Tuesday, June 10, 2008

On Artbeats.com: Article on Editing to Sound

Chris and Trish Meyer | 06/10- 07:46 PM

Over on Artbeats.com, we’ve written an introduction to editing audio.

Every month, we write a Tips N Tricks article for our friends at Artbeats.com. This month we wrote a piece about spotting hit points in music and dialog, plus a series of pointers on how to place edit points, transitions, and animation keyframes based on these hit points. We strongly believe the tight integration between audio and video is a secret weapon that can be used to raise your productions above the rest; we hope you find this introduction worthwhile.

Click here to download a 333 KB PDF of “Editing to Sound” from Artbeats.com.

While we’re talking about Artbeats, Steve Holmes (formerly of Total Training) also just created for Artbeats a new video tutorial that shows you how to “step through time with an innovative look at the evolution of energy.” You can download the 36+ minute tutorial from Artbeats.com by clicking here.

By the way, if you’d like to share one of your own projects with Artbeats and their customers, email them - if they choose yours, you’ll get $1000 worth of free Artbeats footage of your choice!

Artbeats has a monthly email newsletter which contains links to each of our articles for them as they are released, plus a link for registered users to download a free full-size clip every month. Click here to register.

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

What’s in a Name?

steve martin | 06/04- 09:47 AM

Manage Your File Names without Leaving the Browser

As any editor knows, good media management begins by establishing proper naming conventions.  In a perfect world, proper clip names would be entered during the logging stage.  However, due to tight deadlines or perhaps shear laziness on the part of the editor, media file names are sometimes injested or captured with non-descript file names such as “untitled” or, as is the case with the Panasonic AG-HVX200, transferred with their 6 digit camera-assigned file names. This article will show you how to rename your files directly in the Browser using Final Cut Pro 6.  Below is an screen shot of an edit in progress using clips transferred from an AG-HVX200. 

Before you can rename the file, you first must locate the Master clip.  Park your playhead over the clip to be renamed, then press Shift-F to reveal the clip in the Browser.  The clip will become selected.

In the Browser, give your clip a meaningful name.

From the Modify Menu choose Rename>File to Match Clip.

You will be warned that what you are about to do will modify the original file. Go ahead, live life on the edge…

Because of Final Cut Pro’s Master/Affiliate clip architecture, all Affiliate clips that reference the Master clip will be renamed.

In the Finder, you’ll see that the file name was actually changed to the new name you entered in the Browser.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Tapeless Workflows, a Jump to the Past?

Terence Curren | 06/01- 10:37 AM

We in the post world are on the verge of an explosion in media management, and it isn’t a pretty sight. The worst part is that even though it is billed as the future, it really is a bast from the past. That is going to be very trying on many of the new production and post crowd who haven’t been raised with the disciplines of the old workflows.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Final Cut Pro to YouTube

Richard Harrington | 05/19- 04:10 PM

Learn how to get the best YouTube videos from Final Cut Pro

What people tend to forget is that you are sending YouTube a master for them to compress; therefore, send the highest quality you can, that fits within their limitations. YouTube.com is well know for being the busiest video-sharing site, but unfortunately, YouTube uses the much older Sorenson Spark codec for their video encoding. This was the “improved” video format for Flash 7 but is based on the very old H.263 video conferencing codec. Even when new, this was an old, inefficient codec.

Many people send YouTube an already compressed video, and are disappointed when they see the quality that results on YouTube. That’s because most of the information was first thrown away by the encode before upload, so there was little quality left to be encoded to Flash 7.

The goal is to give YouTube a master that they can use for encoding:
• YouTube has two limitations: no more than 10 minutes per video and no larger than 100 MB per video.
• YouTube converts everything that is uploaded to Flash 7 video at 320X240 (although they’ve started to also do 640X480 in H.264).
• Remember the good old days of VHS distribution? You wouldn’t give the duplicator a VHS copy of the show to duplicate. No, you’d give them the highest quality master you could. Therefore, to get the best quality from YouTube, give them a high quality “master” that is close to 99 MB.

Here’s how to pull this off:
1 Use QuickTime Pro or Final Cut Pro to exports to .mp4 with H.264 video.
2 Export as MPEG-4 with H.264 and set the size to 320X240. There is no point providing more resolution than YouTube’s finished size. By going direct to that size means that you can devote bandwidth to making that master look great, instead of sending excess size that will be scaled down. The bonus is that you get to control de-interlacing and scaling.
3 From here on there are two choices: calculate the maximum data rate that will keep the file under 99 MB, or use some general purpose settings.

Thanks to Phil Hodgetts for this guest tip.

Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

Monday, May 12, 2008

The Compleat Idiot’s Guide to RED Post on a Budget

Art Adams | 05/12- 11:03 AM

Written by a complete post idiot, these RED tips may make your life slightly easier

This is by no means a definitive manual on how to post RED footage. Rather, this is how I managed to work with R3D footage while creating a spec spot using the RED. Your mileage may vary. I expect to be flamed repeatedly regarding my handling of this shoot’s post process, but from the ashes I hope to extract some knowledge as to how to do it all better next time.

We did not record any sound on the shoot, so that part of the post process is not addressed. Yay!

For behind-the-scenes action, see Adam Wilt’s post on the shoot itself.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Sweet Music Videos from Photos

Richard Harrington | 05/10- 06:54 AM

Turn a folder of images into a music video

Looking for something different? I discovered Animoto at this year’s SXSW conference… Load up your photos, pick a song, and within a few minutes you have a rocking music video. You can use their cleared music or load up your own. Thirty-second movies are free, full-length videos cost $3. You can get a full year’s access for $30. Here is a discount for $5 off.

The whole process is a piece of cake. Be sure to check them out – here. You can post the videos to a website, download them for an iPod, or even use YouTube to share. 

Here are a two more of mine that you can check out.

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