How to combine seq. in FCP and related questions

[msf]

Warning, this is so long its rude…I’ve done this before and I'm sorry...terri, wouldn't blame if you changed your screen name and hid from me...

Background can be read when nature calls - it is merely backdrop to assist you good samaritans in helping.

Questions are at the end. Feel free and answer any one and I am grateful.

BACKGROUND
Thanks to Terri and a lot of trial and error I am at the following juncture with my first project making a home movie DVD with FCP.

PICTURES

I have 2000 scanned family slides and photos cropped, recolored, enlarged, repaired, and saved as tiff files, sorted in folders by theme using Photoshop, saved originally at 720 x 540 @ 72 dpi, and then saved as 720 x 480 @ 72 dpi. Any portrait shaped files have a border added with a background of a grayish hue (having been advised to avoid white for technical reasons and because I find black distracting) and are also finally saved as 720 x 480 x 72.

MUSIC

I have about 50 songs or clips of songs, from various sources and formats all edited with QuickTime Pro and exported to aif files @ AIFF, 48khz, 16bit, stereo, No Compression (I think), with the 'volumes' all set to max out at -12 dcb (said wrong, but you know what I mean I hope). Each song fades out and in (I had to do this manually by dragging the volumes lines – question to follow). All purchased music from Itunes store had to be burnt to a cd first.

SEQUENCES

I have approximately 20 bins, containing all relevant sequences, and imported files, named after each theme, with the appropriate assets.

About 5 have been constructed and rendered in timeline, in sync with the music, with motion effects of zooming and motion and Ken Burns-like movement, as well as the use of my default transition (with an occasional funky one) where appropriate.

No sequence is more than one song and a few clips long or 4 minutes.
There can be 50 images.
There are quite a few images with effects like motion.
Most have transitions


TITLES

I have an adequate title scene made in Livetype… (a little cumbersome for me but good enough for my purposes now).

PROJECT AND EXPORTING

The project has been saved for future use as have all the original assets. I have used FCP successfully (qualification and question to follow). I have exported individual sequences, using the third option “DVD using QuickTime compression” (not using the converter) with settings of Mpeg2, double pass, and whatever additional settings I have talked myself into believing were correct (I am doing this from memory not from my MAC but if I recall it was setting maximum bit rate at 5. something target rate at something a little less and other doodads I can’t remember and probably don’t understand (question to follow).

After producing the FCP video file (the m4v or whatever its called and the associated aif file, I use A. pack to convert the aif file to ac3 file to 2 channel stereo, 19,200 megasomethings, unchecking most boxes like self contained movie, etc…

BURNING DVD

I then use DVDpro or Toast Titanium to burn the DVD for the various small sequences. At this point, in either case, I have no knowledge on how to make a Chapter page, but I haven’t had time to give a real good look yet. I use DVD-R discs.

EQUIPMENT

I have a G4, 1.25 ram, OSX, dual processor, two 60 gig (only 60) internal drives.
HD2 has about 40 gig left right now and I have only rendered 5 sequences
I have one external drive with about 60 gig capacity (I have one other one which is USB1 but who cares) which I current use for storing music library and excess media to free up HDs on MAC.

QUESTIONS (FINALLY)

