More Past Meeting Summaries 2003 2002 2001 2000

Meeting Summary May 23, 2001 It was rock and roll night so we cranked up the volume on a bunch of music videos and documentaries, solved a few folks problems with FCP, showed a few camera filters and what they can do to aid your "look", learned how to "Say Cheese," educated us all on how to log and capture the proper and cool way, got a how2 on using the Vectorscope and Waveform, and got fed for free. Can't beat that for the less than the price of a matinee.   Stump the Gurus was up first, (as usual) with Ken Stone and guest Guru Steve Martin stepping in for Andrew Balis, and wouldn't you know it they were stumped. Seems one of the folks had a problem with crackling and popping audio and it seems he did and tried everything short of a religious ceremony to cure the problem and nothing the gurus said were anything he had not tried so we gave up and he won 5 raffle tickets. Course he still has the problem. Other questions asked: Q) I'm having sync problems in the timeline when I capture via Firewire from my Sony camcorder. A) Try this as it 'might" work. If you know you have done everything correct and your audio sample rate matches your capture sample rate and you are not using a Canon camera and you have speakers hooked up to your DV device and are not monitoring sound from your Mac and have speakers in your preferences turned to "OFF while capturing," then delete the clip and turn ON the autosync compensator in the General Preferences and bring the clip back in. Q) How come some of my clips are captured at 3.6 mgbs per second data rate and some are 3.5 mgbs per second? A) Well.....it's uh...just because. 3.6 is not science and it might vary a little but if everything is looking and sounding good then it doesn't matter. Q) When I drop my clip into the timeline it doesn't butt up against the other clip.There is a tiny gap. A) Turn on "SNAPPING." Q) I have a DSR-20 and I outputted to DVCam and gave it to a guy with a GL1 and he couldn't see it. What's up? A) Output it to DV instead of DVCam. Hook up a DV player and then give THAT to your friend. Q) I want to scroll the thumbnail in the timeline and choose my poster image but I can't seem to do that. A) Thats cause you can't do it. It works only in the browser. Using the hand tool you can scrub but you can't grab that poster image. Q) How can I apply a transitions between nested sequences. A) add handles and make sure you have in and out points set in each sequence before you apply transition. Q)I have some MP3s I convert in QT then bring them in to FCP and they sound like crap. A) Thats cause there MP3s. They just sound lousy. You CAN bring them into Bias DV and tweak them in there with all the cool filters that come with it or revert back to 1.2.5 and QT 4.1.2 which did a pretty good job with MP3s. Q)What's the best way to export long form project, (over 60 minutes) to DV since DV tapes are only 60 minutes long? A) Use full size DVCam. You can put 183 minutes on those things. Q)When I quit FCP and then relaunch I loose my window settings and favorites. A) You need to open FCP from your PROJECT file icon not the FCP icon. Steve Payne of Group 101 films was up first with his Music Video Show and Tell called My Vacation and it was as dandy a video you are likely to see this side of MTV2. Shot in one afternoon and featuring the music of JenBeast, it emphasized the use of extreme close-ups and a "over exposed" image using a TRV-20 with NO special filters. The resulting images are a perfect fit with the poetry of the (excellent) song and evokes a strong sense of an idea fully realized. Edited with FCP in a couple days, the entire video was simple cuts and fades and then the sequence was copied into another sequence and duplicated onto itself. He then made it 85% transparent and put a blur on it so you have a sharp image and a transparent blurred image in composite mode then dragged THAT sequence into another sequence and cropped it in letter box style over a white background. The result was a stunning realization of what you can do with an idea, an afternoon, a cheap DV camera, and a damn fine song. DVCreators Steve Martin was up next with his now "west coast famous" (soon to be world famous) "Tip/Trick of the Month" and this month it was "Say Cheese," which is an effect where you freeze a section of your video and create a "snapshot" of it as though someone was taking a picture through a 35mm camera. But prior to the demo Steve showed off his CD, "Secrets of Final Cut Pro", the nifty training tool featuring 20 tutorials of creative ideas you too can do in FCP while the CD runs in the background. (available here at the lafcpug store and also reviewed by Ken Stone) Anyway, here is how to do the say cheese trick: 1. Put your playhead on a point in your sequence you wish to "freeze" 2.. Go up to the MODIFY menu and and select MAKE STILL FRAME 3. By default the still frame image is 10 seconds long. Apply the Desaturate filter onto the still image (Effects>Video Filters>Image control>Desaturate) 4. Create a :viewfinder look" with alpha channel in Photoshop, (you know, that cross hair in the middle with partial borders in all four corners) and bring it in and superimpose that onto the Desaturate still image. 