Education & Inspiration

Working with Keyframes in Motion

On this week's MacBreak Studio

By Mark Spencer | March 26, 2013

This week on MacBreak Studio, I get back to the basics in Motion by showing Steve Martin from Ripple Training how to create animation with keyframes.

Keyframes are the basic building blocks for creating custom animations and Motion has a variety of tools for working with them... Read More

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After Effects Brainstorm: Learning Effects

Part 2 of our exploration of this little-used creative-block-buster.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | March 25, 2013

In the second of our rescued movies on Brainstorm, I focus on using Brainstorm to help learn an effect you may be unfamiliar with. When presented with all the options in available in an open-ended effect such as Fractal Noise, it can be challenging to know just what all the effect is capable of without spending hours of concentrated, methodical study. Of course, that’s still the best way to truly master an effect, but deadlines don’t always allow us to take the rigorous, ideal approach. Therefore, in this movie I share an approach for using the Brainstorm module in After Effects to help explore what an unfamiliar effect may be capable of, including saving off promising variations for later exploration.

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After Effects Brainstorm: Effect Variations

Taking advantage of a little-used feature to overcome creative blocks.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | March 20, 2013

Continuing our rescue operation on orphaned training movies, this is the first of a trio of movies on the little-used and oft-maligned Brainstorm module in After Effects. Brainstorm provides a way to randomize selected parameters or effects with the goal of helping generate new ideas. It’s easy to think that such results would be just as useful as monkeys sitting at a bank of typewriters trying to create your next script, but when used judiciously, it can actually be quite useful. In this first movie, I demonstrate the most common case of using Brainstorm to quickly try out different settings for already-applied affects to see if it can come up with something useful more quickly than you could messing around with the effect’s parameters.

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Batch Renaming Clips in Final Cut Pro X

On this week's MacBreak Studio

By Mark Spencer | March 19, 2013

Depending on your source footage, Final Cut Pro X may assign clip names based on the metadata associated with the clips, such as the date and time each was shot. Folks used to logging clips before import may find this automatic renaming confusing, but it's actually very easy to... Read More

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Come Learn Final Cut Pro X and Motion at NAB

Over 50 Hours of FCP X & Motion Instruction

By Mark Spencer | March 15, 2013

So what's the deal with Final Cut Pro X now that it's been out for almost 2 years? Can you actually use it for "professional" editing? Is it really just "iMovie Pro"? Why do some people seem to love it and others seem to hate it?

Why not find out for... Read More

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Retiming a Generator in Final Cut Pro X

On this week's MacBreak Studio

By Mark Spencer | March 12, 2013

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Event Manger X for Final Cut Pro X

On this week's MacBreak Studio

By Mark Spencer | February 26, 2013

Managing events and projects in Final Cut Pro X can be a little tricky. By default, Final Cut Pro loads all your events and projects on launch. While you can organize and hide events by hard drive, and you can create folders for your projects, Final Cut still needs to load all those... Read More

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HPA Tech Retreat Day 4

Lightfield cameras, lens metadata, REDRAY, and even more!

By Adam Wilt | February 22, 2013

The Tech Retreat is an annual four-day conference (plus Monday bonus session) for HD / Video / cinema geeks, sponsored by the Hollywood Post Alliance. Day 4 offered a SMPTE update, lens metadata, lightfield cameras, new encoding paradigms, Ethernet AVB and video, upconverting to 4K, and the... Read More

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HPA Tech Retreat Day 3

Post On Demand, VFX on GPUs, and more.

