Help & Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
HAVING
TROUBLE VIEWING THE PREVIEW CLIPS?
Our
site will attempt to install the necessary QuickTime components for you, however, if the preview clips don’t play correctly (or at all)
you may need to do a full QuickTime installation yourself. You can do this by visiting the
QuickTime
site.
HOW DO
THE QUICKTIME PREVIEWS COMPARE TO THE FULL-RES HD
CLIPS?
In
making our preview clips, we have tried to balance quality with size and
convenience. In terms of
resolution, the previews are ¼ size or 270 pixels high versus 1080 for the HD
clips. We also compress them to be
about 1/100th of the file size of the full resolution clips, but they
still look pretty good. You can
freely bring the preview clips right into the major editing tools (with a quick
re-size) and use them until you are ready to license the HD versions for your
production cut.
WHAT
ARE MXF FILES ANYWAY?
MXF
stands for Material eXchange Format. It is a file format that has been set by
SMPTE and has been adopted by the major non-linear video editing software
vendors as the next-generation tapeless workflow
format. Verify that your software
can accept these files before purchasing any of our clip licenses. If you would like more details on the
background of the MXF format, there is a good Wikipedia entry
here.
HOW
GOOD IS THE AUDIO?
We
make every effort to acquire the best audio we can. Most clips are shot with 4-channel 48k /
16-bit audio, where channels 1 & 2 are captured using the professional
Mid-Side technique (M-S
Audio) and
channels 3 & 4 are captured with an on-camera stereo microphone. The Quicktime samples are rendered with
mono audio from the “Mid” channel.
WHICH
EDITING SYSTEMS WILL WORK WITH THE FULL RES MXF HD
FILES AND HOW DO I IMPORT THEM?
Several
professional video editing systems will accept the MXF file format. We have tested Avid Xpress Pro (HD) and
Final Cut Pro but we encourage you to download some free full-resolution clips
from our samples
section to be sure that your system supports this
format. Please consult your editing system documentation on how to import MXF files. We've developed a quick guide for Avid and Final Cut Pro here.
If your system needs the P2 folder structure, you can downlad it here.
WHAT
DO THOSE APPBREVIATIONS IN YOUR CLIP DESCRIPTIONS
MEAN?
We
have adopted the long-standing model for film stock descriptions. Here’s what the
abbreviations mean:
ECU: Extreme Close
Up
CU: Close
Up
MCU: Medium Close
Up
MS: Medium Shot
MWS: Medium Wide
Shot
WS: Wide
Shot
EWS: Extreme Wide
Shot
WHAT
ARE YOUR PURCHASE TERMS AND
CONDITIONS?
Our
terms and conditions are part of our simple Project-Based Royalty-Free
licence
agreement.
Avid
Xpress is the registered trademark of Avid Technology,
Inc.
Final
Cut and QuickTime are the registered trademarks of Apple Inc.