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bassguitarhero
Feb 29, 2008

Question about an editing reel: Do you edit the scenes in addition, or is it just clips from completed projects? I've done a bunch of short news segments and commercials, I don't have the original footage but I can get the completed videos from their websites, so would it be best just to stick some chunks from these together and title them? I figure it's about drat time I actually made a reel, I just never thought about how an editing reel would work.

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Das MicroKorg
Sep 18, 2005

Vintage Analog Synthesizer
From what I've seen on YouTube and Vimeo, most editing reels cut all the footage together into a more or less breathtaking collage of images, set to a more or less pulse-driving beat. I would try to create/edit something new with all your footage and maybe add some decent looking effects if that's you thing.

mojo1701a
Oct 9, 2008

Oh, yeah. Loud and clear. Emphasis on LOUD!
~ David Lee Roth

bassguitarhero posted:

Question about an editing reel: Do you edit the scenes in addition, or is it just clips from completed projects? I've done a bunch of short news segments and commercials, I don't have the original footage but I can get the completed videos from their websites, so would it be best just to stick some chunks from these together and title them? I figure it's about drat time I actually made a reel, I just never thought about how an editing reel would work.

Here's mine for reference: http://www.vimeo.com/18435126

If this is for editing, then I would try to show a few minutes' worth of scenes that you cut that try to demonstrate your best work. You don't have to do it like I did, but for an editor's reel, it's a different beast than a cinematographer's or a gaffer's reel.

bassguitarhero
Feb 29, 2008

Yeah I was looking at yours earlier for reference, which was sort of what prompted my question.

Like, if I'm re-editing these scenes, then the reel itself becomes about the editing, not about the work I've done. Whereas if I put in chunks of things I've edited, then it would keep the feel of what I've actually delivered as an editor.

For a cinematographer's reel I'd definitely rearrange the shots (I'm actually thinking of making 3 reels, one for editing, one for DP, one for FX), but that was sort of my issue about re-editing scenes for an editing reel, since they'd no longer be what I delivered to client. I hope that makes sense.

Kolchak
May 3, 2006

If I don't tell this story now, I don't think I ever will.
It depends on what you're looking to do, I think. I work mostly in television, so when I'm looking at editors' reels I'm looking for the ability to tell a story, to convey the geography of the scene, etc. My eyes usually glaze over when I'm sent another 3-minute collection of random footage and Video Copilot tutorials cut to "Paper Planes," because all it tells me is that you can sync your cuts to an audio waveform. I'd much prefer to see a few scenes from stuff you've cut.

That said, if you're looking to cut music videos or even commercials, then the montage might be the way to go, I dunno. Like I say I'm speaking from a TV perspective, which I imagine would cross over into film as well.

Man_of_Teflon
Aug 15, 2003

Quick question as I'm a complete scrub with aftereffects, but this looks like the thread to ask in:

I've got a shot in aftereffects where a regular tracker was too jittery to stabilize text over some DSLR footage, so I used mocha and it seemed to work fine (the test render in aftereffects looked great).

However, when I render the premiere project that it's part of, the clip looks terrible and jittery again. The premiere project does indeed have the updated AE comp.

What the hell is going on here? For now my workaround is just render in AE and throw that clip into premiere which is kinda wonky.

edit: I'm guessing it has something to do with a tracking comp being used inside the AE comp...?

Man_of_Teflon fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Feb 6, 2011

bassguitarhero
Feb 29, 2008

Kolchak posted:

It depends on what you're looking to do, I think. I work mostly in television, so when I'm looking at editors' reels I'm looking for the ability to tell a story, to convey the geography of the scene, etc. My eyes usually glaze over when I'm sent another 3-minute collection of random footage and Video Copilot tutorials cut to "Paper Planes," because all it tells me is that you can sync your cuts to an audio waveform. I'd much prefer to see a few scenes from stuff you've cut.

That said, if you're looking to cut music videos or even commercials, then the montage might be the way to go, I dunno. Like I say I'm speaking from a TV perspective, which I imagine would cross over into film as well.

Right now I'm looking at a few clips from some pieces:

1) a piece from a promotional video/commercial I did for a video game system, going up on their facebook acct (waiting on approval for the edit itself, they like the music, just trying to figure out how to pay for it). I was gonna take about the first 20 seconds of this and then cut to the outro 10 sec.