By Adam Wilt | February 21, 2013

The Tech Retreat is an annual four-day conference for HD / Video / cinema geeks, sponsored by the Hollywood Post Alliance. Day 3 covered a legislative update, post on demand, ACES, the VFX business, file-based architecture, IMF, working in raw, digital intermediates exchange network, the cloud,... Read More

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Exporting Still Images from Final Cut Pro X

On this week's MacBreak Studio

By Mark Spencer | February 20, 2013

This week on... Read More

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The Masters of Compositing Series - Part 1: Petro Vlahos (1917-2013)

Inventor of the Sodium Vapor Compositor and the Blue Screen Color Difference Traveling Matte & Multiple Oscar recipient

By Jeff Foster | February 14, 2013

*REPOSTED: This is the first in a series of interviews with the pioneers and masters in the compositing/VFX film & television industry. I originally recorded these interviews for my published book "The Green Screen Handbook" (Sybex/Wiley, pub) and had intended to produce one full-length documentary from the materials. But after a couple of years past now, I thought they would be better served as individual parts of a series to help educate and inform people about these historic times from the early days of VFX compositing through modern-day techniques.

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Saving Favorite Effects in Final Cut Pro X

On this week's MacBreak Studio

By Mark Spencer | February 12, 2013

On this week's MacBreak Studio, I show Steve Martin from Ripple Training how you can modify effects in Final Cut Pro X and then save them for later use.

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Exporting Audio Components and Roles in Final Cut Pro X

On this week's MacBreak Studio

By Mark Spencer | February 05, 2013

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Daily Inspiration - Paperman

This animated short is a master class in visual storytelling

By Matthew Jeppsen | January 31, 2013

There's an Oscar nominated short that's making the rounds this week. It's called Paperman, and is a six minute animated Disney short that preceded Wreck-it Ralph in theaters. In my opinion, it's a master class in visual language and shot coverage. The cinematography and pacing of this piece is flawless. Watch below...

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FCP X and Alpha Channels

200th MacBreak Studio Episode

By Mark Spencer | January 29, 2013

On this week's MacBreak Studio, which happens to be our 200th episode, I talk with Steve Martin from Ripple Training about how to change the default way that Final Cut Pro X interprets transparency, or the alpha channel, of a graphic or video. 

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Keyboard-driven Color Correction in Final Cut Pro X

On this Week's MacBreak Studio

By Mark Spencer | January 22, 2013

On this week's MacBreak Studio, Steve Martin from Ripple Training shows me how you can customize the keyboard in Final Cut Pro X to set up keyboard commands for color-correction tasks.

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Useful Tools for Editors: Welcome Back Home edition

After a few years away the Useful Tools column comes back home

By Scott Simmons | January 20, 2013

One of my favorite blog categories / columns has always been the ongoing Useful Tools for Editors topic that has been a part of my coverage of our little industry since I began the Editblog many, many years ago. It was a part of my original site and then I moved it over to Studio Daily for a number of years. I'm no longer blogging for Studio Daily on a regular basis so it is time to once again move the Useful Tools for Editors column and bring it back home to the Editblog on PVC. There's so many useful tools these days I'll try to do a semi-regular round-up of them ... that is unless one comes along that is so cool it can't wait. Do you have a useful tool for editors? Then contact me and tell me about it.

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After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Adjusting Roto Brush’s Propagation Settings

With the After Effects Roto Brush, some assembly is required.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | January 13, 2013

Does it drive you crazy to see somebody use something the wrong way, then declare it doesn’t work? That’s how I feel about the Roto Brush tool introduced in After Effects CS5. This semi-automated tool helps you separate the foreground (i.e. an actor) from a complex background (i.e. not greenscreen) - “all” you have to do is make a couple quick brush strokes defining where those areas are. Well, not exactly. But when you follow the correct process, it can work rather well, and save you a lot of time in the process.

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Editing on The Go with Final Cut Pro X

On This Week's MacBreak Studio

By Mark Spencer | January 08, 2013

This week on MacBreak Studio, Steve Martin from Ripple Training shows us how to make sure we've got everything together when moving events in Final Cut Pro X to another drive.

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3D HFR and the Immersive Experience

Is Less More, or is More, in fact, More?

By Mark Christiansen | January 04, 2013

There seems little doubt that display technology and the way we experience media today won't necessarily look the same throughout the 21st century, any more than Downton Abbey looks like Enter the Void, or a zoetrope resembles Call of Duty. There are, for example,... Read More

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