What's the best approach to score a movie?

[andrevanharen]

Now I finally decided to dive into film scoring, I am wondering what would be a good approach to do this. For example, do I import the complete movie into Logic (uses more ram) or is it better to only insert the scene I work on? So a new project for every scene that needs to be scored? Do I use DV format which uses more ram, or should I use Quicktime that give some pressure on the processor?

 

Practical questions...

 

André

[Jordi Torres]

For example, do I import the complete movie into Logic (uses more ram)

 

When you import a movie in Logic, it is actually being played back by quicktime, and the file itself is read from disk, not loaded in RAM. If you open OSX's Activity Monitor you'll find a process called QuickTimeVideoService. This is the process responsible for playing back the movie. If you see it's RAM usage, you'll see it is very low (regardless of movie size or codec used).

 

Do I use DV format which uses more ram, or should I use Quicktime that give some pressure on the processor?

 

I'm guessing you mean the H.264 codec?

 

J.

[andrevanharen]

I remember that I loaded a DV movie in Logic and the memory use jumped up to 9 GB, that's why I assume it's loaded completely in the Mac's ram. So this shouldn't be the case? I will have to try this again to see what happens.

 

"I'm guessing you mean the H.264 codec? "

Yes, I mean the H.264 codec.

[Jordi Torres]

I remember that I loaded a DV movie in Logic and the memory use jumped up to 9 GB, that's why I assume it's loaded completely in the Mac's ram. So this shouldn't be the case? I will have to try this again to see what happens.

 

Do check again. That shouldn't be the case, no.

 

Movie size does not affect RAM at all because the movie file itself is not loaded into RAM. Any movie you open should take the same amount of RAM regardless of size, and the RAM used when opening a movie is actually being taken by the QuickTimeVideoService process I mentioned (20-something MB's per any movie you open).

 

J.

[bellyofthedragon]

I've had some fun scoring. Find its easier to do it in smaller scenes than scoring a complete movie. All sorts of tempo issues I have found. Sort tempo out first. Even minor changes will muck up your syncing. I've had no movie size problems. Even when I'm scoring a small section I have the complete movie in.

 

Steve