Export via Sorensen Squeeze 6 from the FCP timeline

Just the other day I needed to export mp3 audio files from several long Final Cut Pro timelines to send to a client for review. There was no reason to send video and they wanted to get small audio files that didn’t have to be of great quality attached to an email. What better format than mp3! With that I remembered that Sorenson Squeeze 6 (now at version 6.5) installs an Export Using QuickTime Conversion option in FCP. After making the mp3s I thought that a reminder of this would make a good blog post.

Kicking the tires on DaVinci Resolve for Mac

DaVinci Resolve for Mac has begun shipping en masse and is now getting into the hands of a lot of end users. Apparently I talked up the right people as I stalked the Blackmagic Design booth at NAB as they sent over a copy for testing and review. I wanted to install Resolve right away but a busy week of editing meant I didn’t have to time gut the office machine to get the cards in for a proper Resolve configuration. After looking at the install discs sitting around for a few days I couldn’t stand it any more and took them home to install there and at least get a taste for what Resolve for Mac is like. But my home Mac Pro doesn’t really meet the recommended system requirements ....

Martini QuickShot Creator puts pre-viz directly into FCP

Just watched the demo for Martini Quickshot Creator, and must say that this $199 software package looks AWESOME. Check out the demo here...you can quickly build pre-visualized scenes for a project from a library of characters and scenes. All from within Final Cut Pro. This software looks simply brilliant.

Adobe’s US$99 Premiere Elements for Mac: a first look from a pro video perspective

Last week, I attended Experience Adobe CS5 Production on a Mac here in Miami. Interestingly, the seminar was organized by a local reseller called Enhanced View Services, although promoted via Apple Events, and the actual presenters were from Adobe and Apple. Even though there was a presentation from Apple before and after the Adobe presentation, I estimate that 75% was about Adobe’s CS5. Many ProVideo Coalition readers know that I have written several articles about Final Cut Pro workflow, and more recently, I’ve published several about Premiere Pro CS5, and I will continue to do so. In addition to saying hello to the people from Apple and Adobe and hearing even more about CS5, I really wanted to see whether there would be any mention of the new US$99 Premiere Elements for Mac, which had been announced earlier in the week… and if not, I wanted to ask questions about it. In this article, you’ll find out more about what happened at this event, and the surprisingly positive answers I got about Premiere Elements for Mac.

TecnoTur 5 (English): interviews with SingularSoftware (PluralEyes + more) and OWC (iMac w/eSATA)

TecnoTur episode 5 (English) is now available. In episode 5, Carla Sánchez and Allan Tépper discuss RIM/Blackberry’s new podcast consumption application. Next comes Larry O’Connor of OWC (Other World Computing), creator of the revolutionary eSATA modification for certain Apple iMac computers, as well as SSDs (Solid State Drives) and other products. Finally, we converse with Bruce Sharpe of Singular Software about 3D/stereo editing workflow, PluralEyes, DualEyes and their latest application, Presto. Here are details about how to hear TecnoTur free, or become a subscriber.

Review: Get - Phonetic searching for Final Cut Pro

One of the big hits at NAB 2010 was a little program set up in a tiny booth at the plug-in pavilion called ‘Get’, from a company called AV3 Software. Get isn’t really a plug-in at all but rather a stand alone application that works in conjunction with Final Cut Pro to phonetically index media and allow the editor to search for words within that indexed media. In its simplest terms, if you have an interview with a subject that’s talking about resumes, you can search for the word “resume” and Get will return results of all the clips that it indexed with the word “resume” including markers on each clip where the word appears. Since Get is a standalone application you then send the search results to Final Cut Pro where the clips will import with markers intact. Many editors will instantly see where this might come in handy.

Rarevision 5DtoRGB vs MPEG Streamclip for transcoding

There’s a new transcoding tool making the rounds on that newfangled Twitter thingy the kids are using these days, it’s called Rarevision 5DtoRGB. It’s a free app for Mac users that they claim offers a much higher quality conversion from H.264 DSLR raw footage to an editing codec (ProRes is a common choice, in one of several flavors and bitrates). Two blogs have done some comparison testing between this new tool and MPEG Streamclip (another popular free option), and I wanted to point them out here for your pixel-peeping enjoyment…

Burn-in timecode will make your client happy

If you’ve ever had to send out a copy of an edit for client review (and really, what editor doesn’t do this on a very regular basis) then you may have very well been asked to provide a BITC. BITC stands for burn-in timecode and is as old as editing itself. Dylan Reeve noted right after this post went up that in some countries it’s called TCIP for Timecode in Picture. The numbers running on a BITC give the client an exact number to provide back to the editor when commenting on specific points in an edit. That timecode references the master sequence timecode of the edit. Back in the “old days” of editing you often had to output a cut to videotape and then make a dub of that tape using the super-output of the deck. But today’s non-linear editors provide a filter that you can throw on a cut to produce the BITC. Media Composer and Final Cut Pro both have this effect but they operate in a very different way.

Add eSATA to a 27” iMac and untap RAID speeds of 3.3 times faster than FireWire 800

Although it has been in existence for many years and is known to be among the best and fastest ways to connect local external hard drives or disk arrays to a computer, Apple strangely has been the only computer manufacturer to my knowledge which has not yet offered a direct eSATA port on any of its computers. Even way back in the Apple G5 tower era, I used to add eSATA ports to high-end video editing systems I integrated, and this of course has continued with the MacPro (Intel) era of Apple towers. The lack of direct eSATA port on all other Macs Mac, MacBook(Pro), and Mac Mini] has sadly meant that video editors have had to settle for slower FireWire 800 speeds… until now. The highly respected OWC (Other World Computing) is now offering a US$169 custom modification to iMac 27” (mid 2010 models) to add eSATA, which untaps 3.3 times faster performance with an external disk array or SSD, compared to FireWire 800. This article will cover what the extra speed means to a video editor, how eSATA has been added to Macs before (with compromises), the advantages of OWC’s new official upgrade plan, and how to do critical video evaluation monitoring with an iMac.

Bill Warner, Walter Murch multi-part stories, links galore

There’s a couple of really good multi-part interviews that have been airing incrementally around the Internet that I wanted to point to. If you haven’t been following them then you’re in for a real treat as you catch up. Hollywood Reinvented is currently in part 5 of an interview with Bill Warner, the man who created Avid. Flickering Myth is taking an extended look at the career of Walter Murch.

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