2) a piece from a news video i cut for a CBSi affiliate, again intro up to the beginning of the interview, then cut to outro and out

3) a piece from a music video i cut that was made from a live performance i put together for the SF Girls' Chorus. We set up 3 video screens behind the girls while they sang, and then projected this video piece. We filmed the event, then I used after effects to lay in the video in post over the original (faint) video screens, then cut between angles of the event and a one-screen version of the video.

4) a bit from a doc trailer i just finished cutting.

so altogether, about 30 seconds from each video, essentially a couple of 10-20 second sections so I could preserve the feel of the edit I turned in to client. I don't have any music videos or narrative pieces at this point, so I'm not going for anything super-flashy as I am just competency at a range of styles from quick news & commercial to slower-paced performance and documentary. Mostly just waiting on this bloody promo piece to get the OK.

bassguitarhero
Feb 29, 2008

Man_of_Teflon posted:

Quick question as I'm a complete scrub with aftereffects, but this looks like the thread to ask in:

I've got a shot in aftereffects where a regular tracker was too jittery to stabilize text over some DSLR footage, so I used mocha and it seemed to work fine (the test render in aftereffects looked great).

However, when I render the premiere project that it's part of, the clip looks terrible and jittery again. The premiere project does indeed have the updated AE comp.

What the hell is going on here? For now my workaround is just render in AE and throw that clip into premiere which is kinda wonky.

edit: I'm guessing it has something to do with a tracking comp being used inside the AE comp...?

I believe that the issue is the tracking, since AE has to run the tracking over the comp in the program, and then would base the actual stabilisation off a null object that it's following in the comp, so premiere may not be doing that. i'm not sure on that one, i went to a CS5 roadshow and I *thought* that that was working in an after effects->premiere roundabout, but without using Premiere I could see why it wouldn't work.

butterypancakes
Aug 19, 2006

mmm pancakes

Man_of_Teflon posted:

Quick question as I'm a complete scrub with aftereffects, but this looks like the thread to ask in:

I've got a shot in aftereffects where a regular tracker was too jittery to stabilize text over some DSLR footage, so I used mocha and it seemed to work fine (the test render in aftereffects looked great).

However, when I render the premiere project that it's part of, the clip looks terrible and jittery again. The premiere project does indeed have the updated AE comp.

What the hell is going on here? For now my workaround is just render in AE and throw that clip into premiere which is kinda wonky.

edit: I'm guessing it has something to do with a tracking comp being used inside the AE comp...?

Are you just dropping the AE comp in Premeire? I see no reason not to just render out the comp. DNxHD is a great choice for this.

Das MicroKorg
Sep 18, 2005

Vintage Analog Synthesizer
A friend of mine asked me why the audio he exported from a Final Cut Pro sequence (export as AIFF), is a couple of frames shorter when imported back into the timeline. Does anyone know of this problem and how to fix it?

Kolchak
May 3, 2006

If I don't tell this story now, I don't think I ever will.
That pretty much always happens to me whenever I get an approval mix back from the audio house and I drop it into my timeline. Everything will still be in perfect sync, but the last frame or so is gone. This usually isn't an issue for me as the last couple frames of my show are silent (they're just the company logo), so I've never really bothered with it. Is your friend missing any audio there? If it's not crucial I wouldn't worry about it.

Das MicroKorg
Sep 18, 2005

Vintage Analog Synthesizer
He said all audio is there, but since it's shorter by a couple of frames, it's a little out of sync. I'll test this later myself. After googling it, it seems to be a common issue.

butterypancakes
Aug 19, 2006

mmm pancakes
It's happened to me, but it's never caused a sync issue. Most likely it's a drop/non-drop issue. So no info is missing, it's just counted differently. Export OMF from now on.

Das MicroKorg
Sep 18, 2005

Vintage Analog Synthesizer

butterypancakes posted:

Export OMF from now on.
That's what we do at work, which I guess is why I hadn't heard of the audio export issue before. Then again, I'm not much of a sound guy at all.

thunderspanks
Nov 5, 2003

crucify this


FLX posted:

That's what we do at work, which I guess is why I hadn't heard of the audio export issue before. Then again, I'm not much of a sound guy at all.

Coming from a sound guy: go OMF or go home.

Social Dissonance
Nov 25, 2002

hey guys lets ride
Hopefully this is an appropriate place to ask this. For you mostly "amateur" video makers, how much of an improvement in your workflow time is there from moving from Sony Vegas/Audacity to OS X and iMovie or Final Cut Express/Pro?

