Wednesday, June 04, 2008

A Distorted View of the World

Chris Meyer | 06/04- 08:02 PM

A case study of why it’s crucial to plan just how you’re going to move between 16:9 and 4:3 worlds.

One of my vices is auto racing; I love to watch it. Which, of course, means that Speed TV (formerly Speedvision) is a requisite part of my satellite or cable TV package. Speed is owned by Fox Sports; you’d think there’d be some budget available, and some standards enforced. But every now and then, they put on a program that makes me wonder just who they’re hiring to do their production. (See my previous blog post Staggering Mistakes for another shining example.)

One recent program - a preview of a Formula 1 event - had me stumped for days trying to figure out just how in the world they managed to mess up the image that much (the result of which is simulated here). Here’s what I think they did:

Monday, June 02, 2008

Rethinking the Music Video

Chris Meyer | 06/02- 12:03 PM

What if the graphics in a music video were driven by the music, instead of a filmmaker?

At last year’s TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conference, Jakob Trollback - director of the highly innovative motion graphics studio Trollback+Company - gave a talk and showed a sample of a different approach to take for music videos. His idea is that the video could and should be an expression of the song, not an expression of a filmmaker’s high concept, or for that matter the low concept of MTV demographics. The video above realizes this vision with the song Moonlight in Glory by David Byrne and Brian Eno from their groundbreaking album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

Trollback isn’t the first to take this approach. Imaginary Forces created a legendy piece honoring film soundtracks for the Oscars which also used abstract graphics apparently motivated by the music, while even earlier Digital Kitchen made a great piece for Sony’s digital theatre sound system which was very similar in flavor to the piece above (if anyne can dig up a link to video of either piece, I’ll add it here). But it’s an interesting, thoughtful approach nonetheless.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Soundbooth Beta Open to Public from Adobe

Richard Harrington | 06/01- 06:00 PM

Easy to use, task-based audio editor gets sneak peak

Adobe Soundbooth is a great tool to fix everyday audio problems and production workflows.  It works well for video or Flash workflows and is built around a fairly intuitive set of task-based tools. Adobe is giving its customers a chance to play with Soundbooth CS4. If you are already a CS3 owner, the beta works until after CS4 is released.  If you don’t own CS3.... then it only works for 48 hours.

Here are some of the core features worth checking out:
• Arranging audio files on multiple tracks
• Making quick edits and applying fades
• Matching volume levels with a single command
• Removing unwanted noises and background sounds
• Adjusting tempo and pitch
• Recording and polishing voice-overs
• Adding effects and filters
• Previewing MP3 compression quality
• Easily creating customized music — without musical expertise
• With the new Adobe Sound Document file format you can take “snapshots” of your work-in-progress and undo changes made to your audio assets.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

PSV#78 Making Selections: Alpha Channels

Richard Harrington | 06/01- 02:00 PM

Photoshop for Video training podcast

Instructor Richard Harrington explains how to use the color detail in an image to quickly make a great alpha channel.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Get Photos from Aperture to Final Cut Pro

Richard Harrington | 06/01- 05:05 AM

Free Plug-in Saves Time and Effort

Sometimes third-party plug-ins fill obvious holes… this is truly the case here.  Wouldn’t it make sense to be able to quickly send photos from Apple Aperture to Final Cut Pro? You’d think that sort of thing would be built right in (its not).  Fortunately the fine folks over at Connected Flow over an elegant (and free) solution.

“The Aperture to Final Cut Pro plugin lets you take your images stored in Apple’s professional photo management application and send them directly to a video sequence in Final Cut Pro. From within Aperture, you can select photos, set their order and duration and select transitions between frames.”

The Aperture to Final Cut Pro plugin is a free download and is provided on an as-is basis.  I find it works great.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Motion Templates in Final Cut Pro

Richard Harrington | 06/01- 04:32 AM

How to make your own Motion templates to use in FCP

For the past few years Apple has been pushing Motion as a tool that should be in every editor’s toolbox. The problem has been, not every editor has had the time or patience to learn Motion. In Final Cut Pro 6, Apple recognized this and has integrated Motion templates directly inside of FCP.

To launch a Motion template in Final Cut Pro you have three options:
1 Choose the Effects tab in the Browser > Master Templates.
2 Choose the Generators pulldown in the Viewer > Master Templates.
3 Choose the Sequence menu > Add Master Template.

Choose the template that you want and load it into the Viewer. Once the template has been loaded in the Viewer, clicking on the controls tab will let you change various parameters of the template. There is only one catch:

Not every parameter of a template is editable in Final Cut Pro. Text entry, size, tracking and populating drop zones with footage are the only parameters you can adjust inside Final Cut Pro.

If you need to edit a template to, for example, change the text color, or swap out a background, you need to edit the template in Motion. Here’s how.
1 Edit the template from the Viewer into your sequence.
2 Right-click on the template and notice at the top of the contextual menu you have two options: Open in Editor and Open Copy in Editor. Since the template is a prebuilt one from Apple, you can’t save over it (it’s locked) so you need to choose Open Copy in Editor.
3 Make your changes in Motion and save the file. Your changes will update in FCP.

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

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