1. So far I have only made DVD’s of small sequences. Soon I will want to put it all together. Will I do this in FCP buy dragging little sequences into a new Master Sequence, render, export, etc? Is there a command to combine them all? Should I do it in one big render/export or in stages?
2. A DVD is what, 4.9, 4.7 gig? I’m told never go above 3.9 or some number shy of capacity? True?
3. Where do I see the size of my final DVD? Is the sum of the video and audio file after export, and a.Pack?
4. If it is a little large, I can change the settings and sacrifice quality for space, right? How? Where? In burning software or with FCP at lower quality.
5. I think I know that rendering all these sequences together, not only duplicates the existing sequences on my hard drive talking up space, but there are forces at work that require 2 or 3 x more space than that right? Some temporary and some permanent assuming you want to save the project. How can I calculate if I have enough hard rive for the rendering. Is it a multiple of the file itself? Terri mention 200 gig drives he has…should I just go buy them now (cuz we all know 40 gig won’t cut it) or can I skate…please note I have captured some video, and will be adding it to project later, but exclude that from this conversation for now please.
6. Can I use an external drive for rendering and or burning or do I have to replace (or add) an internal? How do you change the scratch drive, if that’s the right term.
7. I am not under any obligation thus far to fit this on one DVD, but obviously I would look to maximize my project. Should I concern myself with two sided DVD
8. Should I use markers in FCP to assist me with Chapters in DVDPro?
9. Is there a setting where the DVD would play on a PC and MAC and a DVD player? Right now PCs can’t play it. Is this where I should learn about CVD, divx, QuickTime movies and other less intensive formats?
10. Photoshop makes you calibrate colors for your monitor when installing it (I think)…if I skipped that, did it wrong, or have a crappy monitor is it possible that I am editing images that look good to me, but look like crap to the DVD and or another Mac/PC playing kit (in other words WYSINWYG (what you see is not what you get). My monitor is currently a 5 year old Sony CRT…how I can tell if my monitor is deceiving me or if I just suck at Photoshop sometimes.
11. Should I hook up a TV and/or dual monitor to the Mac? Obviously it would be convenient. What hardware do I buy for each, something internal or external to connect them?
12. Is there more than one or two audio transitions and should I use them for fade in and fade out or just use key points on the time line and do it by hand? If the answer is transitions, when I double click it and get those two stereo speakers, is there an easy way to describe how to adjust the fade in/out settings…my default is too quick.
13. If I made only one Project and wanted to keep it...what are the files I can delete without effecting my project…can I delete PAR files, auto render files, wastebaskets, temp files, Similarly if I want to keep the FCP project on an external hard drive, I guess I have to take all the original tiffs and aifs with me, and will have to reassociate them if in a different file structure.
14. Where do I find the compression setting of ‘none’ when exporting a file from QuickTime (from Mp4 to aif, for example)?
15. A Red line in FCP timeline means not rendered, a space means you have a blank, what is yellow and what are the different hues that I sometimes see like blue, light blue or greenish? Warnings?


Well, that's a lot of questions....I hope I don't get banned when I actully edit video and not justy music and pictures. Thanks for any help.

[Case]

2. A DVD is what, 4.9, 4.7 gig? I’m told never go above 3.9 or some number shy of capacity? True?
3. Where do I see the size of my final DVD? Is the sum of the video and audio file after export, and a.Pack?
4. If it is a little large, I can change the settings and sacrifice quality for space, right? How? Where? In burning software or with FCP at lower quality.

DVDs list as 4.7 GB, but that's marketing speak: 4,700,000,000 bytes, that is only 4.37 real GB. Staying under 4.30 GB is usually save practice.
If you make a disc image, you can see the size of the file in the Finder.
If it's a little bit too large, then it would be faster to requantize with a DVD9>DVD5 utility, compared to editing and encoding again.

7. I am not under any obligation thus far to fit this on one DVD, but obviously I would look to maximize my project. Should I concern myself with two sided DVD

If you think the price of dual layer media is worth it, then go for it and fill up those 8 GBs.

9. Is there a setting where the DVD would play on a PC and MAC and a DVD player? Right now PCs can’t play it. Is this where I should learn about CVD, divx, QuickTime movies and other less intensive formats?

A well authored DVD should play regardless. Do you know why the PC doesn't play your disc? Does it play other DVDs? Win XP doesn't come with a DVD Player, afaik, although one is often bundled with a new comp.

10. Photoshop makes you calibrate colors for your monitor when installing it (I think)…if I skipped that, did it wrong, or have a crappy monitor is it possible that I am editing images that look good to me, but look like crap to the DVD and or another Mac/PC playing kit (in other words WYSINWYG (what you see is not what you get). My monitor is currently a 5 year old Sony CRT…how I can tell if my monitor is deceiving me or if I just suck at Photoshop sometimes.