I feel like the way I put together my stuff now is sufficient, but it always feels so cobbled together. I'd like to have access to everything under one program, with lossless editing on the timeline so I can easily put things back to the way they are. The way I have to edit now feels like I just take a cleaver to everything. Price is the only real issue, but I'd be willing to spend the $800 for the premium of a macbook pro if it meant I'd have a much easier time of things.

Rupert Buttermilk
Apr 15, 2007

🚣RowboatMan: ❄️Freezing time🕰️ is an old P.I. 🥧trick...

thunderspanks posted:

Coming from a sound guy: go OMF or go home.

A-loving-men. What version of Vegas is current? At work, I'm running 8.0, and there's no support for OMF, which blows. I hope they've fixed that.

Das MicroKorg
Sep 18, 2005

Vintage Analog Synthesizer

Social Dissonance posted:

Hopefully this is an appropriate place to ask this. For you mostly "amateur" video makers, how much of an improvement in your workflow time is there from moving from Sony Vegas/Audacity to OS X and iMovie or Final Cut Express/Pro?

I've never worked with Vegas, but from what I've heard form other editors, it is pretty much on par with FCP and Adobe Premiere. The programs just handle a little differently and have their own strengths and weaknesses. If you've already got a working setup for your videos with Vegas, I'd first see if you can learn to use it "better", before spending money on another system that you don't really know.

bassguitarhero
Feb 29, 2008

If your current setup is working fine, then there's not really a need to change, since they all are different ways of creating the same product. But if you're trying to work with a bunch of other people, who may be using FCP, then that might be worth looking into as an investment. For example, my buddy and I shot a music video last weekend, created matching hard drives, and since we're both editing on FCP6 then we only have to send the project file back & forth instead of the actual footage.

Everybody I work with works in FCP, so there's an advantage to having it for that reason. That said, if you're not looking for that extended collaboration/networking and your current setup is giving you what you want, then there's no need to change.

bassguitarhero
Feb 29, 2008

Anybody have some tips on getting better-looking DVDs for play on computers? I got a bunch of spots filmed in 1080 on a 5D, they look good in QuickTime, then I use compressor and throw on DVD best quality, looks fine on tv but interlaces a good deal on computer monitors. I've always had this problem but it seems especially pronounced with the 5D 1080 footage. Tried deinterlacing it when I ran it thru compressor, but saw no difference. I assume they'll screen it on a tv but if there's something to try so I don't get that, I'd like to hear about it.

I can't remember the last time I watched a DVD on a computer so I've no idea if that's just a DVD/computer screen issue

TheBigBad
Feb 28, 2004

Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations and ages it is the rule.
Interlaced or rolling shutter?

bassguitarhero
Feb 29, 2008

Interlacing. The cameras are mostly still but one of the spots for example is a dude jumping up and down with champagne bottle spewing champagne everywhere out of the glass so you can see the lines on the computer. Fine on a tv

butterypancakes
Aug 19, 2006

mmm pancakes
Your DVD player software isn't de-interlacing on playback, of course you'll see jagged edges. If your TV is a CRT it's interlaced so you won't see any problems, if it's anything else it will always de-interlace. Your DVDs are probably just fine. If there was a field order issue or real tearing you'd most likely see it on the TV.

Das MicroKorg
Sep 18, 2005

Vintage Analog Synthesizer
Do you see interlacing lines in your editing application as well? Maybe your 1080 footage was interpreted incorrectly and the lines are flipped now. Scaling this footage would make the images al lot worse then.

The DVD player app on MAc OS has a de-interlacing option for regular (i.e. correctly interlaced) DVDs by the way.

bassguitarhero
Feb 29, 2008

I can see lines in final cut pro, but I don't see them in QuickTime. I was given the spots already edited and exported to pro-res 422 but I can re-export if necessary. I've never run into problems like this before

Edit: I put it into a new timeline and changed field dominance to upper, the lines went away. Guess I should re-do all of them, ugh, this guy

bassguitarhero fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Mar 15, 2011

Das MicroKorg
Sep 18, 2005

Vintage Analog Synthesizer
I (or rather a client :D ) had this exact problem recently. In Final Cut you have to set "upper" for progressive footage.

