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Re: OT: Do speakers just blow out on their own? - 13 years ago
@Joe - Sorry about missing the OT, I'm a little groggy in the mornings. I shut everything off last night and hoped that magical elves would fix everything overnight. Alas... Good thought on checking it with another source. The only other thing I have in house that outputs to 1/4" is my Line 6 Pod & electric guitar. I can now say that my skills on "Suzie Q" have not diminishby jwilliam - Café LA
OT: Do speakers just blow out on their own? - 13 years ago
The title says it all... do speakers sometimes just blow out on their own? Yesterday, I took a dinner break after working most of the day. Quit FCP, left nothing playing. I came back, and my left speaker - an M-Audio BX5a - is buzzing. The power surge protector wasn't tripped. It's not the cable. It's not coming from the board or my system. Nothing new has been introduced electronically inby jwilliam - Café LA
OT (but perhaps not) - templates for web based demo reels? - 13 years ago
First, apologies if this is in the wrong forum, but this seems like a reasonable appropriate off-topic thread. I need to build a better online demo reel, and I have neither the time, energy, or patience to learn enough HTML & Flash coding to build one from scratch. I can fumble through basic HTML, but that isn't going to cut it anymore. Does anyone have any experience using customizableby jwilliam - Compressor - Media Compression and Conversion
Re: [OT] Dealing with deadbeat clients/getting paid - 14 years ago
Yes, a compendium of legal advice = bad idea. But jimt is on to something that is worth exploring... instead of discussing the language of contracts, a primer or a FAQ for being a freelancer wouldn't be a bad idea. There's a big difference between being an individual brought in for a few days or weeks to work at a company, and being the company and bringing in work from clients. The laws dby jwilliam - Café LA
Re: [OT] Dealing with deadbeat clients/getting paid - 14 years ago
Shane - What's funny is that 20 minutes after my post, it hit me to ask my accountant for a recommendation! I know this company owes a couple of people bigger sums of money than I'm owed, too... yet last I heard they were still drowning in work. How you can't pay bills when your job board is filled with jobs takes a special kind of incompetence and mismanagement, but apparently I'm seeing iby jwilliam - Café LA
Re: [OT] Dealing with deadbeat clients/getting paid - 14 years ago
Interesting stories, thanks for sharing. Good advice, JimT. I've already decided to lawyer up, and at this point was just making sure there wasn't some alternative approach to collecting that I'd overlooked. Got any advice for finding/hiring a lawyer? What to ask/expect? Are there lawyers who specialize in collecting bad debts, or will any entertainment-savvy lawyer be up to the task? I'by jwilliam - Café LA
[OT] Dealing with deadbeat clients/getting paid - 14 years ago
Apologies if this is the wrong forum, but since all the work in question was done on an FCP system (OS X, 10.4.11, FCP 6.0.3, for the record), I figured this would be a good place to start. If there's a more appropriate forum, please let me know. However, since this might not be an uncommon problem, and in my case, since all the work was done in Los Angeles, I'm hoping that the brain trust herby jwilliam - Café LA
Re: Upgrading to Leopard? - 14 years ago
Alright... the FX plug in thing just convinced me, as that's my next FCP related purchase. Thanks for the thoughts, all, and expect some wacked-out "How do I fix this" questions come Wednesday or Thursday, ha ha ha! Jeffby jwilliam - Café LA
Re: Upgrading to Leopard? - 14 years ago
Why do you prefer Leopard? Does better = faster? More stable? Cooler features? I'm leaning towards upgrading because I like the time machine backup function, but beyond that, I'm still in the dark as to what else Leopard offers.by jwilliam - Café LA
Upgrading to Leopard? - 14 years ago