5.Put a 4 frame dip to color transition at the "shutter click" point using white or black. 6. Put a sound effect to simulate shutter click at the transition point. 7. Adjust 10 second still image to suit taste. Chris Dupont of Monkey Wrench Studios was up next with show and tell of the Metal band "Dream Theatre" A limited budget DVD this project was top heavy on visual effects utilized entirely in FCP. Shot with 6 Digi-Beta cameras, this was the first FCP project Chris cut coming from a Media 100 background. Chris started out showing us the final DVD output using the DVD player on the Mac. The resulting project was a cacophony of concert footage interlaced with multiple split screen effects, heavy use of animated graphics, flop filters, and dazzling quick cuts and wipes. But what was cool about this show and tell was that Chris was not only able to tell us how he did this multiple camera DVD project, but showed us the timeline as well so we could actually SEE exactly HOW he did it. At a couple points in the video he utilized 8 tracks of video which of course offered ample time for TV viewing as things rendered. Chris took us through the motion controls and filters controls and gave us a quick how2 on his workflow which he developed over several attempts to find it. As well, he gave us a tour on how the concert was shot. Great to have the timeline as a visual on how things are put together to archive the end result. DP Barry Braverman brought a whole bunch of DV Cameras (courtesy of Promax) and a box of Tiffen Filters, sat model Lori Schwartz in a chair and gave us all demo on what filters can do for your particular DV camera and yes, all cameras are different and require different filters to achieve your desired result. For example a 1/2 black pro mist filter on a PD100 will give you a nice warm image but flare out any hard light that might in the composition. A possible solution? A silk stocking? No. A black diffusion FX filter will give you very nice diffusion without loss of resolution. So he showed us the difference between the two and the flare all but disappeared and the image was warm and quite pleasing. Barry says that this particular filter should be used only in interior situations and you should shoot with the lens wide open. In fact using any filter you want to shoot with the lens wide open as it tends to show the image elements of the filter if you stop the camera down. If it's not practical to shoot wide open then try a Soft FX filter which loses a bit of resolution but produces a nice image without flare. Although time did not allow us to show all the cameras Barry did touch on the differences in the images between them siting the more hard colors of the XL1 vs those of the Sony cameras. Each would require its own type of filtration to produce your desired result. Barry brought out a nifty and rugged Matte box to hold up. Barry recommends spending the money on a good matte box as he feels most folks change cameras but you only need one matte box Judging from the mass of people who scampered onto the stage during the break to pepper Barry with questions and touch the cameras, this subject deserves much more discussion. Speaking of the break we all took a time out for 20 minutes to eat vegetables and drink sodas courtesy of the good folks over at Runway. Gregory Lemkin from Tribe Digital Ent. was up first after the break to show and tell about the aimee Mann video, "Ghost World" he edited which was first shown at MacWorld in SF in January. Directed by John Fortenbarry and shot with 2 XL1s and a ZL1 with extensive use of SteadyCam Jrs and guerrilla approaches such as wheelchair dollys and minimal lighting to achieve a "home movie" type effect. Shot over 2 days at Hollywood High Gregory gave us a few of war stories on the post production which included about 70 gigs of material he digitized as likes to have every piece of footage in his Mac available regardless of the usability. Gregory said it was difficult to match cameras as one of them was not balanced or matched to the same color as the others. He suggests if you are doing a multiple camera shoot that you, at the very least, hook up all cameras to a single monitor and adjust for color balance. Gregory