Edit: V V V Oh okay, sorry. When I import footage from a Canon DSLR, FCP recognizes it as "upper", which displays fine (as you said). Also, in MPEG Streamclip, there is only an option for "upper" or "lower". Guess I mixed that up.

Das MicroKorg fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Mar 16, 2011

butterypancakes
Aug 19, 2006

mmm pancakes
Page 688 of FCP's manual disagrees with you. Progressive material should be set to none, in my experience it doesn't matter if you're on a progressive timeline.

EDIT: That could be part of OP's problem. Make sure your sequence is set to "none". If it's 29.97 then Compressor will create fields, if it's 24 you can just make a progressive DVD and let the player do a soft 3:2 on TVs.

butterypancakes fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Mar 16, 2011

bassguitarhero
Feb 29, 2008

I only had the finished spots, the completed, exported files, so I've no idea what the original timelines were like. Essentially I just was called in to build a DVD of the spots while this guy was at SXSW. I was wrong about checking it on a TV, too, I thought one of the people I handed it off to did, but I'm not sure.

Either way, it looked fine in quicktime, was interlaced in final cut until i switched field dominance to upper, then exported back into dvd studio pro which still had some interlacing but, again, that's always the case, so, fingers crossed.

Not much more I could have done overall, I walked into that job completely blind.

Mike Works
Feb 26, 2003
Hey dudes, this is a completely beginner newbie question here, but I have recorded and am in the process of editing a video I shot on an iPhone 4 in high def. The video is for a project for a university film class. I've been editing the whole thing in Windows Movie Maker that came with Windows 7.

The problem I'm having is that the movie I'm making is going to be spliced in with movie footage shot in (4:3). This is making the movie look really rough, since scenes will just skip from having bars on the side (movie footage) to no bars (my footage).

So, my question is, is there any way to easily put black bars on the left and right of my high def footage to give it a sense of symmetry? Or perhaps on just the entire movie once I've finished editing it?

Sorry if this is a dumb question; I just have next to no clue what I'm doing. Cheers.

Cubemario
Apr 3, 2009
My suggestion is to pick a movie that's not shot in 4:3, since adding in black bars on 16:9 is going to look really bad and won't give a sense of symmetry at all. Another solution would be getting a version of that movie in proper 16:9 if it's available. Yet another thing you could do is re-encode your iphone footage to 4:3, but it'll look bad if the movie footage is full screen.

I'm going to assume since you're in a film class, you should have access to something better than WMM. Your first mistake is using that in the first place. I suggest anything else, like Premiere Pro or Final Cut which either/both should be available. If you're wondering why WMM is terrible, it's because it's prone to crashing often and is very limited in its functionality.

I'm curious why you used your iphone for footage and not an actual camera of some sort, your class should give you access to some kind of equipment..right? I'm asking because anything shot in mobile video looks terrible because the sensor is so small, among other things.

Cubemario fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Mar 16, 2011

Das MicroKorg
Sep 18, 2005

Vintage Analog Synthesizer

Mike Works posted:

Movie Maker ...

Yeah, Movie Maker won't get you far here I think. There are only two ways to make it look consistent. Either you put the 4:3 clips in a 16:9 timeline and zoom in (cutting off the top and bottom of the frame) or the other way around, zooming into the 16:9 clips, cutting off their sides. Zooming in will make your footage look somewhat worse, but it's way better than using black bars.

If you can't cut off portions of the frame because there is important stuff in them (and your film is a documentary or news kind of thing), then here is a quick and dirty idea to somewhat obscure the bars: Use a 16:9 timeline and insert the 4:3 footage so that there are black bars at the side (like you did). Then behind it, put the same footage, zoom in, blur it, put some effect on it, make it slow-motion, etc.

Either way, you most probably need to get Premiere or Final Cut for any of this.

Edit: /\ /\ /\ also, what he asked.

Das MicroKorg fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Mar 16, 2011

bassguitarhero
Feb 29, 2008

What I did in one of these situations was I took the 16x9 footage in the 4x3 timeline so it was already letterboxes, then I made a big black image, jpg, in photoshop to be the same specs as the 4x3 frame, and dragged that into my project file. Then I put the black jpeg in the timeline and moved it down so it lined up with the black box underneath the 16x9 footage. Then repeated the process for the black bar above the 16x9 footage. Left those blocks on top and bottom throughout the timeline, so that way all of my 4x3 footage got covered up by the black boxes and looked like the same as my 16x9 footage.