I'm happily running FCP Studio 2 on a Mac Pro, dual-core 2.66 intel processors (I believe), with OS X 10.4.11. I purchased the system brand new a year ago, have pushed a lot of jobs through on it, with very little trouble. Almost nothing out of the ordinary in terms of bugs, problems, etc... This week, I'm finally in a lull where I don't have a live project going, or a deadline looming. If Iby jwilliam - Café LA
Using the 'time re-mapping' tool - 14 years ago
I'm playing around with the time-remapping tool, and something seems to be eluding me. It's cool, and I like using it... but something still isn't working quite right. I want to have an effect where a shot starts off in fast motion for 10-12 frames, then ramps down to normal speed. Normally, I do this by building the fast motion effect shot for 12 frames, then match cutting to the normal clby jwilliam - Café LA
Re: Need help w/Compressor issue - jobs not processing - 14 years ago
Sorry about the cryptic-ness... was under the gun & racing to get a piece out. I did my conversion Derek's way -- I just used Quicktime itself to convert my footage. The file I started with was ripped from a DVD using DVDxDV, and came in at "uncompressed 8 bit", the default settings. Then, an hour later, I learned an even more valuable lesson - that the default settings can beby jwilliam - Café LA
Need help w/Compressor issue - jobs not processing - 14 years ago
Mac Pro 10.4.11 Compressor 3.0.3 I'm sending a 35 gig file that I ripped from a DVD to compressor to convert it to DV-NTSC. When I send the job through, all the 'history' window says is "unknown time remaining" and it refuses to budge. What's going on? How can I get this conversion rolling? Is there some magic set of preferences that I can trash? I need to get this file converby jwilliam - Café LA
Re: Roundtripping titles with Motion and FCP - 14 years ago
Yep, that's how it works. Once you're back in FCP, cut the template into your timeline, and double-click it. In one of the tabs in the viewer, you'll be able to edit your text fields.by jwilliam - Motion
Re: Roundtripping titles with Motion and FCP - 14 years ago
Save your title as a template, then open that template in FCP. I usually build my lower third titles that way - I create one in Motion, then 'save as template', and then I can title everyone I need to without rendering out individual titles or any of that.by jwilliam - Motion
Re: WAY OT: "'In a world' voiceover master dies at 68 - CNN.com - 14 years ago
It's a tragic passing, and possibly leaves me with the distinction of editing the last screen appearance of a legend. He has a small role in this short film I'm editing where he plays, appropriately enough, the Lord Of All Good. Not like the pressure to do a good job wasn't on before; now I'm cutting a legend's swan song. RIPby jwilliam - Café LA
Re: SUBTITLES - again! - 14 years ago
I know it's late, but for next time, instead of burning in your subtitles, couldn't you just string them out on another timeline, then 'nest' them into your master timeline?by jwilliam - Café LA
Re: QT plays an MP4, FCP gives me errors and a white frame... What? - 14 years ago
I think you might be right with the Flip4Mac plug-in... I think I installed that a long while back. Not sure what MPEG Streamclip is - does it just convert files? In any case, that image sequence process worked out. A tedious workaround, and makes me think there's something funky/corrupt in the first couple of frames. When I build a new movie after deleting the first 5 frames of the image sby jwilliam - Café LA
Re: QT plays an MP4, FCP gives me errors and a white frame... What? - 14 years ago
Oh yeah! I got Derek Mok on the case. Next stop, solutionville! From the quicktime inspector: source: /Volumes/Lions/Aug28 Final Copy Cosby.mp4 format: AAC, Stereo (L R), 48.000 kHz AVC Coding, 320 x 240, Millions FPS: 29.97 Data size 10.98 MB data rate: 127.88 kbits/s normal size: 320x240 pixels *** Yes, Lions up there is a tribute to my long suffering NFC North hometby jwilliam - Café LA
QT plays an MP4, FCP gives me errors and a white frame... What? - 14 years ago
I just got a reference quicktime from my client, who hacked something together in iMovie or some other 'i don't know what' kind of program. The file is a 320x240 mp4, and plays just fine in quicktime. When I bring it into Final Cut, I get a "general memory/out of memory" bunch of errors, and it won't play back. When I try and export it out of quicktime and convert it to a betteby jwilliam - Café LA
