———— 18 October 2008 ————
Here’s the all-in-one video tutorial showing you how to cut, color, and compress 1080p video captured with Canon’s upcoming 5D Mark II Digital SLR with three Final Cut Studio 2 applications: Final Cut Pro, Color, and Compressor. I recommend clicking thru for the hd version to better see the application interfaces.
In this episode I walk through the steps to edit your footage in Final Cut Pro, perform a broadcast safe grade in Color, and then make a web compression for upload to YouTube and Vimeo using Compressor.
I work directly with the source H.264 video Vincent Laforet made available for download (no H.264 -> Apple ProRes 422 transcode this time around). I also discuss some system specs and rant about High Dynamic Range video. A quick tag surf lead me to this post that has an example of HDR video captured by something called the HDRC® MDC04 CL camera system.
What’s High Dynamic Range (HDR), you ask? Check out yet another Chad Richard HDR timelapse (click thru for the full HD effect):
Mr. Richard has done a lot of heavy lifting to convert a series of HDR stills into 1080p video (and then compress for Vimeo, of course). Check out his tutorial for this process here.
We’re at the forefront of a paradigm shift where digital photography and high definition video are converging. Check out Romy Ocon’s 5dmkii bird photography, err, video:
Right now is an exciting, exciting time.
proactively • sitting in a front row seat • peter
———— 21 May 2008 ————
Found this nugget of awesomeness over at Roxio’s support forum:
Apple Compressor
File Extension: m2v
Video Encoder
Format: M2V
Width: 1920
Height: 1080
Pixel aspect ratio: square
Crop: None
Frame rate: 29.97
Frame Controls:
Retiming: Nearest Frame
Resize Filter: Linear Filter
Deinterlace Filter: Line Averaging
Adaptive Details: On
Antialias: 0
Detail Level: 0
Field Output: Same as Source
Aspect ratio: 16:9
Field dominance: Top first
Average data rate: 21.1 (Mbps)
1 Pass VBR enabled
Maximum data rate: 25 (Mbps)
High quality
Best motion estimation
Closed GOP Size: 15, Structure: IBBP
<<Note from TominIowa>>
For Final Cut and Compressor users, please make sure to,
In Final Cut changed the
“Sequence Setting”,
“Starting TimeCode”
to 00:00:00;00 instead of the default value of 01:00:00;00.
If you don’t, chapter markers may not work.
Good to have some documentation, but don’t have the hardware to try it out yet.
proactively • pete
———— 9 April 2008 ————
Just stumbled across Editing Organazized and found this enlightening post:
To make YouTube content work on non Flash-based devices (AppleTV, iPhone), recent videos are available in higher-quality, non Flash versions.
To view higher quality MP4 (H.264) versions of videos, add ‘&fmt=18′ to the end of the address.
So here’s a comparison test embed of Jose Gonzalez posted with the Compressor 3 iPhone setting:
Default
with the additional code &fmt=18
Credits:
Jon Salvia ……………….. Camera Producer
Salvatore Salvia ……….. Camera
Peter Salvia ……………… Cuts Color Compression
Quoting Rory’s immediate, professional, knee jerk opinion:
Hey, I think the top one looks better. No wait, yeah, I can see the difference. But not much.
Thanks for the blog cameo Mr. Sheridan. And thanks Editing Organazized for the awesome and informative post.
proactively • peter
———— 2 April 2008 ————
Sorry for the bloggery drop off, went on a mini-vacation and also an edit suite rebuild (which is ongoing). Got a 6500k light for the new edit suite which looks amazing. Also got the new Dell 2408WFP in to replace the old 23″ Dell CRT. So now the monitor setup is awesome and I have a lot more workspace for the laptop and such. I’ll post pics of the new setup once it’s. well, set up.
Came across a bunch of useful Compressor & Qmaster bookmarks I thought I’d share. Thanks to Ivy for the trouble shooting assist last week:
Compressor Troubleshooting Basics
Exporting from FCP using Virtual Clusters
Warwick Teale’s Virtual Cluster
Virtual Cluster Setup Walkthru
These bookmarks represent the beginnings of a new Washington, DC based user group brain dump. We’re working out the name but look for a new wordpress blog to launch soon. Then I can have a pro app nerdery blog and keep this blog focused on cool stuff like multiclip editing for live music productions, Color workflows for grading FCP projects, and hands on reviews of my new Matrox MXO.
Ok, maybe that’s a bit of nerdery too. But it’s cool nerdery.
proactively • peter
———— 15 March 2008 ————
Saw posts on the FCP-L where users running Mac OS 10.4.11 and installing YouTube’s Mulit-Upload Tool are experiencing the same difficulties I did. Apparently there can be problems installing with Safari.
Users who run Firefox and Mac OS 10.4.11 seem to be free and clear of upload freezes.
proactively • peter
———— 10 March 2008 ————
Ok, so my internet connection is really slow (thank you Comcast!) and the Jose Gonzalez DV NTSC anamorphic quicktime, weighing in at 771.6 mb, still hasn’t uploaded. So in the meantime I’ve updated the blog to include a new page with a copy of my resume for your entertainment. Also, I’ve updated the blog title to pro•active•ly.
Why the suffix? It’s an ode to my English major roots. Think of that extra -ly as a metaphor for the extra tidbits of info I might tack on to a rather mundane Compressor explanation, or the extra tangent that leads to a link to the Videospace widget.
Speaking of the Videospace widget, it made me realize that I could derive the precise amount of DV NTSC and HDV 1080i material that would fit in the 1024mb window for YouTube:
DV NTSC
HDV 1080i
So boys and girls, it looks like we can upload longer videos using HDV quicktimes! Makes me feel a bit silly that I down-converted the Jose Gonzalez piece from a 1440×1080 ProRes 422 timeline to DV NTSC for upload to YouTube. Ends up I could have had Color render my media as HDV instead of ProRes 422 and then simply exported a self contained quicktime movie to upload directly to YouTube.
Of course, it remains to be seen which quicktime would result in a better YouTube compression. Or if uploading the HDV quicktime might result in the coveted Apple TV “HQ” tag for high quality movies. Sounds like a test is in order. And my first upload still isn’t done…
proactively • peter
———— 10 March 2008 ————
Just saw a post on the FCP-L that YouTube has mad its Multi Video Upload tool available for mac users. Here’s the link for the installer. From YouTube’s website:
Have a bunch of videos to upload at one time? We want to make this easier for you!
- Upload multiple files at once
- Small install required
- Each uploaded video is limited to 10 min and 1 GB
The YouTube Uploader is a small piece of software which will allow you to upload multiple videos without having to use the standard upload form.
Glad YouTube finally made this available for us Apple folks. According to Digital Heaven’s Videospace widget 5 minutes of DV NTSC should come in right at the 1024mb file size limit:
No longer do you need to upload an intermediary compression for youtube to recompress and make your movie look like crap. Now, you can upload an anamorphic DV NTSC quicktime file and let youtube create its compression directly from source media. I’ll post results from uploading Jose Gonzalez later tonite…
proactively • peter
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