Not the most ideal of solutions but it worked.

Das MicroKorg
Sep 18, 2005

Vintage Analog Synthesizer
I actually wouldn't recommend this black bar solution at all, because if you play it on a 16:9 screen, you will have a black box around the image. To get rid of that, your TV has to zoom into the frame, so not only will your 4:3 footage be upscaled, but also your original 16:9 footage, since you reduced it in size to fit the 4:3 frame. If you go the other way around, as I explained above, you only need to zoom into your 4:3 footage. If you play it on a 4:3 screen both types of footage will be reduced in size, probably hiding the 4:3 upscaling artifacts.

Das MicroKorg
Sep 18, 2005

Vintage Analog Synthesizer
never mind

Das MicroKorg fucked around with this message at 10:41 on Dec 20, 2012

Fiction D
Jun 14, 2010


eh
I have a question I've been surfing around the web for in hopes of finding an answer. Maybe someone on here will know. It's pretty particular.

One of my editors decided to add some of his own plugins into a sequence file for FCP. They look good, but for the purposes of exporting a rough cut so I can send it over to my sound editor, I can't export it out without first rendering the plugin clips. To make matters worse, I don't have the plugins, so that means that I can't render and export this crap unless a) I get the plugins or b) He does it. He's not very good with follow-through, so I have no idea where the hell he is and I really need to export this sometime soon.

Plain and simple, is there any way to remove plugins from clips in a sequence? I'm fairly new to fcp so sorry if this is a stupid question.

bassguitarhero
Feb 29, 2008

Depending on the plugins, they'll either be laid out on top of the clips directly, just like cross dissolves, or they'll be added to a bit of slug sitting on top of the clips (some BorisFX plugins do this). If you find the spot where the plugin is working you shouldn't have a problem finding it.

Sometimes when I'm editing, especially in reels, I wind up nesting sequences to keep things a little more clean, so if you don't find the plugin directly, maybe the sequence is nested, in which case you could double click on the sequence and see if that opens up another one.

Or, if you know where the effect is happening, you should be able to right click/ctrl+click on the clip and open in viewer, then go to your filters and tab and look for it in there.

HopWallace
Sep 8, 2004

free balloon day

Fiction D posted:

I have a question I've been surfing around the web for in hopes of finding an answer. Maybe someone on here will know. It's pretty particular.

One of my editors decided to add some of his own plugins into a sequence file for FCP. They look good, but for the purposes of exporting a rough cut so I can send it over to my sound editor, I can't export it out without first rendering the plugin clips. To make matters worse, I don't have the plugins, so that means that I can't render and export this crap unless a) I get the plugins or b) He does it. He's not very good with follow-through, so I have no idea where the hell he is and I really need to export this sometime soon.

Plain and simple, is there any way to remove plugins from clips in a sequence? I'm fairly new to fcp so sorry if this is a stupid question.

Is it listed as a filter when you open the clip in the viewer? If so, just remove the filter. You'll of course lose the effect, but it sounds like you aren't seeing it anyways as it is.

Edit: Ahh, beaten, but yeah that should take care of the problem.

Fiction D
Jun 14, 2010


eh

bassguitarhero posted:

Depending on the plugins, they'll either be laid out on top of the clips directly, just like cross dissolves, or they'll be added to a bit of slug sitting on top of the clips (some BorisFX plugins do this). If you find the spot where the plugin is working you shouldn't have a problem finding it.

Sometimes when I'm editing, especially in reels, I wind up nesting sequences to keep things a little more clean, so if you don't find the plugin directly, maybe the sequence is nested, in which case you could double click on the sequence and see if that opens up another one.

Or, if you know where the effect is happening, you should be able to right click/ctrl+click on the clip and open in viewer, then go to your filters and tab and look for it in there.

Sounds good. I don't have a mac personally, so I'll have to take my external hd with the footage into work tomorrow and try it out. I wonder how long 19 mins of footage will take to export from a hard drive. :(

Mozzie
Oct 26, 2007
Red sucks and it's post work-flow sucks and I hate it, Why can't it be more like Alexa? I never appreciated how much better of a system Alexa is until I offered to help post some red footage all the way to final.

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butterypancakes
Aug 19, 2006

mmm pancakes
REDCODE demands a thought out and established workflow. It gets better, like in a lot of things don't expect your first try to be perfect.

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