on: July 28, 2009Author: Neal Campbell
12 comments so far (is that a lot?)
Having @SwitchingGranny in the house for Brief 602 was fitting. She tries new things and on 602 we did too!
Canon 5D Mark II + Panasonic HVX200a
The new version of Final Cut Pro is supposed to handle working from different file formats in the same timeline better than before. It probably does, but not with the settings I used. I used the 5D Mark II for wide shots and the HVX200a for close-ups. Working with natural light, the Canon almost always gives me beautiful images. So far I haven’t gotten acceptable results using studio lighting. On Brief 602, you can see on the wide shots that Martha and Cali are blown out in places and they both look great on the close ups. I’m going to need to practice with shooting and lighting with the 5D Mark II to find the sweet spot.
Final Cut Pro and File Types
The 5D Mark II gives me a 1080p Quicktime movie using H.264 compress. The HVX200a is set to give me a 1080i movie and in this case I had it set for 24p. I dragged the 5D Mark II footage into the timeline first and let Final Cut match the settings to that video. I added the footage from the HVX200a and cut between close ups and wide shots. Every cut required rendering and that took several hours. The two videos started out in sync, but by the end, the footage from the 5D Mark II was a couple of frames behind the audio. Every adjustment required a render before I could see if the cut and sync were okay.
Before, when I mixed footage between the two cameras, I exported both files into the same format. I believe there is a way to not have to do that with this version of FCP. This wasn’t it!
Final Cut Pro and Exporting
I’m really excited about the new Share option in Final Cut Pro because we release four different formats of The Brief. Share gives us the ability to create all four version from FCP so I can potentially drop VisualHub from the workflow. However, as I’m writing this, I’m 1 hour and 17 minutes into the export and it still hasn’t completed one of the four versions. Most likely there are options I can choose to speed things up, but this is a first try and it’s disappointing. Estimated Time Remaining is nearly 12 hours!
Final Cut Studio in General
I was looking forward to Soundtrack to hear new sound effects and music beds. There aren’t a whole lot of new music beds, but the new sound effects are very good. I haven’t had enough time to actually use Soundtrack yet, but I’m very happy to have all the new sounds.
I was also looking forward to a boatload of Motion templates. There are a few, but there are many, many new assets and behaviors. I’ll spend a whole weekend playing around in Motion. I’m not sure about this but it seems like a lot of what I’ve always done in LiveType might be built into Motion now.
My first time out with the new Final Cut Studio wasn’t exactly a success. It took 10 hours to do what would normally take me 2 hours. I almost always blame the user (me) when there are problems, and I’m sure that’s the case here. This week I’ll play around and adjust settings and I’ll follow up this post with more after I’ve found solutions to my initial problems.
July 28th, 2009 at 7:05 am
All great info. It’s getting better all the time. The old media is dead. Long live Cali.
July 28th, 2009 at 8:29 am
I’m honored to have my claim to fame be appearing on the first brief where you used the updated Final Cut Studio.
I’m grateful to have been here with you sweet folks and experienced so many behind the scene aspects of the production of GBTV
You guys will always be my geek idols.
I’m so blessed to call you friends
July 28th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
hey I just wanted to say thanks for introducing me to tweetmeme. I saw it on your site and started using it myself. thanks
July 28th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
I send you a message on Twitter:
A suggestion:
Assuming you import all video to ProRes422, you could edit and output all video to Quicktime ProRes422 again as you are finished. That should take a few minutes and then U can convert that file in to the four different video files with the FREE program: MpegStreamClip.
Go to their website: http://www.squared5.com
It’s available for PC and Mac
Just drag the final edit in to the window of the program after you started it and then select Export under FILE in the menu.
It’s also capable to do batch lists of multiple files (or just one file to many formats).
Works great and it also makes good use of the cores in your Mac.
Good luck with it,
Gert
http://www.hdvinfo.nl (Dutch website about HD Video)
July 28th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
If you’re doing batch encoding, to speed things up, use Episode Pro. Final Cut Pro (and Compressor) are notoriously slooooooow. Episode is much faster.
July 28th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
I don’t want to be a buzzkill, but shouldn’t the new and improved tool function the same as the old tool AND be faster and more efficient? What’s the point in the upgrade if you have to change the way you do things? Maybe I’m missing something.
July 29th, 2009 at 6:51 am
Did you do anything differently with the sound levels in this new setup? SwitchingGranny’s sound level was much lower than Cali’s. Does FCP offer any options to deal with that in post?
July 29th, 2009 at 7:43 am
When did the new version come out and why the need to upgrade?
July 29th, 2009 at 10:59 am
I agree with Scott W regarding the audio levels. Don’t know if it was a post production issue, or if the sound levels weren’t checked on set, but I wasn’t able to hear hardly anything that Martha said, but Cali was loud and clear. It looked like there was a mic on the table, and both of them were also wearing a lapel mic, so I don’t know why you didn’t have enough level.
January 26th, 2010 at 8:56 am
I usually buy an essay or term papers about this topic.
January 29th, 2010 at 11:49 pm
I’ve used and throughly enjoyed a 5D for a couple of years, and have found it to be a simply outstanding full-frame camera. Like a lot of people, I was eagerly looking forward to the 5D Mark II, and pre-ordered one. After using it for a few weeks, I am pleased to report that this is an excellent update to the 5D.
February 14th, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Sitenizi tesadufen buldum ve oldukca begendigimi soylemeliyim. Basarilar.