also showed us his award winning"commercial" that he wrote and directed for DigiDance which featured extensive use of Green Screen effects and told the story of a young man pitching a movie idea to various tiers of people in the studio system and getting literally kicked around in the process. A dandy short worthy of the acclaim it received and showing that maybe it's best to do it yourself rather than incorporating a corporation to help you tell your story. DV Companion, (available here at the store) author Phil Hodgetts gave us an interesting How2 on one of the more problematic areas of FCP, the Log and Capture. Here is how to do it the proper way according to Phil. First thing is to get your settings right. With 2.0 it's pretty easy and self explanatory and with 2.0s many pre sets it's just a matter of selecting the right one. Then set your viewer and canvas windows to 50% or smaller so your Log and Capture will open at half size for smoother playback. Phil doesn't like using Capture Now despite it's cool "stop start detection" ability. He prefers logging so he can exactly find what he needs to find by searching his log notes, also using Capture Now does not allocate to any particular project. You must navigate to the captured clip and SAVE it manually and then place it where you want it. Also there is a delay in the capture despite 2.0s ability to specify length of capture Clunky, Phil calls it. You must put in a reel name in the log and capture window prior to capturing. Set your in and out points as you would normally and after logging clips, use batch capture. Phil recommends turning off the drop frame warning as 2.0 seems to look very carefully at the first frame of capture and sine the first frame is often abnormally long FCP thinks it is a dropped frame and will tell you so. You can use Analyze Movie to check your captured clip. If it says dropped frames all over the place then you got a problem. If it says you dropped the frame on the first or second frame then ignore it. BTW, Phil likes logging using markers instead of using in and out points. Phil also showed us what we thought of as impossible. Using the Vectorscope and Waveform to monitor your video and audio in the timeline. For this (impossible) technique, click HERE Anthony Scarpa was up next with a documentary he directed on the band "Betty Blowtorch" an all female metal/punk group. Shot with a vx2000 and a GL1 in "run and gun" style, edited on FCP with Cinelook and featuring interviews with the band and many celebrity admirers, it tells the story of this "sexy and bad" group of girls through a mixture of intimate interviews, concert footage, and Vanilla Ice rapping about his manhood. What is remarkable about any DV documentary, and certainly this one is no exception, is the intimacy one can achieve using mini DV cameras as opposed to bulky 16mm or beta SP. Performance becomes reality when the camera disappears. Betty Blowtorch might be performance art but Anthony gave us the "who they are" which is often more fascinating then the music, even if you are a fan. This is good stuff on a band is going to grab a great deal of attention when it's album comes out June 15th. Click HERE to view it on iFilm Vicki Blue was up next with her film about arguably the most influential all female band in Rock and Roll history, The Runaways. Unfortunately Vicki had to leave before she was able to show and tell so I showed it and told a little about it. Titled "EDGEPLAY" and shot on a XL1 with use of archival footage it tells the "untold" story of this group of 16 and 17 year old girls and their life in the band with a manager that was somewhat less than a gentleman. This is an expertly edited and remarkable film that is still unfinished due to lack of funds and we can only hope that Vicki finds the money to finish it as it is a story that needs to be told simply for it's historical value. Just wish Vicki could of staid to tell war stories. They are as remarkable as this film. World famous raffle was up next and we thank the generous folks who gave us the following. $250.00 gift certificate -Tiffen Filters Final Cut Pro keyboard - Post-Op Video Stealth Serial port - Geethree.com Slick transitions and Plugins for iMovie - geethree.com ShuttlePro jog shuttle device - Runway Promax FCP Keyboard - Promax Calculators - promax Secrets of Final Cut Pro 2.0 CD - DV Creators Final Draft and Final Draft AV- Final Draft T-shirts- Promax t-shirts - Creative Cow A loud and late night and a really good time. Thanks to Promax for footing the bill, Runway for feeding us, Chris Coe and Doug Lindeman and Ken Stone for handling tickets and Dan Brockett for Taping the event. See ya next month on June 27 where we try to get it right once again.