Reconnect media problems... Reconnect only works on one clip at a time - 14 years ago
Hey All... Edit to bump, original post below. Long story short, I've got most of my issues settled, but I'm still having re-connect problems. When I try to re-connect a whole sequence, I see the whole list of offline clips in the top window. I locate them, select the online clip - all of which lives in the same directory, but when I select 'connect', it only re-links 1 clip out of a list of 2by jwilliam - Café LA
Re: One clip keeps crashing FCP... options? - 14 years ago
Follow-up post - I ran the trouble clip through compressor, and made it an 8 bit uncompressed quicktime, and now things seem to play fine, though I have to render every clip I put into my timeline. Any thoughts?by jwilliam - Café LA
One clip keeps crashing FCP... options? - 14 years ago
I think I have a corrupted media file, because every time I try to play it back, Final Cut abruptly closes. I'm running FCP 6.0.4, MAC OS X 10.4.11, on a Mac Pro that is usually trouble free. There's a lot of other media in the project that works fine, so at the moment, I'm pretty convinced that it's just a local problem with this clip. I don't have a source tape on this clip, so re-digitizby jwilliam - Café LA
Re: what's this left arrow move command called? - 14 years ago
Yes, I didn't even think of searching for the word 'left'. It just seemed too obvious. In my defense, I did try dragging the left arrow key to where I wanted it, but wasn't getting that to work for whatever reason. Thanks, Derek!by jwilliam - Café LA
what's this left arrow move command called? - 14 years ago
I really want to map a "step one frame back" and "step one frame forward" command to my keyboard, because my old AVID habits are hard to break. However, I can't find them in the list of keyboard buttons... What does FCP call this? I've searched that button list for "back", "frame", "previous", "move", and about 5 other things and can'by jwilliam - Café LA
FX Factory requires Leopard? - 14 years ago
I'm about to buy FX Factory Pro, when I notice that it requires Leopard. Ugh! I would really like to play around with it on the job I'm working on, but I'm still on 10.4.11 Is there a non-Leopard version available on their site that I'm overlooking? Or should I just suck it up and make the leap to Leopard? How dangerous is it to switch up OS mid-project? I don't even like to upgrade FCP midby jwilliam - Café LA
Re: Suggestions/filters for creating a 'scoreboard' look? - 14 years ago
james - That tutorial is AWESOME! Thanks for doing that! I'm still learning the power of Motion, and feeding a circle shape into the replicator is the kind of great idea I'm not sure I'd have thought of. If you're in the LA area, I owe you a beer. Thanks! Jeffby jwilliam - Café LA
Re: Smoothcam oddness - 14 years ago
Thanks, all. Adding that as a feature request is a good idea. I'll second that motion... Thank goodness for the all-night render. It wound up taking 10+ hours to render out, for what will probably be :25 seconds of screen time. Sure, I could have exported & re-imported, but where's the fun in that?by jwilliam - Café LA
Smoothcam oddness - 14 years ago
I have a lockdown shot that still floats a little. To fix it, I apply the "smooth cam" filter, which has done some lovely work for me in the past. Only this time, I apply "smooth cam" and FCP tells me it's going to take 9 hours to render. For 12 seconds of clip. Something seems off about that... The source clip is just under 1 hour. Is FCP trying to calculate smooth-cam forby jwilliam - Café LA
Re: Suggestions/filters for creating a 'scoreboard' look? - 14 years ago
I was thinking of something pretty close to that bottom pic, Joe, with the Arizona Wranglers on it. I think the dotted font might be acceptable, but if you've got a suggestion for making a better 'slide-on' effect akin to sequential bulbs lighting up as the text slides on, I'm all ears. I broke down and posted my query when my thoughts hit this point: create a matte layer of 'dots' to repliby jwilliam - Café LA
