Final Cut Pro - 23.98 & 23.976

Yesterday I spent 6 hours trying to figure out why an animation I created in After Effects looked stutter-y or jumpy when it was added to my Final Cut sequence and exported.  Well, I finally figured it out and now I kind of want to scream at Final Cut.

Apparently, Final Cut Pro (I'm using FCP 7) rounds up 23.976 to 23.98 (or more confusingly know as 24). This is usually not a problem if you just add your 23.976 footage into FCP and start cutting.  My issue was that I created an animation in After Effects, check my sequence settings in FCP to see that it said 23.98 and then used 23.98 as my comp settings in After Effects.  Since After Effects is really exporting 23.98, FCP was adding frames and taking out frames in order to make up the .004 difference.  This doesn't seem like a lot, but it wrecked the animations.  They looked like they were having trouble playing back and it was just ugly.

So, if this has happened to you and you don't want to go in and re-export every project you did in After Effects, what you can do is open up Cinema Tools, (comes with FCP 7) and batch conform every clip to 23.98.  Yes, 23.98.  It's confusing, but Cinema Tools is really doing 23.976, but since all this Apple software, including Quicktime, wants to round up, you'll end up with the "correct" 23.98.

Ugh.  Maybe it's time to open Premiere.

Here is some more info on the issue. 

Export Multiple Sequences in Final Cut Pro at Once

Recently, I needed to export 27 sequences to  small .mov files with timecode.  The reason I had so many sequences is because I had Plural Eyes sync 27 interviews and it puts them in their own sequence.  I needed to export them, so they could be reviewed by the client, so I figured I would share the way I did it.  Best part of this is that it's easy. 

You need to go over to your browser and find all the sequences you want to export.  Command click all the sequences you want and then right click.  Go to "Send To" and then click "Compressor". 

Boom. That's it. Compressor should open up and you can just export with whatever settings you want.  If you need help using compressor, send a message or leave a comment.  If needed I can make another update going through that.

Creating and Exporting a Preset in Lightroom 3

After you have made a bunch of adjustments on an image, you might want to save that toning for later.  Maybe you just tried your hand at the vintage look from an earlier post and want to save that as a preset.  Well you can and you can even export that preset for others to use.  

After you have made all the adjustments for your image, all you need to do is go over the Preset box in the Develop Module and hit the plus button (+).

A dialog box will open up asking you which adjustments you want to save.  Usually the boxes that are checked by default are the ones to go with, but if you think you want to save any brush stroke, gradients, etc, then go ahead and check those as well.  This is also where you name the preset whatever you want and where you can add it to a new folder or the default User Presets folder.

Click create and boom. Done.  

Now say you want to give that preset to a friend or offer it on your site for others to use.  All you need to do is export the preset and send it.  To do this, right click on the preset you want to export.  When the dialog box pops up, click on "Export".

 

Now all you need to do is rename the file if you want and tell it where you want to save it.  That's it. Send the file to all your friends so they can steal your swagger.

If you are having any issues or want help with anything else, send me a message.  Also, if you are using Photoshop, you can use "action" to do roughly the same thing.  They come in handy, I promise.