Monday, July 28, 2008

Ten Reasons To Switch To Final Cut Studio

Kevin P. McAuliffe | 07/28- 02:15 PM

With all the editing programs and packages on the market today, deciding on which one is right for you can be difficult and confusing.  I thought I would take a look and list my top ten reasons why you should either switch to Final Cut Studio 2 or make it your first choice when buying for the first time!

10. SMOOTHCAM AND THE INTRODUCTION OF BACKGROUND PROCESSING

Anyone who has used Shake will be familiar with SmoothCam.  It was designed to, as the name says, smooth out camera bumps and shakes in your footage.  Most people might look at this and think that it is not really that big a deal, but believe me, it is.  Why you ask?  SmoothCam not only lets you smooth your footage out, but it introduces a new feature to Final Cut Pro that let’s you process the effect “live” in the background.  The way the effect works is that once you add it to your timeline, FCP immediately starts analyzing the original clip to see what is happening inside the frame.  Keep in mind, if the shot you captured was an hour long, it will process the whole hour long clip.  In most cases, with anything that needs processing or analyzing, you would need to stop and wait for it to finish.  Not anymore!  Now, Final Cut Pro will analyze while you are working.  Once you hit play on your timeline to see what you are working on, the analyzing will pause, and once you stop playing to do effects work, titles, etc, it will keep processing until it is done.

Monday, July 14, 2008

On Artbeats.com: Article on Mixing Audio

Chris and Trish Meyer | 07/14- 08:20 PM

Keeping the viewer focused rather than confused when mixing voice, music, and sound effects.

As some of you know, both of us originally came from the music industry. Chris in particular still composes music and edits dialog for some of CyberMotion’s clients.

Every month, we write a Tips N Tricks article for our friends at Artbeats.com. This month we wrote about how mix audio effectively to ensure the listener can hear the dialog without becoming distracted by the music or sound effects. There’s only a few simple rules you need to learn to make a huge improvement in the quality of your soundtracks. Remember: Bad audio can really distract from good video!

Click here to download a PDF of “Clearly Mixed” from Artbeats.com. (This is an update of our classic 1995 article on mixing, On The Level.)

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Why QuickTime is the US Dollar of Digital Video

Mark Christiansen | 07/12- 09:00 AM

As the standard is devalued, the world undertakes a slow-motion search for an alternative. What can be done for QuickTime?

How bad are things for the US Dollar these days? So bad that, as reported by the BBC and mentioned recently on This Week in Tech, Gisele Bundchen no longer accepts modeling pay in dollars, nor apparently do many high-end boutiques in the capital of U.S. commerce, New York City. European travel is effectively twice as expensive as it was just a few years ago simply because of the exchange rate. So it may come as a surprise how familiar the situation of the world economy in regards to the dollar is if you’re a video professional using QuickTime.

I’m not actually joking.

Monday, June 16, 2008

It’s not the budget, it’s where you put the camera!

Art Adams | 06/16- 05:45 PM

Equipment doesn’t make the image; people do. I proved this on a music video recently where we had more people than equipment.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

In LA? Hire this editor!

Adam Wilt | 06/15- 01:57 PM

Shameless plug - editor for hire

I’m decompressing from “Maelstrom” and catching up on email that accumulated during the shoot, and I notice that Los Angeles-based editor Sharon Franklin is looking for gigs. She says,

Ideally, I’d love to get on a feature film or television series. I’m especially interested in working on projects for Discovery or The History Channel. I am a member of the Editors Guild, so I’m qualified to work union jobs. In fact, that would be my preference.

She’s one of the most “natural” editors I know. She has a sense of style and rhythm, but she doesn’t force them on the material: the story always comes first. I’ve seen some of the source material she’s had to work with, and she can pull coverage and continuity out of thin air. You could do a lot worse than have her cut your show. Contact Sharon Franklin at (310) 927-6220, or editrixstar at yahoo dot com

(We now return you to your regularly scheduled program, already in progress… “Maelstrom” notes will follow in the next three days, before I head off to CineGear Expo...)

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Compression Artifacts & Pulldown

Chris Meyer | 06/11- 08:01 AM

A question about a ghost leads to discourses on 3:2 pulldown and the QuickTime codec dialog.

This started as a quick post about how to gain finer control over the compression settings in the QuickTime dialog. But before we can get there, we first need to talk talk about how 3:2 pulldown works. (Trust me; it all ties together; it was also a good little mystery.)

I recently gave a training session at a local studio, and at the end they were invited to trot out their Barney Stumpers (questions about why something went wrong, how something works, etc.). For one stumper, a user had some footage with 3:2 pulldown, and after pulldown was removed, he noticed that an after-image of the previous frame appeared in the next frame after an edit. Why?

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