After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Rendering a 4:3 Center Cut Movie from a 16:9 Composition

As we mentioned what now seems like ages ago, we spent a year and a half creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. The introduction plus one or more additional videos from each course are available for free preview; we re-posted here on PVC the videos that contain tips and instruction you might find useful. Well, the series is done, and we’re off writing the next edition of the book. But before we go, we had one last video to share with you, which may be of interest to any After Effects user who still has to create both 16:9 and 4:3 versions of their compositions.

The HPA Tech Retreat, Technology’s Leading Edge

I attended this year’s Hollywood Post Alliance retreat that touted the theme “Snowflake Workflows”. In this episode of “The Terence & Philip Show” we cover some of the more interesting things I learned there.

Besides covering some cool new technology previews, we had a side discussion on how disruptive technologies often come out of the consumer divisions of the large conglomerates rather than their professional product division.

So click below and join the conversation.

New Adobe Webinars for Free Training

Adobe has a FREE series of webinars every Thursday from now until June 21.  Plus I teach one on June 7 about Adobe Photoshop CS6.
You can sign up here – http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=detail&id=1903730&loc=en_us

Keep reading to see the class descriptions.

NAB 2012:  Art Lebedev Optimus Popularus Keyboard

NAB 2012:  Sony Press Conference

Alec Shapiro hosting the 2012 Sony Press event.  Sorry about the poor picture, but that’s a cellphone for ya.

The annual Sony NAB press conference was held at Las Vegas’ Hard Rock Hotel, with a setting that seemed to be a bit less grandiose than previous years.  Perhaps this is fitting considering that Sony recently announced as many as 10,000 layoffs coming in the near future.  But even without that hanging over the festivities, the announcements made by Senior Vice President for Broadcast & Production Systems Alec Shapiro were less than stellar, and at times even seemed pretty out of touch, at least to an old broadcast hand like me.

The overarching theme was “Believe Beyond HD,” and near the end of the presentation the spectre of 4K acquisition did rear it’s head.  However, the first three items presented were not 4K productions, but 3D.  Clips from the upcoming programs “Stormsurfers” and hip-hop competition “Battle Of The Year” were projected on a mid-sized screen, but oddly, even with the provided RealD glasses neither clip looked very 3D at all.  (And seeing one of the “Stormsurfers” surfers very obviously holding a GoPro camera on the end of a stick suggests, at least, that not *all* of the footage was shot on Sony cameras.)  Shapiro opined that 3D was growing by leaps and bounds, but at least in the home TV market, the just isn’t true, and might well be a big part of Sony’s current financial malaise.  The third 3D production mentioned was ESPN’s coverage of the X Games, but oddly, no clips were played - and I would REALLY have liked to seen those.

9th Annual Editors’ Lounge Panel Predicts a Cloudy NAB

The panel was hosted by Alpha Dogs, Inc. and Key Code Media, and the event drew an audience of well over 100 production and post-production professionals, all eager to learn what’s in store at NAB 2012. attendees were welcomed by panelists that included; Debra Kaufman, Associate Editor at Creative COW (as moderator) Terence Curren (Editor/Colorist and Founder of Alpha Dogs Post), Mark Raudonis (VP of Post Production, Bunim/Murrary Productions), Steve Cohen (Film/TV Editor and author of “Avid Agility) and Michael Kammes (Senior Technology & Workflow Consultant, Key Code Media).

Some of the subjects covered in part one include:

0:00 Introductions
1:39 Who is under NDA?
2:25 Editing for the internet
7:15 Drawbacks to the 3D experience
10:28 Apple in the “post PC world”
15:47 Quality of internet content
18:08 How do we monetize internet content?

Sony’s NX70 camera to receive its missing 29.97p framerate via free firmware update

Sony has just announced that the NXCAM camera model known officially as the HXR-NX70 (often followed by a regional suffix) —but colloquially known simply as the NX70— will receive the vital 29.97p framerate via a free downloadable firmware, sometime in the first quarter of 2012.  Well, let me get a little more specific: The 59.94Hz segregated versions of the NX70 will get 1080PsF29.97. This article will explain how vital this framerate is for many producers in ex-NTSC countries, and cover some other improvements included in this update, together with a few that are still missing.

Is TV Broken?

I don’t generally re-post links to articles, but this one from CNN’s Business Insider Matt Rosoff caught my eye.  Give it a read, but the thumbnail is this:

What is so flawed about the television watching experience that Steve Jobs devoted his final months of life to changing it?  It’s a good, quick read.  What do you think?  Is TV broken?

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