This is part two of our article on effectively compressing video for the web and multimedia. Be sure to read part one if you haven’t done so.

Need to get your video delivered to your audience? Then there’s probably going to be some compression involved. Don’t let hardware or software get in your way. Let’s take a common sense approach to getting your video out there.

Pick Your Power

There are tons of compression tools out there, but the pro apps offer important features like batch processing, multiple architecture support, and customizable presets. The five most popular options are:

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Join Apple Certified Trainer Mason Dixon as he shows you how to adjust your text's layout and work with LiveType's LiveFonts in Motion.



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This is part two of our article on effectively compressing video for the web and multimedia. Be sure to read part one if you haven’t done so.

1.) De-interlace your video: Most video files are interlaced, which means that half of one image is blended with half of the next. On a Television this produces smoother motion, on a computer it produces junk.

2.) Lower your audio standards: Most users are listening to computer audio on tiny speakers. Cutting your sample rate to 22 or 11 kHz and the sample size to 8-bit will often produce unnoticeable audio changes but huge space saving.

3.) Shrink the window: While you don’t need to make video postage stamps sized. But reducing the window to half size creates a file that is 25% the file size of the original. That’s a BIG savings in space.

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bbDEMUX – Free

http://sourceforge.net/projects/macbbdemux

I stumbled across this great piece of freeware when stuck with an editing problem. My client had some MPEG-1 files they wanted to edit together for their website. While I was able to import them into FCPand set the timeline to 320X240, I couldn’t get the audio to import. Turns out with MPEG-1 files, the audio and video are merged into one track (muxed). This great little app does nothing more then split them apart, but that’s all that was needed and its free!

Successfully getting a video file delivered to your audience usually means it will be compressed (heck it’s often compressed just so we can work with it in the first place). Making the video file available to your target audience is your goal, but the challenges of hardware, connection speed, and even operating system can affect the decisions you make. Let’s take a common sense approach to getting your video out there.

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This is one of our favorite gotchas. Recently, a client called us and was extremely frustrated; he was rather worried that somehow his tricked out Final Cut Pro system was possessed and had ruined all of his media. After calming him down a bit, he described the symptoms as really staggered and jumpy playback and it looked like the footage was really low rez even though it was high def.

After a few more questions the fix was clear. In the RT pulldown on the Timeline, settings for Playback Video Quality and Playback Frame Rate were set too low and quarter respectively. No wonder he was getting ugly playback!

If you have similar symptoms, the RT menu is often one of the first places to check. While there are many combinations here, we find that setting both Playback Video Quality and Playback Frame Rate to Dynamic will offer the best balance of real-time playback and quality.



Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

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Corruption can happen a lot of places, even in Final Cut Pro:

1. Look in the Autosave Vault. Before panicking, simply try going back a few versions. Do a search for Autosave in the Finder. Look in the folders for a backup of your project file. Work your way backward through the recently saved copies.

2. Create a new user account. Create a new user account for testing purposes. This is a great way to see if the problem is a corrupt preferences file. Most Final Cut Pro preferences files are stored in the user’s settings. Open the System Preferences panel under the blue Apple. Click Accounts. Click on New User. Create one call test, and give it admin privileges. You can assign it a password or not. Only use this account for troubleshooting (you may want to keep it for the future).

Now, log out, and log in as the new user. Try opening Final Cut Pro. It should open with no active project files. If it opens, you’ve narrowed the problem down to bad user preferences (see next tip) or a bad project file.

3. Test the project file. Next, open the project file that was causing the problems. (If it was stored in the other user folder, you won’t have access to it. Log in as the original user, make a copy of the file, and move it to a shared location such as the media folder or the top level of your hard drive—not the desktop—that’s owned by the user.)

If it opens, you’ve confirmed it was the preferences. If it crashes, it could be bad media or renders, or something has become corrupt in the application or the OS.

4. Delete the render files. Delete all the render files. Don’t worry—you can rerender a lot faster than you can rebuild the project. To find render files, look on your media drives for the Render Files and Audio Render Files folders. Terminate them with extreme prejudice. Yes, it’s Apocalypse Now for your render files.

Try reopening the project. Success? If not, try hiding the media files from the project. Disconnect the media drive, or drop the media into another folder. If the project opens with the media offline, you’ve got a bad media file. (An alternative is to open the project file on another machine—same rules apply.)

5. Recapture the media. If you determine you have a bad file, you can either load/relink media back into the project in small groups or batch recapture the media from the original tapes. If you’re still getting tanked, send the project to a friend to see if it’ll open on their machine. This is the best way to determine if you’re having a hardware, application, or operating system issue.

6. Still broken? At this point, you may need to call your reseller or a consultant.



Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

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Recharge Your Creativity and Craft • January 28 - February 1 • Playa Del Carmen, Mexico

Now in its third year, the Editors Retreat has become an annual gathering for the post-production elite. Highly experienced editors from the worlds of film, TV and video gather to network, exchange ideas, share tips and of course, have fun!

Past keynotes and attendees have included such names as Alan Heim, Sally Menke, Stuart Bass, Chris Franklin and David Helfand as well as Apple, Adobe and Avid experts and industry power users. Attendees have included representatives from HBO, FRONTLINE, MTV, Lockheed Martin, Harpo Productions and Telemundo.

Running for 5 days and 4 nights, the Retreat offers advanced sessions on post visual and audio techniques and features valuable insight into emerging trends and technologies. An equal amount of time will be devoted to discussing the creativity, craft and business practices of successful editors.

To ensure that only the best of the best attend, participation is subject to an application and screening process. Visit www.EditorsRetreat.com for the full schedule and more details.

WATCH THIS YEAR'S VIDEO

This sounds like something from etiquette class, but this little activity can save hours of headache throughout your system. In the Utilities folder in the Applications folder, there’s an application called Disk Utility. Under the First Aid tab there’s a button to repair permissions (Repair Disk Permissions). Select your drives and let it rip. You should run it a couple of times. It’s amazing how so many of those little quirky problems will go away.



Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

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Join Apple Certified Trainer Richard Harrington as he shows you how to best customize Final Cut Pro's interface to make color correction a breeze.



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Learn how to use the Shape Tools to create dynamic motion graphics elements. This tutorial was recorded as part of a session at the 2007 NY Post Production Conference (www.nypostconference.com).

I was over at YouTube posting a new tutorial.... came across a great clip that mixes multiple animation styles… this is VERY cool.  It’s nice to hear the man so off-the-cuff… yet wise.
“In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.”
Learn more about it here (and yes… I missed this one somehow).

Well... color me surprised.... my new book on Aperture Hit #1 on Amazon across several categories.



I’m not sure about the Digital Music category... but it also took top spot as the best selling Mac book as well.
You can check the book out here... if you’ve gotten the book and enjoyed it, can you please post a review as well.

Thanks!

What would happen if you locked Bill Gates and Steve Jobs in the same apartment (like Big Brother)? Well you get the risque comic strip – The Silicon Apartment (PG-13). The strip is really quite good and skewers both sides.

Things can and do go wrong. A simple reset to your system is often the best way to “cure” software problems. Don’t just click Restart, however; let the system fully reset itself by shutting down. As a favorite engineer used to tell me, “Shut down, count to 20, restart—if there’s still a problem, then call me.”



Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

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