System Preferences > Display > Color has a calibrate function, which should take care of the basics.

11. Should I hook up a TV and/or dual monitor to the Mac? Obviously it would be convenient. What hardware do I buy for each, something internal or external to connect them?

You'll need a videocard (internal) per monitor, usually.

14. Where do I find the compression setting of ‘none’ when exporting a file from QuickTime (from Mp4 to aif, for example)?

Export > Sound to AIFF > Options > Linear PCM.

[TK5005]

Any portrait shaped files have a border added with a background of a grayish hue (having been advised to avoid white for technical reasons and because I find black distracting) and are also finally saved as 720 x 480 x 72.

To save time in the future, you can always add a background in FCP instead of doing it to each photo in photoshop.

1. So far I have only made DVD’s of small sequences. Soon I will want to put it all together. Will I do this in FCP buy dragging little sequences into a new Master Sequence, render, export, etc? Is there a command to combine them all? Should I do it in one big render/export or in stages?

If you create a new sequence, all you have to do is drag each sequence into the new one. You might want to make sure that everything is edited first because render times will start going up.

2. A DVD is what, 4.9, 4.7 gig? I’m told never go above 3.9 or some number shy of capacity? True?

You can go a little above 4.3, just make sure your bitrate for your movies stays under 10.08Mbps, thats including video and audio.

3. Where do I see the size of my final DVD? Is the sum of the video and audio file after export, and a.Pack?

In DVD Studio Pro, all of your total assets will be added into the final DVD size. It is usually good practice to load all of your assets into DVDPRo before you start to author. that way you can make sure everything fits. You should see a total size in the upper right corner of the program.

4. If it is a little large, I can change the settings and sacrifice quality for space, right? How? Where? In burning software or with FCP at lower quality.

I would go with compressor. Compressor ships with FCP and is a great tool for making things fit onto DVD and many other formats. This is where you can also Bit budget your files.

5. I think I know that rendering all these sequences together, not only duplicates the existing sequences on my hard drive talking up space, but there are forces at work that require 2 or 3 x more space than that right? Some temporary and some permanent assuming you want to save the project. How can I calculate if I have enough hard rive for the rendering. Is it a multiple of the file itself? Terri mention 200 gig drives he has…should I just go buy them now (cuz we all know 40 gig won’t cut it) or can I skate…please note I have captured some video, and will be adding it to project later, but exclude that from this conversation for now please.

One thing that is always good to do is to not render everything before you go out to compressor. Compressor will do this for you if you send it straight from FCP. If you want to preview the timeline and don't need audio you can always hit option P to do a slow preview.

6. Can I use an external drive for rendering and or burning or do I have to replace (or add) an internal? How do you change the scratch drive, if that’s the right term.

External drives will work fine as long as they are connected while you are editing. To change a scratch drive go to your system settings in FCP and choose set under the scratch disk tab.

8. Should I use markers in FCP to assist me with Chapters in DVDPro?

Yes, definately. This is a great practice, because if you do it in FCP you have unlimited choices of where to place them. If you wait until DVDPro and try to set them, you may not be able to place them exactly where you want. This is do to the compression that the video goes through. By setting chapter markers in FCP you are forcing an I frame (compression marker).

11. Should I hook up a TV and/or dual monitor to the Mac? Obviously it would be convenient. What hardware do I buy for each, something internal or external to connect them?

The best choice would be an NTSC monitor (for US) or PAL (for Europe)
theses monitors are color corrected and very reliable for seeing how your footage will look on a tv. The problem with hooking up any old tv is that the colors may not be true.

12. Is there more than one or two audio transitions and should I use them for fade in and fade out or just use key points on the time line and do it by hand? If the answer is transitions, when I double click it and get those two stereo speakers, is there an easy way to describe how to adjust the fade in/out settings…my default is too quick.

You can purchase other audio transition plugins for FCP, however you will get the most control if you transition by hand (using keyframes)

Hope all of this helps.

-tk5005