(sigh) The drama of post-production film editing just never ends! Maybe one day I'll shoot my next movie about my experience!
Since I'm having trouble bringing my footage from my home computer to the school computer using the Final Cut Pro editing system, I decided to use the Avid Xpress Pro editing system. Avid is the one that is generally used by Hollywood, although some tell me that Final Cut Pro is making inroads now. I have already taken courses in both editing systems, but Avid is a bit more of a challenge than Final Cut Pro.
Here's a link to Avid Xpress Pro:
http://www.avid.com/products/xpressprohd
And here's a link to a picture of the Avid interface:
http://www.avid.com/community/mac/images/Script_lg.gif
So what I decided to do is output the footage that I've worked on so far on my home computer to mini-DV tape on my Canon XL1 camcorder and that I would bring the tape to school so that I could recapture it on the Avid system. I went through two JVC tape decks and two Panasonic camcorders to transfer the footage to the PowerMac with no luck! In all four cases, there was tons of noise on both the video and audio portions of the playback. However, I just outputted the footage yesterday and played it back on my Canon and it was fine! I returned home and played that tape again and like last night, it was perfect with no noise. Anyway, I decided to output that whole footage again on a new mini-DV cassette tape and this time I would bring my Canon to school to capture it on the computers there. Before I went ahead, someone told me that it was possible that anything recorded on my Canon camera may be incompatible on other camcorders due to a tracking issue which can only be fixed through servicing. Anyway, I tried using my Canon to capture my footage and, believe it or not, the Avid system was rejecting my camera! I would later find out searching on the Internet that evening that there are tons of issues between Avid and Canon.
So a couple of techs came by and concluded the only way to do this would be to convert my mini-DV copy of my footage onto a JVC tape deck, in which the tape deck would record directly from my Canon. Then we took that tape and used the JVC deck to capture my footage on Avid and it worked! Finally! After almost a week of headaches, I finally began working on editing my film at school.
I promised many people that I will have my film out by Christmas, but after all these technical glitches, I'm not so sure that will happen, but I try to be hopeful.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Monday, September 26, 2005
WHAT A FREAKIN' 24 HOURS!
I suppose if I am to continue to pursue filmmaking, I have to expect some glitches along the way.
One thing I learned about Final Cut Pro as an online editing system is that anytime you save your work, you automatically create media files onto your hard drive.
Sunday night, I finished lining up all the film shots with the audio and room tone in the background (room tone is when you record silence in the same room where you did your film shoots to "get the sound of the room" added to your audio). The six media files are:
Audio Render files
Autosave Vault
Render files
Thumbnail Cache files
Waveform Cache files
and! the most important media file:
Capture Scratch
These files are needed in order for your shots to run perfectly on your editing system and when you eventually output them to tape, DVD or whatever. Without them, your files go "offline" and you cannot work on them. What happened was I was working on a separate project in which I will do a video montage of my recent visit to the Joshua Tree Park in Twentynine Palms, California with Alanis Morissette in the background singing "Ironic". I had saved that project, along with my media files, on my LaCie external FireWire hard drive. I transferred that project and the media files on my desktop, however, I found out that it wasn't necessary to transfer media files on my desktop as long as the external hard drive was still connected to my computer. Plus, someone told me it's never a good idea to have media files on your desktop anyway as it could confuse the editing system.
So I deleted all the media files on my desktop and then tried to resume on my regular project, only to discover in horror that all of my room tone audio files, as well as extra shots I just captured days earlier have disappeared and went offline! Initially, I had no idea how this happened. Fortunately, I was able to hook up with a person here in Phoenix who works as a videographer for the State of Arizona the following Monday morning and he was able to explain how to restore my missing files. First, I had to check the System Settings in my editing system and I noticed it had saved all my media files to my desktop and not my documents folder in my hard drive. I reset the system settings and I was able to retrieve and recapture all of my missing files with my Canon XL1 digital video camcorder and everything I'm happy to say is back to where it was!
However, I still had one more glitch to overcome. As I was almost finished recapturing all of my lost footage, my camcorder started going crazy on me. When I played back the tape on my camcorder, I was getting all these Mosaic split-screen images and pixels dotted all over the picture. I was concerned that the camera I plunked down a lot of money on was becoming worthless, however, it turned out that the video heads were dirty and just needed cleaning with a dry-cleaning Mini-DV cassette. Only $10. That did the trick.
So everything is back to way it was before, but this is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy! Since the school is using a more advanced version of my editing system, I will play it safe and do all my editing at school and not at home. One thing I'm going to try to do is output what I have worked on so far on Mini-DV tape and capture that on a computer at school.
Over the weekend, I shot three "establishment shots" on my camcorder that I will add to my film to give the viewers an idea as to where specific scenes take place (a high school and two houses, including my own).
Hope I didn't lose any of you with all this technical stuff! :)
One thing I learned about Final Cut Pro as an online editing system is that anytime you save your work, you automatically create media files onto your hard drive.
Sunday night, I finished lining up all the film shots with the audio and room tone in the background (room tone is when you record silence in the same room where you did your film shoots to "get the sound of the room" added to your audio). The six media files are:
Audio Render files
Autosave Vault
Render files
Thumbnail Cache files
Waveform Cache files
and! the most important media file:
Capture Scratch
These files are needed in order for your shots to run perfectly on your editing system and when you eventually output them to tape, DVD or whatever. Without them, your files go "offline" and you cannot work on them. What happened was I was working on a separate project in which I will do a video montage of my recent visit to the Joshua Tree Park in Twentynine Palms, California with Alanis Morissette in the background singing "Ironic". I had saved that project, along with my media files, on my LaCie external FireWire hard drive. I transferred that project and the media files on my desktop, however, I found out that it wasn't necessary to transfer media files on my desktop as long as the external hard drive was still connected to my computer. Plus, someone told me it's never a good idea to have media files on your desktop anyway as it could confuse the editing system.
So I deleted all the media files on my desktop and then tried to resume on my regular project, only to discover in horror that all of my room tone audio files, as well as extra shots I just captured days earlier have disappeared and went offline! Initially, I had no idea how this happened. Fortunately, I was able to hook up with a person here in Phoenix who works as a videographer for the State of Arizona the following Monday morning and he was able to explain how to restore my missing files. First, I had to check the System Settings in my editing system and I noticed it had saved all my media files to my desktop and not my documents folder in my hard drive. I reset the system settings and I was able to retrieve and recapture all of my missing files with my Canon XL1 digital video camcorder and everything I'm happy to say is back to where it was!
However, I still had one more glitch to overcome. As I was almost finished recapturing all of my lost footage, my camcorder started going crazy on me. When I played back the tape on my camcorder, I was getting all these Mosaic split-screen images and pixels dotted all over the picture. I was concerned that the camera I plunked down a lot of money on was becoming worthless, however, it turned out that the video heads were dirty and just needed cleaning with a dry-cleaning Mini-DV cassette. Only $10. That did the trick.
So everything is back to way it was before, but this is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy! Since the school is using a more advanced version of my editing system, I will play it safe and do all my editing at school and not at home. One thing I'm going to try to do is output what I have worked on so far on Mini-DV tape and capture that on a computer at school.
Over the weekend, I shot three "establishment shots" on my camcorder that I will add to my film to give the viewers an idea as to where specific scenes take place (a high school and two houses, including my own).
Hope I didn't lose any of you with all this technical stuff! :)
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